The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙💜💚🤎
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
Chemistry: 🧪🧪🧪🧪
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌍
Character development: 🤓😀😘
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Dual Narration
The heroine: Sawyer – she is from Montana but is now in New York City for her first time. She was avoiding everything that reminded her of Montana because Beck, her ex-fiancé is with her former best friend Manda, who is now pregnant with Beck’s chid. Sawyer had given up nearly two decades and much more of herself to that relationship. She is also in New York to meet her cousin Graham, a married gay man with whom she wants to get together to talk over ways to bring their mothers, who are two fighting sisters that live in Montana back together.
The Heroes: Jake – He was on the subway one day because Shorty was back in town, and Ashton wanted Shorty as far away from his woman as possible and was about to be banished, but Jake wanted to find out about his cousin Nikolai. Jake had been a cop, but after his brother died six months ago, his mission was to find his killer, and he had found out it was Nikolai. Now that Nikolai is dead, his family voted Jake in as the new head of the family. He was more likely to take down his family than lead it. But he really had no choice. He sees a woman on the subway and couldn’t get her out of his mind.
The Story: Sawyer had gone to see her cousin, but she chickened out because from what she can see of his life, he is happy and successful. While she is a mess. She gave up a great job that she really liked to help pay for Beck’s education. She worked and kept working while they were together, she payed for their house, she had loved college but never got a job in her field so Beck could have everything he wanted. He came out of grad school debt free thanks to her She thinks she ended up being a joke.
When Jake sees Sawyer again at the police station one evening when he is there to pick up a relative and Sawyer was there after being arrested for hanging around outside her cousins’ work. Jake ends up getting his cousin out of jail and plans to take her to rehab, and they take Sawyer along with. Sawyer is happy to go along with them as she has nothing better to do and thinks it might be an adventure to add to her New York bucket list. It is her last night in the city after all, and she was very attracted to Jake. Little did she know that a hit had been put out on Jake and when some hitmen came to collect, she was a witness and could be used against Jake, so he took her captive for her own good.
I liked the danger of the situation the two main characters are in. I also really liked the fact that both of them see their lives as such a mess. Both of them are just trying to make it through the day and they meet each other and are so attracted to each other that they can’t get each other out of their minds. Jake had never wanted to be a head of a mafia, but he had no choice but to take charge and clean house.
This story has such an intense mix of emotional wreckage, attraction, and danger. The idea that both Sawyer and Jake are trying to claw their way out of the chaos in their lives, only to stumble into each other’s orbit, adds a strong undercurrent of tension. The way they’re forced together, especially with the mafia hit in play, gives that sense of inevitability that makes stories like this so gripping.
There were also some things about this book that I didn’t like. Sawyer was supposedly a thirty-six-year-old woman who had gone to college, worked for years putting her ex through college and grad school, bought a house and more, yet while in New York she almost seemed neurodivergent or something. She was apparently so freaked out about her life that she often just sits there thinking, so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she can’t even answer when people talk to her, even when it’s a cop and he is asking her pointed questions to determine her state of mind. She just ignores him and talks to herself until she is arrested.
Sawyer’s characterization is really interesting. With everything she’s been through, you’d expect a different kind of resilience or awareness from her. Her mental disconnects, especially at key moments like interacting with the police or the assistant at her cousins’ workplace, make her feel inconsistent compared to her life experiences. I wasn’t quite sure if this was intentional – meant to highlight her emotional exhaustion, or more like a writing flaw that pulled the reader out of the story.
This audiobook was narrated from multiple perspectives, done in dual narration by Jeffrey Kafer and Amelia Hughs. Jeffrey Kafer is not one of my favorite male narrators, but he has a nice, deep voice that I like for strong male characters. Amelia Hughs has a strong, clear voice which is very pleasant. Overall, the narration was pretty good.