Rebel by Rhys Ford

Narrated by Tristan James

I’ve listened to a number of Rhys Ford’s novels recently, and I’ve enjoyed Tristan James’ work in other books of hers, so I was pleased to pick up Rebel, the first book in her 415: Ink series, for review. Ms. Ford is a prolific author who writes in a variety of genres – fantasy, paranormal, romantic suspense, for instance – so Rebel, which is more of an ensemble family drama, is a bit of a departure from the other stories of hers I’ve listened to. And I have to confess that I wasn’t as drawn in by it as I’d hoped to be. The major characters are engaging, and their backgrounds are intriguing and skilfully incorporated into the story, but the central romance is lacklustre; there’s minimal conflict which is resolved rather easily, and I just wasn’t feeling the chemistry between the central couple. Add to that some odd quirks in the narration, and Rebel proved ultimately to be a bit of a let-down.

The story opens as Rey Montenegro is saved from a house fire by the man who later becomes his best friend. Mason Scott is one of five ‘brothers’ – all of whom have been through the foster system, not all of whom are related (although some are) and who have forged themselves into the family unit they never had. Even as the seventeen-year-old Rey glimpses Mason’s brother August – Gus – from afar, he feels the pull of a strong attraction, and before long, the pair are developing a strong friendship that, years later, turns into more. But things don’t last, and three years before the story commences in the present, Rey dumped Gus, citing his unreliability and general flakiness as something he – Rey – wasn’t prepared to deal with.

The family ‘patriarch’ – who is actually Gus’ cousin, Barrett (Bear) – is the owner of 415 Ink, a popular tattoo shop, where Gus and his brother, Ivo (who IS his biological brother) also work. Gus often travels around the country doing guest-slots at various other tattoo shops, and he’s arrived back in town after an absence of six months after having received some life-changing information. Back on the night when he and Rey split up, Gus went to a party, got blind drunk and hooked up with Jules, who, at the time, was apprenticing at the shop. She got in touch with Gus a few weeks earlier to tell him that he’s got a three-year-old son, and it’s been a kind of wake-up call for Gus, who is just shy of thirty and realises it’s past time he got his shit together. He wants to be a proper father and is determined to do everything he can to make sure he’s part of his son’s life from now on.

The thing I enjoyed most about the story was the close-knit relationship between the brothers, who obviously care for other a great deal, and there’s absolutely no question that, despite any disagreements or personality clashes, they have each other’s backs and would do anything for one another. There’s plenty of brotherly piss-taking and teasing, and they’re very protective of Gus, who had the most appalling childhood imaginable, taken into care after the deaths of his twin brother and violently unstable mother and then bounced from one family to another until Bear was finally able to gain custody of him. On the downside though, the second-chance romance between Gus and Rey is sadly flat and uninteresting, and there’s little chemistry between the pair. They don’t really talk about everything that lies between them until fairly late in the book, and what we get instead is a bunch of conversations between Gus and Bear, Gus and Mason, Rey and Mason, Rey and Bear, which are basically rehashes of the same thing – “he still loves you but hurt him again and I’ll kill you” or “he still loves you but are you ready to forgive him for what he did?” I was glad when Rey finally realised that three years earlier, he’d done to Gus what pretty much everyone else he’d cared about had done to him – threw him away – but it’s kind of surprising that it took him three years to work it out, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d ever have got it, if one of the brothers (Bear or Mason, I can’t remember which) hadn’t clued him in. We’re told Rey and Gus have never stopped loving each other, but that’s the problem – we’re told and not shown. There’s a lot of repetition and, especially in the first part, internal monologue or narrative and little dialogue; the story tends to get bogged down in unnecessary detail, and ultimately, I found it difficult to connect with either of the principals or invest in their rekindled romance. There are gaps in the storytelling that lead to the whole thing feeling rather disjointed, especially near the end where there are some crucial missing scenes that made me wonder if I’d somehow skipped a couple of chapters.

I’ve enjoyed a number of Tristan James’ performances (and have several on my TBL), but there’s something ‘off’ about his narration here that I can’t quite put my finger on. He’s got the sort of deep, husky voice that just washes over one in pleasant waves, and I generally enjoy his rather laid-back style of delivery, but here, it’s so languorous as to be verging on the soporific; and I can’t work out if I felt that way because I was bored (in places) by the story, or if the lack of momentum in the story was responsible for the lack of energy in his delivery.

And then there’s a rather odd pronunciation quirk I’ve never heard from him before, and which happened enough times throughout to be pretty jarring. For some reason he “double pronounces” the letter ‘s’ at the end of a plural, so, for instance “the kids’ rooms” is said as “the kidses rooms” and “brothers’” is pronounced “brotherses” (I couldn’t help thinking of Gollum from Lord of the Rings and his Hobbitses!) Regardless of whether you subscribe to the use of the “apostrophe-s” manner of indicating a plural possessive or writing the ‘s’ twice (kids’s), it’s still pronounced the same way – kids, brothers etc. I also found his characterisations to be inconsistent in places, and that sometimes he’d use the wrong brother’s voice in dialogue. The characters are well differentiated, so the listener can tell there are two or more people speaking in any one scene and can hear the distinction between them, but I noticed several occasions where a character sounds one way in one scene, and another way in the next. Maybe Mr. James had an off day, or maybe my dissatisfaction with the story had me hearing things differently, but given my admiration for both author and narrator, I’m gutted to have to say that Rebel didn’t work for me in terms of either story or performance. Fingers crossed that my next Ford/James collaboration will be a more pleasurable experience.

Caz