Reviewed by Annika
TITLE: The Way Things Are 
AUTHOR: A.J. Thomas
NARRATOR: Ron Herczig
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner press
RELEASE DATE: June 18, 2015
LENGTH: 9 hours, 20 minutes
BLURB:
A night of drunken confusion at 19 resulted in Patrick Connelly fathering a child. Determined to be there for his son, Patrick walked away from a sport he loved and forever hid his sexuality. After Patrick’s brutal divorce and a vicious hate crime, his son, Jay, has become obsessed with graffiti. Hoping for a fresh start, Patrick moves Jay to his childhood home in Seattle. Within two weeks, Jay is arrested again. On his way to pick Jay up, Patrick stops an assault, then finds himself in handcuffs too. Thinking things can’t get any worse, he’s confronted by the sexiest man he’s ever seen – his son’s new probation officer, Ken Atkins.
The hardest part of Ken’s job is working with difficult parents, and the undeniably handsome Patrick Connelly is going to be a difficult parent. A chance encounter and steamy hookup with Patrick leave Ken blindsided. As they work together to try to keep Jay on the right path, the passion between them proves impossible to resist. When the assault Patrick prevented comes back to haunt them and Jay gets into trouble again, Ken must convince Patrick that ensuring his son’s happiness doesn’t have to mean sacrificing his own.
REVIEW:
<i>The Way Things Are</i> has been on my TBR list for quite some time, but I never got around to reading it there was always something else shiny stealing my attention. When I noticed that it had also been released into audio (quite some time ago) there really were no excuses left, I was listening to this book.
Patrick Connelly is gay and has always been gay. But a drunken night when he was nineteen resulted in a son. A son he loves more than anything, and would do anything for. Only Jay gets himself in trouble – a lot. He can’t seem to keep from being arrested time and again. Hoping to break the pattern bad habits Patrick decides to move them from New York and back to Seattle where he grew up. True to form though, they haven’t even finished unpacking when Jay is arrested again for tagging and lands himself a probation officer determined to see to it that Jay stays out of trouble.
Ken Atkins has seen it all, but when the file of his new parolee lands on his desk he’s sure there has been some mistake. The kid is only fourteen, but has a rap sheet rivalling career criminal in length. When he finds out that the reason he can’t get a hold of the kid’s father is because he too has been arrested he figures he’s in for some tough times. And there were tough times ahead – but not for the reason he might think.
There was two storylines in this book, two good storylines I might add. The only problem was that they didn’t really go together. First you have the relationship part of the story, the starting over, getting Jay on the right track, helping him to understand and move on from past trauma. Both Patrick and Ken helping him, supporting him. Patrick and Ken’s instant attraction and fighting that attraction as long as Ken is still Jay’s probation officer. Following their budding relationship, their falling in love. That’s all part of the one story and it works really well.
Then there is the mystery part of the story, Patrick breaking up an assault (and getting arrested for it), finding a dead body and all the trouble that ensues. I love that part too, it’s another great story. The only problem is that both stories feel incomplete. Neither really got the time to shine, had enough space to be fully explored. It felt too superficial for my tastes and I do think that if these stories had been made into two separate ones they would have been so much better. There would have been more time and space to develop the stories and the characters more. To make you connect to them, which never really happened for me this time.
As for the narrator, Ron Herczig, I can’t really say that he did much to improve on the book. Narrators have the ability to sink a book or lift it to another level and bring it to life. Herczig did neither. It wasn’t a bad narration, but it wasn’t all that fantastic either. His narration was very monotone and even, which is very hard for me to listen to as I tend to space out. I need the emotion, the infliction. I need to live in the story, but this time around I was on the outside looking in.
I enjoyed listening to this book, it wasn’t my favourite by Thomas, nor was it a bad one. but it didn’t evoke any strong feelings one way or the other either.
RATING: 
BUY LINKS: