Audiobook Review: A Solitary Man by Shira Anthony and Aisling Mancy (Giveaway)

GoodReads || Dreamspinner || Amazon

Blurb:

Sparks fly when Chance meets tall, sexy Xav at a Wilmington bar and they have the hottest one-nighter of their lives. But Chance doesn’t do repeats, Xav seems detached, and they go their separate ways without a word. Later, when closeted Assistant District Attorney C. Evan “Chance” Fairchild meets Dare's Landing’s newest deputy sheriff, Xavier “Xav” Constantine, Evan isn’t only wary. He’s irritated as hell.

Xavier is a former FBI agent turned deputy sheriff who is hot on the trail of a South American child prostitution ring. Evan is fighting to put an end to rampant cocaine trafficking and chafing under the thumb of an election-hungry boss. When someone tries to kill the eleven-year-old witness who holds the key to both their investigations, they’re forced to work together as they put their lives on the line to protect him. As Chance and Xav collide in the heat of a sweltering North Carolina summer, dodging bullets and chasing bad guys isn’t the only action going on.

When a FBI case to save young boys from a sex-trafficking network goes wrong, Xavier resigns and heads to North Carolina to take a job with the sheriff's department. Before starting his job, Xavier heads to a bar and picks up a guy for a hook-up. The night is hotter than either man expects, but that one night is all they're going to have. The department Xavier works for is different than expected, but the work becomes very familiar. It doesn't take long before Xavier is finding more clues and missing boys linking to his FBI case. And to Xavier's surprise, the man he hooked up with is closeted Assistant District Attorney Evan. Evan is not happy to find out that his one night stand is the new deputy, but he does what he does best and shuts it all down and pretends it doesn't exist. Evan doesn't have time for Xavier, he's too busy trying to please his power hungry boss and to figure out how the cocaine is coming into their town.

This is a difficult story dealing with sex-trafficking and I thought the authors did a great job with it. Though this isn't a true story, it's definitely one that is more common than many of us would like to acknowledge. Child sex-trafficking is a big issue and I commend the authors for tackling such a difficult subject.

As to the characters, I had a hard time with Evan's character. It was just hard to understand how someone who wants to do so much good in the world, could be such a pawn to his boss like he was. I could certainly understand his closeted behavior, though, it's the South! I liked Xavier. He didn't let anyone stop him from doing what needed to be done. He didn't care who it was, he would speak his mind and for a man in his position, that's exactly the behavior I would expect. And I loved that he went into his new position unwilling to hide who he was.

This story is narrated by Jim Pelletier, and honestly, something about it didn't work for me. This was a complicated story with many twists and turns, but I spent more time thinking about the narrator and less time focusing on the story. I can't say exactly what about the narrator and this story did not work for me, but it definitely didn't. I feel like this is a story that I would really like but I just wasn't able to focus on the story itself.

Though I wasn't a fan of the audio, this is a book that I'm going to read and see if that makes a difference. This story has all the things I love to read (well, I'm not a fan of child abuse of any kind, but you know what I'm saying), and I feel that reading the book would allow me to focus on the story. With the premise and what happens to the boys in this story, I should have been in tears, but I wasn't so I know my emotions weren't engaged in this audio. Once I read the book, I'll give the audio another chance to see if that makes a difference in how I feel about it.

Overall: 4 stars

Performance: 3.5 stars

Story: 4 stars

a Rafflecopter giveaway