Breaking Cover by Kaje Harper

Narrated by JF Harding

Kaje Harper’s Life Lessons series continues with Breaking Cover, a wonderful blend of romance and mystery that was so completely enthralling that I couldn’t stop listening to it. Everything works – the mystery is intriguing, the characters are relatable and beautifully drawn, the relationship development is deeply emotional, and J.F. Harding’s narration is perfection.

At the end of Life Lessons, teacher Tony Hart and widowed detective Jared MacLean (Mac) had decided they wanted to be together, even though Mac isn’t out and Tony doesn’t like the idea of spending the rest of his life in the closet. But he knows that if he wants to be with Mac, it’s going to have to be on Mac’s terms – at least for now. Breaking Cover takes place around a year since they met; Tony and Mac are still together, but the secrecy is starting to wear on Tony. He’s lost touch with his friends because he daren’t risk letting something slip, and the hiding – being a couple only behind closed doors and having to think about what he says all the time – is becoming more and more frustrating.

Mac has noticed something is up with Tony, and even knows what it is, but he tries to ignore it and hopes it will just go away – he loves Tony deeply and is terrified of losing him. Things come to a head when Tony asks Mac if he’ll come along to the LGBTQ+ shelter for teens he volunteers at to teach the kids – some of whom are on the streets or in abusive situations – some self defence moves, and Mac refuses, citing pressure of work. It may not be a big thing, but for Tony it’s yet more proof that he’s in love with someone who is never going to put him first. He knows how Mac feels about him (even though Mac hasn’t said ‘the words’ to Tony yet) and that he, Tony, is more in love with Mac than ever, but his refusal is a harsh reminder that, in the time they’ve been together, Mac has never once talked about the possibility of coming out.

When Mac tells Tony he can’t commit to helping at the shelter due to workload, he isn’t entirely lying. He and Oliver, his partner, have just caught the case of a young woman who was strangled to death and then stabbed post-mortem – and realised that the MO closely matches that of a murder committed some weeks earlier. It’s too early to say whether they have a serial killer on their hands (officially, that label is only given after three murders) but it’s looking increasingly likely, and when a third victim turns up not long afterwards, it’s certain.

Mac and Oliver are at the young woman’s apartment taking a look around when Mac notices the signs that a child – a young boy – lives there, too. A quick glance at a framed photograph tells Mac the child is Ben Serrano, the little boy Tony has been a surrogate father to ever since his birth. Ben is six, but his father – a good friend of Tony’s – killed himself before Ben was born, and while his mother takes care of him the best she knows how, she’s an alcoholic and her addiction has been spiralling lately. She’d go out on a Saturday night to get smashed and would pick up a guy and bring him home – and this time, she picked up a killer. Worse, Ben was in the apartment the whole time.

Ben’s mother named Tony as Ben’s guardian in her will, and Tony arrives as soon as he can to take Ben home with him. Tony and Mac both know that this is going to mean big changes in their relationship; Mac has all but moved in to Tony’s apartment and spends several nights a week there, but it’s a small one bedroom place, and there’s no way they will be able to carry on as they have been. Tony isn’t about to ask Ben to lie about Mac’s presence in his life.

Things are complicated still further when Tony learns that Ben’s maternal grandparents are going to challenge the will and petition for custody of the boy. They’ve never been part of his life and Tony is the only father Ben has ever known; he’s determined to do whatever he has to to keep Ben with him. He is well aware that as a young, single, gay man, he’ll be subject to extremely close scrutiny when it comes to assessing his fitness for custody of a child, and knows he needs to be able to answer questions about his personal life truthfully – and he can’t do that without outing Mac. Upset – and undeniably angry with Mac for putting him in this position – Tony tells him they need to put whatever they have between them on hold while Tony focuses on Ben. And possibly for the foreseeable future.

Gah – talk about ripping out my heart and stomping on it! Kaje Harper does a great job here with weaving together the different story strands – the murder investigation and the upheaval in Tony and Mac’s relationship. There’s more of a focus on the relationship side of things – which is absolutely fine by me! – but the murder mystery is well plotted and executed, showing the amount of grunt work involved in such an investigation, all the time spent questioning, sifting through haystacks of information looking for needles and working out how all the pieces fit together. There is one thing pulled me up short, however – it’s spoilery so I won’t go into detail, but it struck me as a bit odd that Mac and the other detectives would have realised that there was a danger to one witness without thinking there might be danger to another.

Mac and Tony are well-rounded, likeable and so very real as characters. They obviously love each other very much, but they’re both faced with incredibly difficult decisions which could make or break their relationship. Mac’s reasons for staying in the closet are very valid – not just the casual and endemic homophobia displayed by some of his colleagues, but the very real concern that the worst among them might deliberately refuse to back him up in a dangerous situation – and Tony’s reasons for needing some sign that he’s at least thinking about making a change are equally so. I like that Tony absolutely gets why Mac is so resistant to coming out, and I really appreciated that he makes the choices he does for the sake of his own wellbeing – because living a lie is stifling him and he realises he needs to take care of himself – and not because he’s trying to make a point.

As this is, in large part, a romance novel (and there are two more books in the series!) I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that Mac absolutely steps up, deciding Tony and the family they’re building are the most important things in his life and worth taking the risk for. His internal struggles are extremely well written and I really felt for him, so torn between the life and love he longs for and wanting to stick with the safe and familiar.

All those struggles and doubts and conflicting emotions are brought into sharp focus by J.F. Harding in another absolutely fantastic performance. Everything Mac and Tony are going through is right there in his voice – all the highs, all the lows – and not a single emotional nuance is missed. His vocal characterisations are perfectly judged – deep, gruff tones for Mac, higher pitched and lighter ones for Tony – and consistent with the way they sounded in the previous book, and the interactions between them are full of warmth, affection and understanding. The depth of the love and strength of the connection between them is superbly conveyed – there is no doubt about the way these two feel about each other – and the sex scenes are the perfect mixture of hot and loving. The secondary characters are all distinctly portrayed in ways that are age and gender appropriate, and I have to make special mention of Mr. Harding’s renditions of Ben and Anna – young children are probably not easy to voice, but they sound ridiculously cute!

Breaking Cover is one of the best audiobooks I’ve listened to this Summer – this year, probably – and despite that one issue I mentioned, I loved every bit of it. The story is compelling, the characters are loveable and J.F. Harding’s narration takes the whole thing to another level. Highly recommended.

Caz

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