Narrated by Greg Boudreaux
Rend isn’t an easy book to read or listen to, but it’s one that well repays the time spent with it. It’s the tale of a marriage on the edge of collapse and a troubled young man who is dealing with some very real, very deep emotional issues – and I came away from it having experienced laughter and tears, moments of joy, moments of pain and everything in between. When an author can do that simply through the arrangement of words on a printed page… it’s powerful stuff. And when you then take those words and give them to a narrator of the calibre of Greg Boudreaux – who I knew would nail, absolutely and perfectly, every single emotion behind them – there was never a doubt that I was going to be reduced to a pile of emotional rubble by the end.
We meet Matt Argento as he’s nursing a drink in a local bar, hoping to get himself picked up for a night of no-strings sex in a comfortable bed. He’s coming to the conclusion that it isn’t going to happen when a large, handsome blond man sits down next to him, introduces himself as Rhys (who was a secondary character in Riven) and starts chatting to him. Matt is completely on board with the idea of going home with him, but when they leave the bar, Rhys instead heads for a local diner where he proceeds to order practically everything on the menu and Matt, suddenly realising that yes, he’s hungry, tucks in, too. The pair of them spend a couple of hours talking and getting to know each other, and Matt is already starting to feel the sort of connection with Rhys he’s never really felt with anyone before. He’s disappointed when the night ends with only a passionate kiss – but is pleased when Rhys asks for his number and texts him the next day to ask to see him again. They continue like this for a few weeks, although Rhys makes no moves beyond kisses and Matt starts to wonder if perhaps he’s not attracted to him sexually… until he realises Rhys has been waiting for him to make clear what he wants. Matt’s life being bounced around the foster system has taught him that asking for things is pointless because they never happen – but he gathers his courage:
…I texted him, Do you have sex?
He wrote back immediately: Yes.
I responded: Great. Wanna have it with me?
Rhys: More than anything.
Twenty months later, we find Matt, happily married to Rhys, working at Mariposa, a non-profit organisation that helps kids transition out of foster care. It’s a fulfilling job, he and Rhys are head-over-heels in love and living in comfortable domesticity (well, almost – neither of them can cook!) – it’s the kind of life Matt had never even dreamed of, let alone thought to have, but sometimes he can’t help looking over his shoulder waiting for the other shoe to drop. Life has taught him that the good things never last, and with Rhys about to go on tour to promote his first solo album, all Matt’s old fears and insecurities feel like they’re lying-in-wait on the peripheries of his life, just waiting to creep back in and smother him.
Knowing this tour is important to Rhys, and not wanting to spoil what should be a happy and exciting time for him, Matt does his best to hide what’s really going on with him whenever they talk, and the longer Rhys is away, the harder Matt finds it to cope. The story is told completely in Matt’s PoV, which isn’t always a comfortable place to be, although Ms. Parrish very wisely intersperses the present-day portions of the novel with flashbacks showing how Matt and Rhys fell in love – and they’re very much needed to balance out the emotional upheaval Matt is going through. He knows Rhys loves him, but doesn’t understand why – overlooked and unappreciated for almost all his life, he doesn’t think he’s worthy of being loved, and that view of himself eventually grows into the belief that he’s not good enough for Rhys, and that Rhys would be better off without him.
And Rhys… oh, Rhys is just gorgeous. He’s kind, honourable and open-hearted with an enormous capacity for love and happiness, and his faith in Matt, even through the darkest of times, is touching and wonderful to witness. He’s Matt’s heart, just as Matt is his, and through all the emotional turmoil, the hurt, the anger and the black moments in Rend, the one thing that’s never in question is Matt and Rhys’ deep and abiding love for one other. Perhaps they got married too early – they’d only known each other for a couple of months when they tied the knot – and hadn’t taken the time to really think it through and work out how to be married, but they never give up on each other, no matter how badly they’re hurting.
As I said at the beginning of this review, when I saw Greg Boudreaux’s name attached to this audiobook, I knew I’d be reduced to a pile of quivering, emotionally-drained mush by the end of it. He characterises the two leads perfectly, employing a richly resonant baritone to portray Rhys, aptly reminding the listener that he’s a physically imposing man with a personality to match, while Matt is pitched slightly higher and his voice has an appealing, winsome quality. There are a handful of secondary characters in the novel, notably Theo and Caleb from Riven, who are just as clearly differentiated so there’s no confusion when they’re all in scenes together (and I swear Mr. B has based his interpretation of Theo on Iggy Toma’s performance in that audio). Matt’s irrepressible friend Grin lives up to his name and almost always has a smile in his voice, and the couple of female characters – Rhys’ mum and Matt’s boss – are convincingly and obviously female by virtue of a change of timbre and delivery rather than any great variation in pitch. But by far the most impressive thing about the performance as a whole is the incredible range of emotion and expression on display. This is an intense and intensely romantic story and it would perhaps be easy to overdo in places, but Mr. Boudreaux never takes things over the top and never underplays; he captures Matt’s raw fear, vulnerability and crippling uncertainty perfectly, and Rhys’ bewilderment and anger are palpable, as is the depth of the strong and very real affection between them. Audiobooks like this one rarely get nominated for big industry awards and that’s a crying shame, because if there was an Oscar for audiobook performance, Greg Boudreaux certainly deserves one for his work here.
I make no secret of the fact I’m a bit of an angst bunny, and romance novels allow me to indulge that need for angsty stories while knowing it’ll all work out in the end; I know that no matter what the characters go through, there’s an HEA/HFN in store for them. And Rend is one of those stories where I needed to remind myself of that, because at times, things get to looking pretty bleak. BUT – don’t let the prospect of that put you off, because when all’s said and done this is a beautiful and uplifting story about two people who are hopelessly and irrevocably in love working through their problems, finding their way back to each other and becoming stronger as a result.
Caz
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