Narrated by Tristan James
I liked the sound of Ricochet, the first in new-to-me author Reese Knightley’s Out for Justice series of romantic suspense novels featuring a team of elite operatives known as Phoenix. I hadn’t, when I requested the title, realised it was the author’s début book – not that I have anything against first-time authors, in fact, I’ve found some terrific stories and authors to look out for by reading or listening to débuts – but sadly, this author and this book don’t fall into that category. The story itself feels like a bare-bones outline that needs a lot of fleshing out; there are elements of the storytelling that just don’t work, the characterisation is thin, there’s way too much telling and not enough showing, and the writing itself is distinctly average and could have used a good editor to weed out the annoying repetitions and overblown, clichéd phrases.
Seventeen-year-old Noah Bradford is inducted into the Witness Protection Program after he and his best friend Jenny are rescued from the compound belonging to Terrance Manning, the vicious criminal who murdered Noah’s mother. For reasons we don’t learn until much later, Manning was intent on grooming Noah to be his second-in-command and eventual successor, but rather than treating him as some sort of favourite, he instead tried to crush Noah – in both body and spirit – at every opportunity. During the raid on the compound by the FBI, police and US Marshals, Noah is found by Marshal Rob Mackenzie (Mac) and helped to safety. Neither Manning nor his chief henchman – Noah’s stepfather – are to be found; they’ve managed to get away.
Fast forward two years to Jenny’s funeral (we’re later told she was found and killed by one of Manning’s men, but it’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it revelation) and we learn that Noah and Mac become close during those two years – or I should say, we’re told that’s the case, but we never actually see anything of this closeness or get a sense of the attraction that’s (supposedly) been growing between them during that time (by which Noah is nineteen going on twenty). Mac, who realises he’s falling hard for Noah, decides he should make a clean break and leaves, but I couldn’t quite fathom his reasons for this; he was worried about their nine-year age gap (that was mentioned a lot) and his last boyfriend was a total shit, but that’s all I can really remember. I can’t recall any mention of the fact that in witness protection, Noah was supposed to be someone else with no ties to his past, which I’d have thought would have been the biggest bar to a relationship between them.
Anyway. Fast forward another five-and-a-bit years, and we discover Noah has become one of the world’s biggest bad-asses in the history of bad-assery and now works for a sooper-sekrit but government sanctioned black ops organisation known as Phoenix, that specialises in cleaning up domestic and international messes that the various alphabet-soup agencies can’t touch. When Mac left – which Noah is still pissed about – another Marshal was assigned to Noah, and she’s one of the few people to know that Noah left WitSec to join Phoenix. When she’s killed by Manning’s men – clearly signalling that there’s a mole somewhere in the Marshals’ office – the search for her killer, the mole and Manning (eventually) brings Mac and Noah back into each other’s orbits – and Noah’s desire to get answers and to turn the tables on Mac by making him remember their connection and then abandoning him lasts for all of five seconds before they’re declaring their luuurve for each other, which has somehow survived despite their not having seen or heard from each other for six years. I know this is supposed to be romantic, but given there was absolutely NO connection built between them in the first place it was, quite frankly, ridiculous.
The complete lack of emotional connection between the two leads is going to be the biggest flaw in any story that purports to be romantic, but this book is also beset by a number of other problems in its execution. The time-jumps were frustrating and the quick summaries of what happened during that time felt like lazy writing, and the characterisation is flat and uninteresting, so I was bored by the sections dealing with cat-and-mouse game (at least that’s what I think it was supposed to be) as Mac hunted for Noah because I simply wasn’t invested in either of them as individuals. We’re told about Noah’s training, we’re told he’s a ruthless bastard, but aren’t shown any of those things. We’re told about his and Mac’s feelings for one another, but we don’t see them develop and they have as much chemistry as cold porridge. One of my biggest beefs, though, is something which stood out like the proverbial sore thumb; the author’s frequent and extremely repetitive use of “the man”. It’s as though she has an aversion to the use of “him” or “his” (or a name); I realise that juggling names and pronouns can be tricky when you’re writing a same-sex couple, but this happened SO OFTEN that it annoyed the crap outta me.
“Noah shivered, and the man reached over the crank up the heater.”
“Mac drew in a breath and met Noah’s gaze when the man laced their fingers together.”
“The weariness in Mac’s voice drew Noah’s fingers gently through the man’s silky hair… ” [Huh? A voice can move his fingers?]
I realise those examples alone are sort of okay, but over and over and over again for almost NINE hours? No. Did this book even have an editor?
*takes deep breath*.
Okay, so on to the narration. Tristan James makes a valiant attempt to inject some sort of life into the story, but even a performer as experienced as he is can’t make a silk purse… His pacing is fine, he assigns clearly different tones of voice to Mac and Noah, making Noah’s voice slightly higher pitched to show his relative youth when we first meet him and lowering it later on. There are quite a few secondary characters in the story, most of them members of Phoenix, and Mr. James differentiates clearly between them so it’s easy to tell there are conversations taking place between groups of characters – although I couldn’t swear that I’d be able to identify which character was which because their appearances are brief and none was especially memorable. His delivery is smooth, and there’s humour in his voice when called for (which is woefully infrequently) but I’m afraid accents aren’t his forte. One of the main secondary characters – Noah’s boss – is (I think) Italian and has some fairly long stretches of dialogue, and another (female) character uses a French accent on several occasions – and sadly neither was particularly accurate or well-sustained. Props to him though, for managing to utter some of the ridiculously syrupy dialogue and performing the sex scenes – which are boring and devoid of heat – while (presumably) keeping a straight face.
There are way better m/m romantic suspense titles out there than this one. Do yourself a favour and go and listen to one of those instead.
Caz
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