Narrated by Justine O. Keef
Nalini Singh took a step or two outside of the paranormal romance series (for which she has garnered a huge following), and wrote a New Adult/Contemporary Rock Star Romance series, Rock Kiss. This is a lot of genre blending – it’s contemporary, the protagonists are in their twenties, there’s angst, and the books focus on the members of a hard rock band called Schoolboy Choir. And the first one is also erotica. There are graphically described sex scenes – a lot of them – right from the beginning.
Rock Addiction starts with Rock God Zachary Fox, Schoolboy Choir’s lead singer, known usually just as “Fox”, noticing a new woman at a party in New Zealand and deciding he wants her. Unfortunately, that short, descriptive scene is not in the audiobook, and it would help set up what happens next (I read the scene in Amazon’s Look Inside feature). Molly is the half-sister of the band’s publicist; she’s also a virginal librarian, with a past. Fox jumps in the elevator with Molly when she leaves the party and seduces her into a one-night stand. Once he’s had a taste, he knows she is His Woman, so he convinces her to extend the one-night stand to one month, and plans to slowly win her over to his Forever plan.
Molly the librarian resigns herself to just one night with the Rock God who has a “voice like sex and a body like heaven”. After all, the one thing she will never, never, never again want in her life is fame because of an experience she had as a teenager, when her pious politician father was caught in flagrante delicto with a teenage girl. The events that followed included intrusive paparazzi, online shaming and more, and she exhibits symptoms of PTSD from the experience. The thought of anyone noticing her and digging up this shameful past makes her physically ill. But how can she pass up the attentions of Mr. Sex and Sin Voice and Body?
The opening seduction scene sets the tone for this book – by page 15 he was fantasizing pressing his hard-on into her from behind, and by page 23 he was lifting her dress over her head and describing in graphic detail how the rest of the evening would and did progress. Although the sex is always vanilla, despite some teases about using ropes and tying her up, they had healthy appetites and we the readers are privy to pretty much every detail of every encounter – in the garage, in the car, over the sofa, in the elevator. Oh yes, and in the bed under the covers, which is what Ms. Librarian prefers at first. But even though she has been admiring him from afar for a while, she does everything she can to keep him at arm’s length because she will not, cannot be exposed to the limelight of fame ever again. Never, not even for a Rock God, because she’s also afraid she will become addicted – the way her father did to sex with minors and her mother did to alcohol.
I have only read one other Singh, in the Psy-Changeling series. I liked it well enough, and I admire her writing prowess. This may seem a little clinical: she forms good, complete sentences and paragraphs that are descriptive, and creates good characters, so I was never put off by her writing technique. It was the plotting and character motivations that had me occasionally shaking my head and rolling my eyes – maybe the teen fantasy of being the mousy girl befriending the boy band members does it for some readers, but I’m not one of them. For me, the New Adult trend of heart-wrenching angst coupled with constant, graphic sex was too much. Apparently, I don’t fit the target demographic, so take this review with a couple grains of salt. It was a little too much tell and not enough show: I feel like Singh missed the boat on showing me the attraction between Fox and Molly, through developing and building sexual and emotional tension, and spent more time telling me in graphic detail how they had sex.
The really good new is, Justine O. Keef is a great contemporary narrator (yay!). She has a terrific delivery – her pacing is excellent, and she created several easily discernible characters. I was a little confused about nationality and accents – although Molly is in New Zealand, I wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be from the States or New Zealand, and Keef delivers her voice with American pronunciations even though twice in the book there is a reference to her sounding like a Kiwi. She also uses an American accent for Molly’s best friend Charlotte, and Charlotte’s boss – all in New Zealand. However, she does give a couple of regional NZ and Aussie accents to minor characters. The band members were definitely American. Her male register is low enough to evoke a man speaking, and I enjoyed both the dialogue and the narrative performance.
Melinda
Narration: A
Book Content: B
Steam Factor: For your burning ears only
Violence: None
Genre: Contemporary Romance/New Adult
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Rock Addiction was provided to AudioGals by Tantor Audio for review.
How odd that the audiobook left out the opening scene! Is it known what else might have been omitted that was in the print copy? I guess this will never be a whispersync title!
I hope it was just the review copy that did not have that opening mini-scene, called “Collide” in the Amazon preview. It really does set up the scene better.