Skintight by Susan Andersen

Narrated by Johanna Parker

This is a hard-to-find audiobook that is available in CD format (used) at Amazon in the $20 range. You might recognize this narrator – she’s the voice of the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris.

Skintight takes place in Las Vegas where heroine Treena is a dancer in a show. She’s from a steel mill town in the east, where she grew up in a big, happy family, feeling like the outsider because she had bigger dreams than marrying out of high school and staying there. She worked her way up in the dance world, paid for her own dance classes and made it big. As part of her backstory, she marries a much older man who, as it turns out, was dying from cancer. He was rich – but lost it all to the costs of health care – and died within months of their marriage.

His son, Jackson “Jax Gallagher” McCall is out to steal back what should have been his: a priceless autographed baseball now in Treena’s possession. As it turns out, although it was not left to Jax in his father’s will, Treena always intended to find him and give it back because she knew that’s what his dad wanted. But Jax wasn’t around – he wasn’t there when his dad was dying, he didn’t attend the funeral, and she’s never met him – so she’s in no hurry.

Jax comes to Vegas as a professional poker player in a tournament and has a plan: he’ll introduce himself to his dad’s widow with his professional name (Gallagher), seduce her so he can gain access to her house, find the ball after he’s boffed her senseless, and skeedaddle. His backstory is that his mother died when he was young, and his dad raised him – poorly. He was a geek – a big, tall, brainy, scrawny geek – and his dad seemed to want an athlete. He skipped 3 grades in school, went to MIT at 14, but always felt like the outsider (see a pattern here??) and never felt he lived up to his dad’s expectations.

Now he’s a big, tall, brainy, built professional poker player with plenty of money. Unfortunately, under the influence of alcohol, he bet the baseball in a poker game to a fellow who is determined to get it by force if necessary. Hence the plan – he figures his dad’s widow is a money-grubbing gold digger bimbo, and that his plan will work when he wows her with his money. In his mind, there’s no point in just asking for it because she would never give it away. But he miscalculated – a big problem for a mathematical genius poker player!

There’s a fun secondary romance that is almost unnecessary, but fills in the “built family” aspect that Andersen does so well – 2 middle-aged single neighbors who finally give in to their attraction for each other. They act as mother and father in her group of neighbors who drop in and give advice and get in the way. The whole “built family” aspect is important to Jax in making him feel home for the first time in his life, contributing to his feeling of well-being with Treena. For me, this part makes the characterization of their relationship whole – it isn’t just a lust attraction, but the whole package, and they develop a friendship outside the bedroom that is very realistic.

Of course, Andersen writes bacon-sizzling hot love scenes too, which doesn’t hurt. I enjoyed the hell out of this book when I first read it – 5 stars and a keeper for sure. Talented narrator Johanna Parker does a bang-up job with the narration. She differentiates her characters well, and tells a good story. I got my copy from the library – it’s a hard-to-find, out of print audio, although with the audiobook industry so hot right now, I wonder why it hasn’t been re-released.

Melinda

Narration: A

Book Content: A+

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence: Minimal

Genre: Contemporary romance

Publisher: Recorded Books