Forgotten Sins by Rebecca Zanetti

Forgotten SinsNarrated by Karen White

Forgotten Sins introduces us to the Dean brothers, three dangerous men who have led traumatic lives. We meet all of them here, but this is very much Shane’s story.

Josie Dean has made a good life for herself in a small town in Washington state. She enjoys her job as an accountant and she feels like she’s making friends, allowing her to live the kind of life she’s always longed for. Sure, she still dreams of Shane, the man who loved and left her two years ago, but Josie is determined to go on without him. After all, he’s the one who left.

When the police find Shane at the scene of a crime, he has no idea who he is or where he’s been. Luckily, he has a piece of paper with Josie’s name and number in his wallet. The police call her, and the two are reunited. Shane has so many questions about his past, but Josie can answer very few of them. It’s plain that, even though Shane married her, he did not trust her with the details of his life.

When I think of stellar narrators, Karen White’s name always comes to mind. I was beyond pleased to see her listed as the narrator of Forgotten Sins. In fact, her narration was one of the things that convinced me to give this book a try. I was definitely not disappointed.

Ms. White has a way of reading that is somewhere between flat-out reading and the melodrama some narrators seem to prefer. Her pacing is wonderful, and she is able to vary her pitch just enough to make most characters distinguishable from one another.

I did have some trouble distinguishing Shane and his brothers from one another. They sounded very similar, down to the southern drawl with which they all speak upon occasion. If, however, it was just Josie and Shane in a conversation together, I had no trouble telling one from the other.

Shane is definitely an alpha male. In fact, there were several times I felt he went over the line in his attempts to keep Josie safe. It sometimes felt like he viewed her as a possession, and I’ve always had a problem with characters who act that way. I wanted Shane to love Josie, but I also wanted him to respect her. Sometimes, that just didn’t happen.

For her part, Josie is a strong, independent woman. She hates the fact that Shane views her as soft and in need of constant protection. She tries to get him to change these behaviors on more than one occasion with varying degrees of success.

Forgotten Sins is the first book in what promises to be a super steamy, action-packed, suspenseful series. At the end of the book, there are several loose ends that should be tied up in upcoming books. Shane and Josie do manage to find their happy ever after, but it comes with a few unknowns. Perhaps some of those will be dealt with in Sweet Revenge, Book 2 in the Sin Brothers series.

Shannon


Narration:  B+

Book Content:  B

Steam Factor:  For your burning ears only

Violence:  Escalated fighting

Genre:  Contemporary Romance

Publisher:  Hachette Audio

 

Forgotten Sins was provided to AudioGals for review by Hachette Audio.