Narrated by Brad King
Annabeth Albert is one of my favourite authors, so when I saw one of her backlist series, Perfect Harmony, was coming to audio, I was quick to request a copy of book one, Treble Maker, for review. Narrator Brad King is new-to-me – and I’m always a little nervous about listening to new narrators – but although he took a little while to really settle in, he delivers a strong performance overall, and I definitely intend to check out the rest of the series as the books are released.
Perfect Harmony is the title of a reality TV singing competition for a cappella (unaccompanied) singing groups (think Pentatonix), and when the book opens, there are thirteen hopeful groups competing for ten places in the next round. Embellish, consisting of two women and three men, is one of the smaller groups, and its members haven’t been performing together all that long; in fact, their lead singer, Cody Rivers, isn’t much used to ensemble or a cappella singing having spent his career so far as a lead or solo singer. Talented and ambitious, Cody is set on making it as a rock star, but living out of his clapped-out van or couch-surfing with friends is getting old, so he’s entered the show in what could very well be his last chance at a big break. He’s been on his own since he was sixteen, when his grandmother rejected him after he came out; he knows who he is and isn’t shy about doing whatever he needs to in order to gain advantages and make opportunities for himself.
Lucas Norwood is a member of the M&Ms, an all-male group from the small Monticello School in the equally small town of Austerity, Iowa. He’s gay and out (sort of), and his parents – who both work at the college (his father is a professor there) – are supportive, and fought for Lucas to be able to attend the very conservative school. That said, their support seems to be conditional on Lucas not actually behaving like a young, single gay man (or a young, single man of any sexual persuasion!), and like many of his fellow students, Lucas has signed a purity pledge. He knows his parents want him to find a sweet, wholesome guy to settle down with, but that’s not what Lucas dreams of at all. His tastes run to the raunchy, to the sort of guy who will hold him down and make him beg for it – and the minute Lucas sets eyes on Cody, it’s like he’s been confronted with his dirtiest fantasies come to life. Cody is everything Lucas is not; flamboyant and unashamedly sexual, Cody swaggers around in tight clothes and eyeliner, rocking the modern goth look and providing the worst sort of temptation – and he knows it.
When one of the show’s more unusual rules sees Lucas joining Embellish for the remainder of the series – and he and Cody end up as roommates – it’s not long before things start to heat up between them. At first, Cody likes pushing Lucas’ buttons simply because he can, and likes disconcerting the repressed “farmer’s boy” with his overt flirting and suggestive comments. But what starts as encouragement to Lucas to explore his sexuality develops into a genuine affection and desire for something more with him – something which scares the hell out of Cody, who has never had a relationship that involves anything beyond mutual pleasure or usefulness.
Lucas has strong beliefs that he’s struggling to reconcile with his desires; desires that are becoming more and more difficult to ignore. He wants to please his family – he sees it as a way of showing gratitude for their support – but in doing so, he’s denying an important part of himself, and slowly, he starts to realise that he’s tired of living by a set of rules and choices he didn’t make for himself.
Of course, what starts out as “just sex” for Cody, and the chance to explore his sexuality as a gay man for Lucas, doesn’t stay that way for long, and both men find themselves re-assessing the things they thought they knew about themselves and what they want from life. But even as they’re both coming to realise that what they want from life is a chance to live it together, they’re still beset by doubts. Cody has spent so many years looking out for number one, can he really change? And can Lucas ever shake off the conditioning of his upbringing and learn that it’s okay to be himself?
Treble Maker is an enjoyable, sexy romance between two flawed but likeable characters who have quite a lot of baggage to work through. I really liked the depiction of the singing competition parts of the story, and was impressed by the subtle way in which Lucas’ family situation is handled. It would have been easy to have painted his parents as a couple of unrepentant bigots, but Ms. Albert doesn’t do that; and I also liked that she doesn’t go for the “movie ending”, choosing instead to go for something less obvious to allow Cody and Lucas to start making a life together doing something they both love.
Brad King is, as I said at the beginning, a new-to-me narrator, and he also appears to be fairly new to the world of audiobook narration as I can only find half-a-dozen or so titles to his credit at Audible. His bio at Tantor.com says he’s a “former one-hit-wonder” rock star, so perhaps that experience makes him especially suited to narrate this particular series! Although he took a little while to settle in properly – he didn’t always differentiate successfully between Cody and Lucas to start with, and I sometimes had to rely on dialogue tags – after a few chapters he found his feet and proceeded to deliver a really enjoyable performance. One of the things that most impressed me throughout was his ability to perform narrative and dialogue in a manner that felt very comfortable and natural; another was the way he picked up all the emotional cues in the text, injecting just the right degree of expression and nuance into his narration. The secondary characters are all easy to tell apart and Mr. King is able to portray the female characters believably with just small changes in pitch and timbre.
I’d have given a slightly higher content grade had the pacing not dragged a little in the first half, but overall, I enjoyed both story and narration in Treble Maker and will definitely be checking out the other books in the Perfect Harmony series.
Caz
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