Narrated by Alexander Cendese and Iggy Toma
I’ve been having fun listening to Eden Finley’s Fake Boyfriend series. The books are funny, sexy and light-hearted although not without their deeper, more serious moments, and as per the series title, each book features a fake relationship. Blindsided is book four and the only one in the set NOT to feature the fake boyfriend trope (the author is upfront about this and it’s in the blurb); the two leads were secondary characters in earlier books who were crying out for a story, and this is it.
Marcus Talon and Shane Miller have known each other since college, where they became great friends on and off the football field, and also in and out of the bedroom, where they frequently indulged in threesomes with a woman in the middle, never touching each other and keeping their focus firmly on their female partner. When their college days come to an end, they both make the draft for the NFL and are signed to different teams, so they go their separate ways and interact only over social media until around six years later when Talon – by now one of the sport’s biggest names – signs up with Miller’s team, the Chicago Warriors. It’s not long before Miller and Talon end up in bed again – with two women between them – but this time Miller realises he’s made a huge mistake and makes it clear he doesn’t want to go there again. After Talon left college – he’s a year older – Miller owned up to himself that he’d had a huge crush on his friend that couldn’t go anywhere because Talon was straight. In the year that followed, Miller fooled around with a few guys and came to the realisation that he’s bisexual (or pansexual), and although he thought he’d got over his infatuation with Talon, it comes roaring back to life now they’re seeing each other every day again, and no way can Miller go back to their old habits. It’d be bad enough if the media were to get hold of the stuff they’d done in college, but worse, what if Miller does or says something that gives the game away and ruins the closest, most important friendship he’s ever had?
They made a pact all those years ago that they’d win a Superbowl together, and now, at last it seems as though that dream might come true. Talon is delighted to have his best friend back, and it’s almost as though the intervening six years haven’t happened, so he’s surprised and not a little hurt when he senses Miller trying to put some distance between them and is at a loss as to why. But through training camp and the opening of the season, Talon finds himself starting to wonder if perhaps what he’d enjoyed most about the threesomes he and Miller had in college was not the sex, but Miller’s presence. He’s confused but not freaking out when he realises he’s starting to see his best friend in a different light, but before he can think about it too much, Miller sustains a serious hamstring injury that means he’s unable to play for the rest of the season. After Miller goes home to New York to recover, he and Talon keep in touch during the rest of the season, and at a distance, Talon finds the courage to open up to Miller about his newly emerging feelings. Miller is most definitely blindsided by this, and at first wonders whether he’s some sort of bi-curious experiment, but as the weeks pass and they start to open up to one another, they both realise that there’s something very special between them – and that they want to try being together as a couple.
Blindsided is a fairly low-angst, low-drama story and the relationship between the two leads is nicely done. They have to spend several months apart owing to Miller’s injury, and this allows them time to build on the deep friendship that already exists between them and then to take it in a different direction. The series as a whole is set in the world of professional sports, and the author carefully explores the difficulties and prejudices facing the characters as gay men in a very homophobic profession. Miller and Talon watched from the sidelines as their team-mate Matt Jackson (Trick Play) was forcibly outed and see how he is still subjected to homophobic insults and slurs both on the field and from some of his own team members – and are understandably torn between wanting to be together openly and not wanting to face the sort of shit Matt has to deal with.
I liked that Talon, once he’d decided what he wanted, was all in, contrasting with the more cautious Miller, who took a while to realise that the thing he’d wanted most for so long was finally his – but that he had to step up, too. I also liked the way the author brings back characters from the previous books as more than simple cameos – Maddox, Damon, Matt, Noah and Lennon are all there to provide a support network for Miller and Talon – and Talon’s brother, Trey, is a hoot.
That said, it’s perfectly possible to listen to Blindsided as a standalone, although I don’t think it’s the strongest book in the series (my favourite is still book one, Fake Out, although I have high hopes for book five, Hat Trick, which I hope will be out in audio soon). I liked the characters and I really felt the depth of the friendship between them, and their romantic and physical relationships felt like natural extensions of that friendship. The author also does a good job with the storyline devoted to Miller’s rehabilitation, and Talon’s determination to help him get back to his pre-injury level of fitness, showing just how much of a part mindset plays in the life of a professional athlete, how the wanting, needing to win is just as important as physical fitness. But this was also where the book fell down a bit for me, because I just wasn’t convinced that Miller’s heart was in football any more, even once he’d got past his initial depression over his injury. In fact, I was expecting some sort of revelation to the effect he’d realised he wanted to do something else with his life, and I was actually quite disappointed when the story didn’t go in that direction!
Alexander Cendese and Iggy Toma make a pretty good narrator team and I’ve enjoyed listening to their work in both this and May Archer’s Love in O’Leary series. I know some listeners dislike dual narrations because the narrators’ character voices are different (which is unavoidable as they’re two different people!) but I’m not one of them. In fact, I rather like that Mr. Cendese and Mr. Toma’s voices are so different – the former all bouncy energy and sharp edges, the latter smooth and laid-back – because I never get confused as to which character’s PoV I’m listening to! Alexander Cendese narrates the chapters from Talon’s PoV and he captures his personality perfectly (I’ve said before that he’s great at portraying the slightly arrogant, snarky jock with a good sense of fun) and Iggy Toma reads Miller’s chapters, lowering the pitch of his voice and adopting a deliberate method of delivery to emphasise the character’s imposing physicality and his more reticent personality. As I’d expect of two such experienced performers, things like pacing and character differentiation are very good, and they’re equally adept at injecting the right degree of expression and emotion into their performances. The one criticism I have, really, is that Mr. Toma’s interpretation of Miller is a little inconsistent in that the lower pitch he adopts at the beginning of the audiobook has lifted a couple of tones by the end (although his portrayal of Miller’s five-year-old niece is cute!)
Although Blindsided isn’t my favourite book in this series, I enjoyed both story and narration and would recommend it to fans of the friends-to-lovers trope and sports romances.
Caz
Buy Blindsided by Eden Finley on Amazon
