Breaking the Rules by Suzanne Brockmann

Narrated by Patrick Lawlor and Renée Raudman

Breaking the Rules is #16 in the Troubleshooter series. I’ve really enjoyed listening to the last several books in this series, with Patrick Lawlor and Renée Raudman narrating. The dual narration thing works really well with this series, in my opinion, because it allows you to hear the male POV in a man’s voice, and female POV in a woman’s voice. I thinks this eliminates most of the issues with that cross-gender thing – where you have a hard time following the characters. Mind you, both narrators have to speak all characters when it’s their “part” – but I maintain it’s a good compromise.

Brockmann’s writing is something I’ve given more extensive coverage in my AudioGals article It Takes Two, Baby. Without repeating myself too much, she writes from “deep POV” in which everything is perceived from one character’s POV at a time, and that character’s gender drives which narrator reads the section. That character also drives how the narrative portion sounds, as though that character were telling the story to you, filtered through his/her mind and experiences. Lawlor and Raudman both live up to the challenge, whether delivering from Jenn’s or Eden’s POV for Raudman, or Izzy’s or Danny’s or Ben’s POV for Lawlor. Each manages to create distinct and consistent personalities for them, and each delivers the tension, the humor, the emotions with perfection.

Izzy Zanella comes to his own in this story. He is married to Danny’s sister Eden, an act of compassion he did for the almost-underage girl when she found herself pregnant – by someone else – and alone, in an earlier book. Now Eden, who left Izzy pretty much right away, is back needing his and Danny’s help to save their other brother Ben from their abusive stepfather. Unfortunately, Ben has also unwittingly witnessed a crime when he befriends a young runaway who is involved in a prostitution ring.

This was a fairly long audio book, and I think a lot of the length was too much exposition by internal monologues. This has long been a character trait of Izzy – both internal and voiced – but seemed to go on and on in this story, and not just from Izzy’s point of view.

Of course, Brockmann always manages to ratchet up the conflict and the suspense at the end, and this was no exception – after 2/3rds of the book spent trying to get Izzy back with Eden, Danny back with Jenn, and Ben safe from his abusive stepfather, suddenly it switches to 100% life and death and the SEALs are called in to work their special magic. And in the midst of it all – with me hoping Brockmann wasn’t planning to knock off one of her characters – Zanella pulls a great stunt that had me laughing out loud.

If you’re already a TSS fan – one of those like me who didn’t feel personally slighted by Brockmann’s choices in earlier books – I think you’ll find this one (eventually) lives up to her usual standards. I think even if you were originally put off by Eden’s age in the earlier book, Breaking The Rules gives much more insight into the Gillman family dynamics that might change your mind.

Melinda

Narration: A

Book Content: A

Steam Factor: glad I had my earbuds in

Violence: escalated fighting

Genre: Romantic Suspense

Publisher: Brilliance Audio