Chance Encounter

A MM MPREG Romance

By: Chris Savage

Narrated by: Jack Noble

Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's summary

Braiden and Trey once shared a burning passion for each other when they were younger. Because their fathers were bitter rivals, they had to keep their relationship a secret. Upon turning 18, Braiden wanted to take their relationship public and declare their love for each other to their families. Trey, however, was not ready for this and this led to a huge fight and them breaking up.

Fast forward 20 years and neither have seen each other since that fateful evening, until they run into each other at a local diner. Braiden is newly back in town after retiring from the Army and is now going to take over his father’s construction business. Trey is now the owner of the same local diner.

Upon seeing each other the mutual attraction is instantaneous, but neither is sure how the other now feels. They are both rather hesitant in their first interaction. Trey is apologetic for not being strong enough to stand up to their families when they were younger, and Braiden is understandably hesitant about beginning a new relationship and possibly being hurt again.

When they tell Braiden’s father, he goes ballistic and the source regarding the long-standing animosity between the two men is finally revealed. This is a secret so big that it could potentially tear Braiden and Trey’s relationship apart.

©2017 Chris Savage (P)2018 Chris Savage

This was just OK for me.

I really hate leaving reviews that are less than 3 stars but if I go by what Audible says, a 2-star review means the book was "It's okay" and that describes how I felt about Chance Encounter. I was provided a free copy from getfreeaudiobooks dot com with the expectation that I would leave a review.

This was the first book I've experienced by this writer and also this narrator. I liked the blurb, I'm a sucker for second chance stories, and I love M/M and MPreg so this sounded like a good fit for me.

I thought the book started out pretty good. Unfortunately, it was downhill from there. I'm familiar with non-shifter omegaverse stories but this one was pretty different. There was no explanation of the world so I was a bit surprised that one of the characters had a mother and father and the other had two fathers. None of the omegaverse stories that I've read had any female characters so I was confused. I actually had to refer to my ebook to make sure I was correctly understanding what I heard.

The main conflict in the story, and the reason for Braiden and Trey's breakup, was that their fathers were bitter enemies. Braiden and Trey were secret lovers during high school and are about to graduate. Braiden wanted to come clean and tell their parents that they were in a relationship; Trey was not willing to do this so Braiden left town.

Fast forward 20 years and Braiden has returned to take over his father's company. Trey has already taken over his father's business. While Braiden swore he'd never get back together with Trey he just can't seem to resist him. Trey swears things are different now and he's willing to tell their parents about them.

The way the story was written seemed a bit juvenile to me. Trey and Braiden are about 30 years old, still living at home, and still worrying about what their parents will do if they find out about them. This just didn't seem to jive with the fact that both of them were now businessmen running companies that their fathers started. There also wasn't much to the MPreg part of this story; it came near the end and just wasn't what I'm used to in MPreg books.

The narration didn't really work for me either. There was no consistency to the voices and it was very difficult to distinguish one character from another. Most of the times they spoke with a (I think) British accent but other times the accent seemed American to me. This made it somewhat difficult to follow the story. I noticed that Jack Noble doesn't have a lot of books available on Audible so perhaps he's new to narrating audiobooks. I actually love listening to a British accent but the lack of differentiation between the voices kind of spoiled it for me. His speech pattern was also a bit halting at times. I found his voice pleasant to listen to so I hope he improves as he narrates more books.

Overall, if I'm being really honest, this might have been a DNF for me if I hadn't agreed to do a review when I received a code for the audiobook.
#LGBTQIA+ #ragsgiving #sweepstakes