Title: The Garden
Series: Lavender Shores: Book Two
Author: Rosalind Abel
Narrator: Kirt Graves
Publisher: Self-Published
Run Time: 8 hours and 23 minutes
Category: Contemporary
At a Glance: This is an amazing addition to this series. Kirt Graves’ voice is so well suited to the story that it’s almost impossible to imagine anyone else doing the narration justice. His expressive voice is one not to be missed.
Reviewed By: Mike
Blurb: Beautiful Gilbert Bryant designs jewelry for the rich and famous, and he made his escape from his gossipy little hometown of Lavender Shores. However, with so many friends and family, he keeps getting pulled back. When he attends his best friend’s engagement party, Gilbert can’t help but sample one of the new men in town. It’s just some innocent—or not so innocent—fun. Nothing that will even cross his mind once he gets back to his everyday life.
Walden Thompson dreamed about living in Lavender Shores since he visited as a child. He finally gets his chance, and he embraces the opportunity to start over, to become someone new. He leaves both hurts and dangerous habits in the past, where they belong. When Gilbert crosses his path, Walden gives in to his baser instincts. He can indulge in the carnal pleasures this once and still be okay. Their few hours together haunt Gilbert, the two-hundred-mile buffer from home no longer shutting out the past or the sexy man he left behind. Walden is just beginning to recover from the smoldering encounter with Gilbert when they are thrust together once more. This time, neither of them can walk away, no matter how hard they try. But when their pasts crash into each other as surely as the magnetism that pulls them together, walking away may be the only option.
Review: Ever since Walden Thompson first visited Lavender Shores as a child, in the tow of his religious and overbearing parents, he has been in love with it, in love with the place and the very idea of it. But Lavender Shores has become more than an ideal; it’s a place where Walden can begin to heal from a failed relationship that didn’t just flame out, it both imploded and exploded at the same time.
Gilbert Bryant lives an hour or so away from Lavender Shores. The small town that he was born in, and the town that drove him away, pulls him back—back to his best friend, his loving family, and the place where he will remain rooted. He designs jewelry and eschews human contact, except for random casual sex with men, and the wealthy and famous clients who seek out his designs.
Then Gilbert sees Walden at a Lavender Shores health club. Gilbert devours Walden with his eyes. He follows him to the showers and then the steam room. There, the worlds of the two men don’t just collide, they slam together in a bond that refuses to break no matter how they stretch it, deny it, and refuse to accept delivery of it.
Rosalind Abel gives us the nearly impossible here. These two men are broken by past events, but they are not so broken that they can’t be mended. These are strong men who have needs, and those needs are fed in some very beautiful and adventurous ways. Kirt Graves is more than able to give us a voice performance that smolders when needed, shrieks when called for, and is so gentle in moving the plot forward that the listener is completely taken to a new and wonderful world.
It is pretty rare that an author’s words fit a narrator’s voice talents so well. They work together here in a way that is a wonderful surprise. When we finally get to the garden in the title, Graves gives Abel’s words so much life you can picture how it dissolves from a formal space into a near-wild jungle of green and flowers that feels like a very real place. When his voice adds Walden and Gilbert into it, their combustibility is palpable. This is an amazing addition to this series. Kirt Graves’ voice is so well suited to the story that it’s almost impossible to imagine anyone else doing the narration justice. His expressive voice is one not to be missed.
Listeners will want this book in their collection. It is book two in a series, but the story is self-contained—you don’t have to have read book one to completely enjoy this novel. You can listen to them in any order, but you will be impatiently waiting for book three along with the rest of us. When you buy this book, you’ll want to clear some time and try to listen to as much of it as possible right away. The Garden is one lovers of romance will treasure. Buy this book, sit back and enjoy the ride you’ll be taken on. You will want to take this ride again soon.
You can buy The Garden here:
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