Reviewed by Annika
TITLE: Chase the Stars 
SERIES: Lang Downs #2
AUTHOR: Ariel Tachna
NARRATOR: William James
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
RELEASE DATE: March 18, 2014
LENGTH: 8 hours, 1 minute
BLURB:
Twenty-year-old Chris Simms is barely keeping his head above water. After losing his mother and his home, he struggles to provide for himself and his brother. When homophobes attack him, he thinks his life is over, but then he’s rescued by jackaroos from a nearby sheep station. He’s as stunned to be offered a job there as he is to discover both the station owner and foreman are gay.
For Chris, Lang Downs is a dream—one that only gets better when Chris realizes the jackaroo he’s crushing on, Jesse Harris, is gay and amenable to a fling. Everything goes well until Chris realizes he’s falling for Jesse a lot harder than allowed by their deal.
Jesse is a drifter who moves from station to station, never looking for anything permanent. Convinced Chris is too young and fragile for a real relationship, he sets rules to keep things casual. Watching the station owner and his foreman together makes Jesse wonder if there are benefits to settling down, but when he realizes how Chris feels about him, he panics. He and Chris will have to decide if a try for happiness is worth the risk before the end of the season tears them apart.
REVIEW:
Chase the Stars is the second book in the Lang Down series and takes place a few months after Inherit the Sky. Caine and Macklin are in town hiring on new jackaroos for the season. Their lunch is interrupted when a teenager comes in yelling for someone to help his brother that’s being attacked in the alley. Chris is reluctant to believe his luck when his saviour not only saves him from being beaten to death, but also offers him a job and a place to stay for him and his brother.
Jesse has been working on stations for years, drifting from one to the other. He’s not looking to settle or for anything permanent. But there’s something about the wounded Chris that draws him in. What begins as showing the new guy the workings of a sheep station turns into a friendship, but also something more. It’s not only the guy that draws him in, there’s something with Lang Downs that makes him want to stay for more than just the season.
Unlike Inherit the Sky the relationship between Jesse and Chris didn’t feel rushed or forced. It developed naturally. Not easily, but it wasn’t out of nowhere either. I enjoyed their journey, finding a home and each other at Lang Downs. I also liked that it didn’t feel as disjointed as the first book, there was more depth – well, excluding the parts with Caine and Macklin that is.
With the risk of repeating myself, something that I still didn’t like was Caine. He’s still as manipulative and insensitive as he was in the first book. Oh, he wants to give the impression of the caring mother hen – as long as the end results fit him. So yeah, those parts got my blood boiling and not in a good way. And why there were parts told from their POV I didn’t quite understand either. I wanted the focus on Chris and Jesse, but that might just be because I’m not a fan of Caine and the less time I spend in his head the better.
I love the rest of the characters though. Neil is kind of funny, the reformed homophobe now so fiercely protective of his two bosses. It’s nice to see how people can change – and when he slips up his future wife will sure put him to rights again. I like Seth and Jason, their instant friendship, and just life at the station in general.
Once again I really enjoyed William James’s narration. And the Aussie accent sure did help that even more. Speaking of, this book is mostly told from Chris and Jesse’s POV and seeing as they are both Aussies by birth I would have liked more than the dialogue to be narrated with this accent and not American. But that’s all details.
RATING: 
BUY LINKS:
[…] Read More » […]