• Pansies

  • Spires Series, Book 4
  • By: Alexis Hall
  • Narrated by: Cornell Collins
  • Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (195 ratings)

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Pansies  By  cover art

Pansies

By: Alexis Hall
Narrated by: Cornell Collins
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Publisher's summary

Alfie Bell is . . . fine. He's got a six-figure salary, a penthouse in Canary Wharf, the car he swore he'd buy when he was 18, and a bunch of fancy London friends.

It's rough, though, going back to South Shields now that they all know he's a fully paid-up pansy. It's the last place he's expecting to pull. But Fen's gorgeous, with his pink-tipped hair and hipster glasses, full of the sort of courage Alfie's never had. It should be a one-night thing, but Alfie hasn't met anyone like Fen before.

Except he has. At school, when Alfie was everything he was supposed to be, and Fen was the stubborn little gay boy who wouldn't keep his head down. And now it's a proper mess: Fen might have slept with Alfie, but he'll probably never forgive him, and Fen's got all this other stuff going on anyway, with his mam and her flower shop and the life he left down south.

Alfie just wants to make it right. But how can he, when all they've got in common is the nowhere town they both ran away from.

Contains mature themes.

©2018 Alexis Hall (P)2020 Tantor

What listeners say about Pansies

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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great narration but hard to hear on the highway

I love every single queer book that MLD/Cornell Collins has narrated. especially this one but their is one big thing that made this hard to listen to. I like to listen in the car while driving and generally this involves highways. Every single MLD book is hard to hear while driving on the highway. My phone is turned all the way up and I have to turn up the stereo so loud it's uncomfortable. This isn't an issue with other books. It could be a sound mixing issue or my car who knows but it's frustrating

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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Voices

The only thing I didn’t like is I couldn’t always distinguish Alfie’s voice from Fen’s.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Poetry - and a lovely performance by C. Collins

Classic, classic Alexis Hall! All my favorite aspects of their writing come together in Pansies. I have been enjoying Hall's recent stuff as well, but I've been holding onto Pansies for the right moment, and I treasured it like a greedy child. Poetry!

I listened to the audio version, and Cornell Collins does a stunning job with these characters. Simply a beautiful performance.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

… Alexis Hall, what a way to write…

I’ve become a fan of his stories, very simple story lines very relatable! Very enjoyable… and when I say simple I do not mean it in a bad way… rather the contrary… OMG! I think this one in particular might be in my top 5! Great job!

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fantastic

this book was fantastic. excellent narration imo. earmarking this audio for my book tracking purposes.

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Don't put this one off..

I've held off on this for months being more into historical MM romance. This has been on my list since the first books I listened to in the genre... Both with Cornel Collins as the narrator. I absolutely love his narrating and wish he had more titles. I thought I read that somewhere that Alexis Hall's novels weren't super as smutty as other books but that is definitely not the case. I'm not even finished with this but I absolutely love this pairing. The romance is so sweet and fumbly just like the characters themselves.. Fumbling through things and figuring them out as they go... The writing is great and it's a really good book to listen to. The dialog sounds like it works best hearing it that reading it.

Just give it a chance. I got sucked in within 3 chapters

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A MUST LISTEN!!!

Seriously I cannot recommend Alexis Hall’s writing enough! Pansies is another spectacular and unique story bright to life by Hall.

As with all his writing Pansies is completely it’s own world, our leading men are so different from each other but they both have broken pieces of themselves that they cannot fix without the others love and understanding. The heart wrenching tale of Fen and Alfie will have you laughing, crying and begging for a happy ending.

I will day this book like all of Halls stories is not a traditional romance plot. There is no mold or trope to explain the love story of these two men (enemies to lovers doesn’t really fit because that’s all in the past and all that remains are the scars) all I can say is you will not regret buying this book and falling head over heals for these two men

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Great narration

Worth spending your credit to join Alfie and Fen on their journey to HEA. Emotions, spice and humor. Great narration as always from Cornell Collins

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

emotional, raw take on school bully transformation

Outstanding! The characters are extremely well-formed, even secondary characters. Plot is a bit slow in the middle, but it's worth sticking it out. Sometimes I felt claustrophobic in the setting, but the setting (small town in northern England) is lovely.

I avoided this one for awhile because I was nervous about the "school bully" angle, but it's handled well. Some of what happens is unhealthy, and it's acknowledged as that and written in a really human, engaging way. Watching Alfie grow is beautiful. At times, some of the things he does or says are horrendous (especially in the past but also in the book), but he learns, and it feels genuine. He's a total romantic, which is so charming. Although some of the things he does or says that are called romantic in the book seem like nothing special--but they mean a lot to Fen, so I enjoyed it all the same.

Fen is slow to heal after losing his mother, and it feels real. Hall is extremely gifted at capturing real human emotions. Fen writes beautiful letters to his mother, but they all sound like Hall's writing style (unique compound words, metaphors, and adjectives), which sometimes threw me out of the scene. But they're emotional and raw, so I appreciated the insight they gave us into Fen's POV.

Sometimes I didn't understand Fen and Alfie as a couple. Their intimate scenes (physical and otherwise) are really beautiful, but everything in-between suggests they're a poor match. They have very little in common aside from what they want in a partner (perhaps that's enough?). They work by the end (they grow for each other, especially Alfie), but it was shaky for me in the middle.

I wish Alfie's friends had featured more. Their role in the beginning seems important, and I was disappointed that they only resurface toward the end. They would have helped the story feel less claustrophobic and slow, but oh well.

I am abnormally invested in Greg, Alfie's friend, and I wish he had his own book. Just want HEAs all around!

Performance is outstanding!

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No one does redemption better than Alexis Hall

In book after book, Alexis Hall gives us a character who's given up, or very nearly, and he slowly, carefully, and sometimes with really wicked sharp wit, brings them back to life, usually through a lover who won't give up on them. The Billionaire series and the Spires series are both about redemption through love, and as corny as that sounds, Alexis Hall makes it so deeply human that the cliche turns real and has the power to move and even inspire. I loved the book, the narration, the whole thing, and as with every Alexis Hall book, I finish it and get so unnerved that there's not another one to listen to that I go back and listen to it again, and it holds up to a second listen, and I suspect to a third.

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1 person found this helpful