Like the story, but not a fan of the narration

I’ve read this book before and never though this would be made into an audiobook! I adored this book the first time I read it some years ago and I like that it’s available in audio now as well, even though I will say the narration isn’t my favorite.

Trigger warnings include use of date rape drugs, rape, abuse, gaslighting, harassment, mentions of suicide, ableism, and racism.

The story is about 20-year-old Landon “Lane” Moredock who is caught up in his parent’s schemes and is set to take the fall since his parents are nowhere to be found and they owe lots of people a LOT of money in a Ponzi scheme. And Lane, who has lived rich all his life suddenly finds himself without money, without friends, without anything but the barest of clothes the FBI let him walk away with. They don’t have anything to pin on Lane, but nobody believes that Lane doesn’t know what his parents have done or that he wasn’t involved.

He turns to the one man was a family friend and thinks might not hate him on sight - Acton Wagner. When Lane arrives at Acton's party, he doesn't know what to expect, and comes out of it deeply scarred.

Derek is one of the victims of the Moredock Ponzi scheme. He's out around $15,000, but he knows that's not much compared to the millions some people got scammed out of. But he's just a photographer wanting to get by in life doing what he enjoys doing and that money is still money.

This book does take a quite awhile for Lane and Derek go cross each other’s paths for real and more than a passing second. There’s no real cliffhanger, so readers can choose to read the second book or not. This ends with what feels enough like a HEA. This is also an age-gap romance! Derek is 37 to Lane's 20, but they work together.

The BDSM in this book is written relatively well and the relationship between the two characters is full of trust and consent. Anytime during their scenes together, if Lane was uncomfortable and asked to stop, Derek immediately stopped. Derek would also make sure each, and every time, they did something that Lane consented first. The scenes with puppy play was interesting.
I honestly feel like it was more uncomfortable reading the role play scenes than anything else. I do feel like I'm dying from secondhand embarrassment whenever characters role play, but that's just a personal thing.

The narration is by a new narrator, I think? Or at least I can’t see if the narrator has any other books he’s done. For the most part, I think Silas Whitaker’s normal speaking voice, the one he uses for when the characters are speaking to themselves or inside their heads, is perfectly fine. It’s just...his accent comes through on certain words that makes me cringe. The story doesn’t necessarily say where it takes place but the narrator’s accent is too much for me with the way he pronounces words like “bag” as “bayg”, “Wagner” as “Wayg-ner” or “already” as “al-ray-dy”. I don’t particularly love the voices he gives the characters either. Lane sounds extremely whiny and too high pitched, to the point that it sounds unnatural. And the other speaking voices of the characters don’t sound all that likable either. Except maybe the slightly Southern accent of Derek’s best friend Ferg. If the next book gets made into an audiobook as well with the same narrator, I might be more hesitant to buy it.

There are things that I really loved about this book, but I understand that this kind of story won't be for everyone. It's extremely dark and very raw. I love the characters and the story.

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Good

I did mostly enjoy this one, but I think my attention span dwindled. I felt like how it started should have been a bigger problem between them, and because of that it made me feel less for Derek as a Dom. I did enjoy the puppy play scenes, because it really felt like that's what Lane needed.

I'll probably go to the next one at some point.

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Where is this narrator from?

I like the story, overall it's aged well even if it's obviously an early effort from these two authors. They also didn't use American English terms for a story set in what appears to be the US.
But. The narrator is awful.
I really wanted to speed it up just because his pronunciations are downright bizarre. At times he almost sounded Canadian or maybe from the Upper Peninsula but that doesn't explain the way he said certain words. For example "ready" was "reedy" and that word or forms of it were used a lot in this book. Plus, at times Lane sounded like Hermey, the dentist elf from Rudolph. The characterizations were just odd and uneven. I can't recommend this audio and I will never again listen to anything with this narrator.

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There For You

I like how we got to see that Derek had his anger and upset about the situation at the beginning of the story. It really makes his change of heart seem like his feelings are very real. I also like how we get the chance to see Lane find his own strength. This story keeps you guessing about how things will turn out right until the end.
I listened to audio version and enjoyed it.

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