Love Him Free by E.M. Lindsey

Narrated by Nick Hudson

Both the author AND narrator of Love Him Free are new-to-me, although both have been on my radar for a while. Nick Hudson is also the narrator of Jordan Castillo Price’s ABCs of Spellcraft series (I’m a massive fan of her PsyCop books, so Spellcraft is on my TBL) and Kaetrin recently mentioned that she’d enjoyed Mr. Hudson’s performance in them, so I was pleased to have a chance to listen to him in Love Him Free.

It’s the first book in the On the Market series, and although I believe it has connections to another series, it mostly works as a standalone.

Simon Kaddish was only a child when, following his father’s death in a bomb attack, his mother and grandmother whisked him and his baby brother Levi from their home in Tel Aviv and moved them to a small, mountain town in the States. After his mother’s death in a car crash, and with his grandmother working all hours in her small bakery, the care of Levi fell mostly to Simon; and when at twenty-one, tragedy struck again and his grandmother died, Simon – terrified of further loss – made a vow to dedicate his life to his faith and to keeping Levi safe and happy:

“This will be my exile. I will give it all up. Just… let Levi have what he wants. Let me keep him.”

Fifteen years later, Simon, who has never found it easy to make friends or cope in social situations, is struggling to keep the Chametz Bakery going, still putting Levi first and has never had a relationship – he’s still a virgin at thirty-six.

Adult film star Rocco Moretti hasn’t let his deafness get in the way of his ambition. He’s well-known, wealthy and always in demand, he has a dream home in Malibu and a gorgeous, long-term boyfriend… until the day it all falls apart when his boyfriend dumps him. Via Twitter. Worse, the guy he’s left him for is Rocco’s agent, which is going to cause huge difficulties in Rocco’s professional life. It’s a tangled mess, but all anyone around him – journalists, acquaintances, people on social media – is interested in is the drama; nobody seems to care that Rocco’s career is on the line or that Rocco, the person, is feeling angry and hurt and betrayed

Or so he thinks – until he clicks on a DM from @Chametz, which contains a sweet and supportive video message in ASL, the first he’s received in his own “language” – and it means a lot to him. After exchanging a few more messages, Rocco impulsively decides to go to Cherry Creek and meet the shy baker with the long fingers and the sweetly freckled cheeks who has been so kind and appears genuinely interested in Rocco the man, not Sylent, the Deaf porn star.

Simon can’t believe it. For years, Sylent has been his ultimate fantasy, perfectly safe to lust after because there’s no way they could ever know each other. So opening the door to find Rocco Moretti on his doorsteps a strange mixture of wonderful and terrifying.

In many ways this is a really sweet romance. Simon’s social anxiety isn’t cured overnight, but he feels comfortable with Rocco and finds himself opening up about his past, about being bullied over his accent at school, about his mother’s neglect of him and Levi, the strained nature of their relationship, the weight of the responsibility he feels for keeping Levi safe and happy, and his guilt over the bakery going under.

Rocco likes that Simon treats him as a normal person and finds himself enjoying the change of pace and getting to know some of the people in Cherry Creek. He and Simon spend a fair bit of time in the early part of the story getting it on, so we’re in insta-lust territory – and I confess, I found it hard to believe that Rocco only had to look at Simon a certain way to have Simon coming in his pants. Maybe if he’d been sixteen rather than thirty-six, a hair-trigger might have been a bit more believable; I mean he might be a virgin, but he’s got a good relationship with his right hand (and porn), so it’s not as though he’s never had an orgasm.

But once that phase of the story is over, the author starts to build more of an emotional connection between the couple, Rocco realising that he wants to help and care for Simon, Simon realising that at last, here is someone with whom he can lay down some of his burdens for a while. With Rocco also encouraging Simon to venture out of his shell a little, they come up with an inventive (ahem!) way to make enough money to get Simon out of his financial difficulties.

The romance is relatively low-angst, with just a couple of minor hiccups along the way. The main conflict in the story comes from Simon’s relationship with Levi, which was fairly hard to understand for quite a while. I couldn’t work out why Levi seemed to hate Simon so much, considering Simon had done everything he possibly could to make Levi’s life easier. Although those questions were mostly answered by the end, as I was listening, I couldn’t help feeling as though I was missing something. Then I discovered that Levi is one of the lead characters in Heartless by Kate Hawthorne – which, according to the handful of reviews I read, contains the backstory I was missing. I don’t plan to go back and read it – as I say my questions were answered by the end of Love Him Free – but I can’t help feeling just a bit miffed that important information regarding the brothers’ relationship was in another book when this is billed as the start of a new series.

The storyline in Love Him Free has some genuinely good things going for it – the characters are interesting, and Simon’s backstory, in particular, is heartbreaking and made me really feel for him. I enjoyed learning about Simon’s Jewish heritage, watching him and Levi slowly repairing their relationship, and the author does a good job of showing how hard Rocco has to work every day, to communicate with those around him. On the downside, the pacing is uneven (things really sag in the middle and the audiobook felt about two hours too long) there’s more telling than showing and I didn’t feel a great deal of chemistry between the two leads. And then there’s this:

The best thing about this audiobook is unquestionably the fabulous performance by Nick Hudson. I went in with fairly high expectations given Kaetrin’s recommendation, and I am delighted to say that he met them and then some. His voice is a pleasant tenor/high baritone, his vocal characterisations and differentiation are excellent and his pacing is just right in both narrative and dialogue. He’s also an extremely good vocal actor; whenever a character is amused, there’s a smile in his voice; when they laugh, so does he, and when they’re sad or angry, that’s there in his voice and tone as well. I was impressed with the way he voices Simon, giving him a slight accent that indicates his non-US origins, and which is consistently maintained throughout. It’s a superb performance, although I did have one niggle, which is that it’s not always possible to tell when Rocco is speaking, when he’s signing or when he’s writing to communicate. Sometimes it’s indicated in the text, but not always; and I wondered if perhaps there should have been an audible difference between Rocco’s vocalised communication and the other methods.

Love Him Free gets a qualified recommendation for the story and an unqualified one for Nick Hudson’s superb performance. I liked enough about the story to want to listen to more from this series, and I’ll definitely be trawling through Audible to pick up some more of Nick Hudson’s narrations.

Caz