Reviewed by Annika
TITLE: American Dreamer
SERIES: Dreamers #1
AUTHOR: Adriana Herrera
NARRATOR: Sean Crisden
PUBLISHER: Harlequin Audio
RELEASE DATE: March 4, 2019
LENGTH: 8 hours, 13 minutes
BLURB:
No one ever said big dreams come easy
For Nesto Vasquez, moving his Afro-Caribbean food truck from New York City to the wilds of Upstate New York is a huge gamble. If it works? He’ll be a big fish in a little pond. If it doesn’t? He’ll have to give up the hustle and return to the day job he hates. He’s got six months to make it happen—the last thing he needs is a distraction.
Jude Fuller is proud of the life he’s built on the banks of Cayuga Lake. He has a job he loves and good friends. It’s safe. It’s quiet. And it’s damn lonely. Until he tries Ithaca’s most-talked-about new lunch spot and works up the courage to flirt with the handsome owner. Soon he can’t get enough—of Nesto’s food or of Nesto. For the first time in his life, Jude can finally taste the kind of happiness that’s always been just out of reach.
An opportunity too good to pass up could mean a way to stay together and an incredible future for them both…if Nesto can remember happiness isn’t always measured by business success. And if Jude can overcome his past and trust his man will never let him down.
REVIEW:
We have a new voice on the m/m scene; Adriana Herrera, and what a talented voice she is. American Dreamer was a delight to listen to and I will for sure look for more books by this author. Herrera weaves a beautiful tale about a man with a dream and how he goes about to fulfil it, the adversities he face, the joy and the love.
Nesto Vasquez is an out and proud Dominican American who loves authentic food. All food. He dreams of setting Afro-Caribbean cuisine on the culinary map, but making it in NYC isn’t going to happen, so he takes his food truck and moves to Ithaca, and gives his dreams his all. And flirting with the sexy librarian makes his life so much better.
Jude Fuller is content with his life – for the most part. He has a job he’s passionate about and great friends. There is no boyfriend or significant other though. He learnt his lesson the hard way early on. People never truly cared about him. And happiness is only a dream. So when Nesto wants to take things further, to deepen their relationship he is hesitant.
American Dreamer is a slow and gentle story. It’s not only a story about two men falling in love, the dance they do around each other from that first meet and towards a relationship. It’s also about the prejudice against persons of colour, immigrants and their fight for equal rights to be treated with decency. How they are so often met with suspicion and mistrust.
This could have been a heavy book, dealing with bigotry in all its forms. Then there is the religious angle where Jude comes from a ultra-religious family, who thinks all gays will be condemned. But this book is far from heavy. Despite the negativity thrown around, the love and happiness overtakes it all. Because the characters are genuinely happy people determined to not let other people or circumstances bring them down, they are close-knit and stand together. That’s what this book brings, that sense of family, of place.
Sean Crisden did a great job with this book. As always he had different voices and great pacing and infliction. However, there were a lot of Spanish thrown about in this book and he didn’t always get that quite right. (And that’s to my highly untrained and non-native, no speaking ears). I do love it that he tried, because in the end that’s far preferable to no accent at all and a monotone reading of the words in front of you.
American Dreamer was a wonderful debut novel and one that is definitely worth a second and third look.
RATING: 
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