Goodbye Paradise

Hello Goodbye, Book 1

By: Sarina Bowen

Narrated by: Teddy Hamilton, Dake Bliss

The heart wants what it wants...

My life is a carefully constructed lie. I’m in love with my best friend, but the way I feel could get us both killed. So as long as we stay here on the dusty ranch, I can never tell him how I feel. And if we leave, we’ll have nothing but the shirts on our backs.

But when Josh is accused of a crime he didn’t commit, fate forces my hand. I steal him away, where it’s just the two of us against the world. I will do anything to keep him safe. I’ll steal. I’ll fight. I’ll tell lies.

Yet I can’t tell Josh how I feel.

I can’t tell him that this is all my fault.

And kissing him in the back of a stranger’s truck wasn’t exactly part of the plan…

Contains: an M/M romance full of awkward confessions, first times, impossible choices, and some world class groveling.

©2017 Sarina Bowen (P)2017 Tuxbury Publishing LLC

Surviving religious abuse

This was a fantastic story! Nothing like I have ever read but it needed to be done. A beautiful story of strength and survival while realizing love is love! ❤️ 🌈
Teddy did a fantastic job bringing Josh to life, however this new narrator I was not a fan of. Way too robotic and bit enough feeling put into his character. I had to speed him up to 1.25 just to get through his chapters. Thankfully there wasn’t very many of them.
All in all great book, and now I’ll be reading the next book in this series!

Second narrator was terrible

This was a completely new style of story for me. I’ve never listened to a book about cults, polygamy nor an LGBT relationship. All Incan say is I loved it. Our heroes were born and raised in a cult and both struggled with their sexual preference but didn’t say anything. Josh was unfairly thrown out of the cult and Caleb ran away to find him. This is a story about true love, acceptance and defying the odds. Highly recommended for people who enjoy contemporary romance stories and want to listen to a very different story.
It wasn’t a five star listen because of the second narrator. It didn’t make sense and it didn’t add value to the story. It’s not like each narrator was doing one particular POV. The second narrator was not good, made awkward pauses and made each character sound very different. It would have been a five star listed had it been only one narrator (the one that starts the story).

Wish Teddy was the only narrator

I love Sarina’s books and this was a great one as well. I love dual POV narration and Teddy Hamilton is one of my favorite narrators. Instead of switching POV every chapter or so, this book has large sections of chapters in a single POV before it switches. It starts with Josh (Teddy) and I spent the majority of the first part hoping it would switch to Caleb so I could get his perspective too. But as soon as it did, I wanted to switch back to Josh bc I didn’t enjoy Dake’s narration at all. I loved Caleb’s character but it was really hard to reconcile how Sarina depicts him the way Dake read him. Now I’m unsure if I want to get the next book in the series. 😬 I could get the kindle version but I hate to split up a series across platforms. Maybe I’ll just get them both for kindle to appease my OCD.

Good book, almost ruined by Dake Bliss!

Luckily most of this story is from the Josh character which is narrated by Teddy Hamilton, as the only way I was able to power thru the Caleb character sections was painfully and with the playback speed increased.
If you ever wondered what a book read by a 40 year old Jewish robot who doesn’t quite understand human sentence structure and has trouble stringing more than 5 words together without pauses long enough to fall asleep during, basically Bruce Vilanch doing an terrible William Shatner impression, would sound like then look no farther.
Otherwise it’s a cute story with enough twists, turns and believably human characters to keep you hooked thru to the end!

Living normal!

I really did enjoy this book immensely. I loved how Josh and Caleb learned to live as a couple and how Josh started to feel worth something, becoming part of a family who truly appreciated him. He and Chloe were just to cute for words!! There at the end there was some angst going on that had me wanting to hurt Caleb but I'm glad I read on and got over my murderous thoughts ;-D
At first I thought this was going to be all about the religious cult and trying to break free though most of the book but I was pleasantly surprised it wasn't long and drawn out in the cult. GREAT READ!!! I enjoyed both narrators as well!!
(less)