Imperfect Illusions by Vanora Lawless

Narrated by Logan McAllister

Imperfect Illusions is a paranormal historical romance set mostly in France and Belgium in 1917, featuring two young American men who are blackmailed into enlisting in the army because their special “skills” – they are magic users – make them valuable to the Allied war effort. I read it a few months back and was absolutely bowled over by how good it is; the historical background has obviously been extensively researched, the worldbuilding is superb and the romance is heart-meltingly gorgeous – so when I saw there was an audio version, I had to pick it up to experience the story all over again. Narrator Logan McAllister isn’t someone I’ve listened to before, but he has almost 250 titles to his credit at Audible, many of them romances, so I went into the listen expecting a decent performance at the very least! I’m pleased to report it was more than decent :)

Elliot Stone and Warren Sullivan meet by chance on the night before they’re both due to ship out for basic training. Elliot comes from a large, well-to-do Chicago family; Warren – Sully – works for his living, so by rights they should never have met. But fate – and the unusual circumstances – take a hand when they both decide to have one last night on the town – good food, a few drinks and, perhaps, some company for the evening. Using his magical gift for illusion, Sully hides the shabbiness of his clothes and makes for an upmarket lounge-bar – and very quickly notices the beautiful blond man on the other side of the room. A few subtle glances later, and the man is making his way over, and the pull of attraction that’s been thrumming through Sully ever since he laid eyes on him spills over into full-blown lust. Sully’s other magical talent – one he keeps carefully hidden – is to be able to sense the emotions of others, and judging from the attraction and excitement Sully can feel radiating off the other man, it’s going to be a good night.

After a bout of fantastic sex, neither of them feels ready to get up and leave, so they fall into conversation and discover they’re both headed for the same training camp – and that they’ve both been blackmailed into enlisting, because of their sexual preferences and in order to protect family members who are also skilled. Reluctantly, they realise that even though they’re headed for the same place, there will be no opportunities for them to meet again; Elliot will be an officer and assigned to one of the elite special operations units working behind the front lines while Sully will be posted to the front somewhere, working with regular troops while using his skills to fight skilled German soldiers. Despite the intensity of the connection they feel to each other, this one night is all they can have.

As the weeks pass, Elliot – now promoted to captain – and his small team are getting ready to undertake their first mission. Reports have come in of mortally wounded German soldiers getting up and continuing to fight, indicating that there may be a necromancer at work, and Elliot’s team is tasked with finding out more. Meanwhile, Sully is struggling to deal with all the negative emotions bombarding him at the front, where he’s running himself ragged using his concealment magic on the battlefield to protect troops and medics, the overwhelming fear and despair radiating off everyone around him making it almost impossible for him to function. He can’t sleep because of the images of death and destruction that invade his dreams and he’s almost dead on his feet from exhaustion.

Elliot and Sully saw each other once or twice, in passing, at the training camp, but haven’t crossed paths at all since they were sent to France. So Elliot is surprised to find himself awakening in one of Sully’s dreams – he’s a dreamwalker, but he usually only enters the dreams of people close to him and has strict rules about consent – but when he sees a devastated Sully in the middle of a battlefield surrounded by rivers of gore and blood cradling a dead body – Elliot’s dead body – he can’t bear to leave him in such agony and acts to reshape his dream.

Elliot knows breaking his rules will have repercussions, but he is unable to just walk away when he can do something to help. He knows that the Sully in the dream is different to the real life Sully, knows that in dreams, inhibitions are lowered and defences are down, and that Sully is unlikely to remember anything while he, Elliot, will remember everything. But even as he explains this to Sully in the dream, Sully begs Elliot to return whenever his nightmares take hold and Elliot, knowing it’s a terrible idea but desperate to find a way to keep Sully safe, can’t find it in him to refuse.

I absolutely loved listening to this ‘getting-to-know-you’ phase of Elliot and Sully’s relationship – it’s a really creative way of bringing together two characters who are physically separated, and the emotional connection that develops between them is no less vivid and real for its being formed in a dream – plus, it’s all the more poignant because we, like Elliot, know what is likely to happen when Sully finds out the truth.

Imperfect Illusions is a gripping tale in which the author very skilfully weaves together the fantasy and real-world elements to create a unique and high-stakes story that is quite unlike anything else I’ve read or listened to. Vanora Lawless does a fantastic job of creating an atmosphere of darkness and uncertainty, of conveying the fear and inevitability of loss felt by those in the thick of the fighting, and the slow-burn romance between Elliot and Sully is terrific – they have fantastic chemistry, the steamy scenes are superbly done and their emotional connection is evident in their every interaction.

Logan McAllister delivers a very good performance with strong and appropriate characterisations and clear differentiation, so there is never any confusion as to who is speaking. He makes a nice contrast between Elliot’s smoother, slightly higher pitched tones and Sully’s deeper, more gravelly ones, and really emphasises the strength of the connection the author has created between them in their scenes together, which are expressive and, sometimes, deeply emotional. The narrative is well-paced, and although there aren’t many women in the story, they’re voiced well, especially Elliot’s no-nonsense second-in-command Lt. Bell (Bellona). Mr. McAllister does a decent French accent when required (two of the soldiers in Elliot’s unit are French) and generally does a good job of pronouncing the names and placenames that crop up, although his pronunciation of Passchendaele as “PashonDELL” (it should be “PA-shuhn-dayl”) stuck out like a sore thumb. Apart from that, however, I enjoyed the performance and would definitely listen to Logan McAllister again. I hope that if the rest of the series makes it into audio, he’ll be in the narrator’s chair.

Imperfect Illusions was a real find – one of those books that wasn’t even on my radar until it was, and it’s one of my favourite listens of the year. The author achieves the perfect balance between plot and romance, the action scenes are well-written, the two leads are engaging and complex, and their romance is lovely. It’s an amazingly accomplished début from Vanora Lawless, and having just read book two in the series, I can tell you that this isn’t a fluke, because the second book is every bit as good as the first. If you’re looking for an historical romance that’s different from the norm, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Caz

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