Homestead

By: Radclyffe

Narrated by: Abby Craden

Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's Summary

Tess Rogers grew up in the midst of chaos and uncertainty, but she always knew one thing to be true - one day 600 acres of prime farmland would be hers. Then she discovers not even that truth can be counted on. Tess' stepfather has kept important secrets, and Tess' dream of breeding a line of organic dairy cows suddenly goes up in a burst of smoke and flame. R. Clayton Sutter is an expert at managing just about anything - money, businesses, and people. Getting NorthAm Fuel's newest shale refinery operational in the rolling hills of Upstate New York shouldn’t be much of a challenge, but then, she hadn't counted on dealing with vandalism, petitions, and a woman she’d never expected to see again - one who still haunts her dreams. When Tess and Clay square off on opposite sides of the heated debate, past and present collide in a battle of wills and unbidden desire.

©2013 Radclyffe (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

WOW

Radclyffe as the writer and Abby Craden as the narrator never disappoint,
The story is great, loved the characters and as always loved Abby Craden sexy voice.

Meh

Underdeveloped characters, weak story, and left with a ton of loose ends. Maybe would have helped if there was even a little time dedicated to the primary character’s previous summer “romance” it would make sense why the dramatic ending was so traumatic. Secondary and tertiary characters are introduced and seem to have a purpose and then just disappear. Not sure if this is just a pro fracking piece with a ghost of a plot around it to try and disguise or lazy writing.

Usually Radclyffe’s stories are formulaic and predictable but entertaining enough. This one is weird and predictable with a very frustrating and rather immature conclusion.

A poignant second-chance love story wrapped around a battle to preserve small farms in eastern NY

It’s hard to understand others reviewers knocks on this book. Having lived in the Albany-Saratoga-Lake Charles-Cambridge, NY area for a number of years a decade ago, Radclyffe (who lives there now) beautifully describes the charm of the friendly small towns that dot the region, also haunted vacant store fronts and constant struggles of family-owned farms competing with huge agri-business.
In that setting, she captures the drama of two equally fascinating but very different women who, 15 years earlier, spent a glorious summer right after graduating from high school falling in love for the first time at Lake George. They were abruptly pulled apart without even saying goodbye, then unexpected encounter on another in the middle of an environmental dispute. One is a third-generation dairy farmer, the other develops fracking leases for her ruthless father’s oil company. In the middle of fraught negotiations over whether oil shale wells will damage the aquifer the farms depend on to stay in business, they discover the passion the shared is still very much alive. But so is distrust, anger, and misunderstanding of what drove them apart.
True, it’s not a predictable Dr. drama, or one of the many lesbian military or police procedurals that Radclyffe and dozens of other lesfic authors have popularized. But to me the only boring things about Homestead were the title, the cover, and too many burgers & beers. The plot is interesting with Radclyffe’s signature twists and turns, strong and sensitive characters, smokin’ sex, great dialog, and ever a Harley. I loved it.

Radclyffe is overrated

Unpopular opinion here, this writer is highly overrated. This is my second book by this author and I find it again too angsty and long winded. Given the age of the characters, you would think they can have a conversation like adults but nope! Let’s be in our feelings and angsty and draw things out as painfully as possible argh 😡
I despise the “masculine” lesbian that always seems to feature in these books. Clay and Dev in the other book. Also how is everyone in some small town in back of beyond NY a lesbian 🙄 Like seriously 😒
Anyhoo, I think this author should write teen romance then the angsty assumptions and miscommunications won’t be as annoying

Amazing WOW!

Amazing performance by Abby Craden, always love her sexy voice. She did an amazing job with all the characters. Loved the story and this is my second book with Radclyffe and Abby Craden and I must say I love that combination.

Love, Lust and so much more!

My favorite author and narrator together again. How could I not love this. I love that it pulled from previous books with characters I loved then. There is enough intrigue so it's not just sexy women but a story linking the past, the present day issues as well as (spoiler alert) a happy ending.
I highly recommend this Audible book for all those craving a great lesbian story.💞

Radclyffe never disappoints

And the narration by Abby Craden is always amazing. Off to see if there’s a sequel to this!

Abby Craden is awesome.

Great story. Great performance. Would recommend to anyone who is a fan of Radclyffe books.

Another good read from this author

As a stand alone, this is a good book, and storyline holds up, but as a sequel to ‘When Dreams Tremble’ it is great. I would highly recommend reading them in order. As always, Ms Craden gives life to every performance. I have come to love her pleasing tones, and find comfort in her seemingly effortless separation of characters.

Typical but still good

Abby Craden, you are great and the main reason I listened to this story.

While I found this to be a wonderful story and recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good romance I do have some things I am becoming frustrated with in books in general and especially romance. Yes, the main protagonists know each other from the past, were once deeply in love or have fallen in love. Does this mean they have totally lost their minds? In some cases the answer is probably yes, love makes us do some crazy things and sometimes those standing on the outside looking in think we have totally gone off the deep end but does it have to be like this in almost every single book where two people fall in love?

In this particular book it would have been a perfect opportunity for a little change in the “template” by having Tess fall in love with Ella while keeping Clay at arm’s length. It would have been nice to watch Tess and Clay renew an old friendship while Tess and Ella worked their way into loves embrace but no the author keeps to the old worn out template that is becoming very boring to read and listen to (if not for great narrators like Abby) because we all know how the story will end after the first chapter and sometimes after reading the summary or back cover but I keep hoping some author will decide to deviate from the norm and throw in some stimulating plot twists instead of chaining themselves to a worn out template.

This was a good story but I am ready for a change and will keep hunting for that non “template” romance.

needed stronger elements and conflicts

Its okay, not has good as Radclyffe's other work. The characters for me are not developed as well as they could be and do not have strong enough conflicts. There is some drama in the novel but its limited to two events which seem minor compared to other novels by Radclyffe. Abby Craden does a great job narrating and the writing is high quality as expected from Radclyffe. I marked this 3 because, the story itself is bland in comparison with other novels, and the premiss of the the oil drilling romantic lead Clay and the conflict between her and farming Tess does not work that well, since they were previously a entangled. So the build up to their relationship is not as strong as it could have been, and they seem to simply fall back together without much hesitation. The conflict between the farmers and the oil company in my mind is not as great as it should be, and to a degree I would have preferred more focus on the farming way of life and love of the land so get more of a connection with the character Tess as a reader. Clay seems less believable as a character, since its hard to equate the rebel teenager to the now corporate project manager. That all said I like the idea of a story focused around farming and the land, more detail and events on that side of the story would have helped.

lovely

simple n straightforward story. loved it. abby craden's reading makes me want to listen to it over and over again.

It really fizzled out. I will lament the end.

I enjoyed this for the most part, however I do feel it fizzled out really badly at the end. I was expecting a nice little emotional confrontation between Clay and her father and his attorney, but all we got was Clay saying she would deal with them in the final couple of minutes. Plus we never really got the answer to the question as to why Clay's father was so invested in Tess's land either. It seemed to be a missed opportunity to make this story a lot meatier than it was, and that is a real shame.

I know Rayclyffe has her fans, and her work will always be popular, but sometimes I just wish the newer stories would hark back to her fanfiction days when there was more drama to the plot, which engaged the reader a lot more. When I think of those works I think of drama and some real suspense, but the latter non-fanfiction books just seem to be lacking that somehow. While this was not as bad as some for lacking those things, it still seemed to have missed opportunity's throughout the plot.

Another point to mention is the two main characters in Radclyffe's story 'When Dreams Tremble' make a couple of brief cameo appearances in the story-line. Yet it is not a sequel. This seems to be something Radclyffe does in a few of her books, and it works quite well as it allows you a brief glimpse into their lives after their main story has been told.

Abby Craden did a reasonable job with the narration, and again I know she has a lot of fans, but for some reason I find her tone hard to understand at times and I have to re-listen to parts in order to catch the words. I don't have that problem with other narrators, so I wonder if it's the engineering or her voice. I think it could be the recording because there was a definite break in the sound at one point in the story-line. Plus I have heard Abby Craden as narrator in a novel not written by Radclyffe and I don't have this problem listening to that recording. It might be something that the people doing the engineering works on this book might want to look into.

Overall I can listen to this again, but I will lament the real opportunity's missed.