Reviewed by Annika
TITLE: Of Sunlight and Stardust 
AUTHOR: Christina Lee & Riley Hart
NARRATOR: Tristan James & Kale Williams
PUBLISHER: Audible Studios
RELEASE DATE: May 14, 2019
LENGTH: 7 hours, 4 minutes
BLURB:
After the death of his wife, Tanner Rowe takes a step toward making her dying wish come true and buys the house with the dilapidated barn she’d been inexplicably drawn to in the picturesque Upper Peninsula. But after a year, he still can’t get past his grief long enough to make the repairs he’d promised.
Recently out of prison, Cole Lachlan has little to his name. Homeless, broke, and without many options as a felon, Cole heads to Red Bluff with hopes of a second chance. There he meets Tanner, whose loneliness mirrors his own, and soon Cole is trading room and board for rebuilding the burned-out barn on Tanner’s property that hasn’t been touched in 70 years.
Turns out, the barn holds more secrets than either of them could have imagined. After unearthing a hidden journal from 1948, Cole and Tanner spend their evenings poring over the pages, reading about a young man pining after his best friend. The deeper they delve into this forbidden affair from the past, the more Cole and Tanner’s own relationship shifts – from acquaintances to friends…to undeniable attraction.
But as they begin to deal with the newness of falling in love in the wake of Tanner’s loss and Cole’s past, they also become more determined to unravel the mystery of the young lovers who’ve captured their hearts, the rumors about the fire, and what really happened that fateful night.
REVIEW:
A few months ago a friend recommended this book to me and ever since I’ve hoped it would be released in audio. Mid May I got my wish and so my journey began with Tanner Rowe and Cole Lachlan. They are both living day to day, but for different reasons. A year ago Tanner lost his wife to cancer. She was the love of his life and the reason he bought the house he now lives in. It was her dying wish for him to live there, restore the burnt barn and find happiness again. But still after all this time he can’t do it. He lives in the house, barely existing. Until Cole comes walking into his life asking to borrow fishing equipment. Offering Cole a place to stay and three meals a day in exchange for him doing repairs to the barn is the perfect solution to both of them.
Cole is freshly out of prison, he has no job, home or money to his name. He’s also determined to do whatever it takes to never go back there again. Turns out, finding a job with a felony record is a lot tougher than he counted on so when Tanner offered him a place to stay in return of some repairs he was more than happy to take him up on the offer. As soon as he entered the barn he felt a presence, knew that it held secrets and not long after he found a hidden journal from 1948. A journal written by a young man in love with his best friend.
The story was predictable but still sweet. It’s divided into two timelines as we follow both Cole and Tanner’s journey of healing, friendship and then attraction and love. But we also follow the two young men from the journal, them falling in love how their relationship went from best friends to madly in love. The difficulties and danger of being in love with another man in the 1940’s. Both love stories were sweet, at times bittersweet and sad, but definitely worth every emotion it wrings from you. The ending was a bit much and farfetched, but then again you can’t always get it all and I was happy enough with the rest of it.
This book was narrated by both Tristan James and Kale Williams. Their dual narration was I’d like to say like a dance – no more like synchronized swimming. They switched of perfectly, had the same pacing and passion, and volume. It was seamless and beautiful. They worked really, really well together. It was almost too perfect in a way, they were too much alike.
Sometimes a dual narration makes sense, where the different narrators bring different skill sets to the table, different voices. To distinguish between different POV’s a bit more when it’s just one narrator. That was not the case here. Listening to audiobooks should be effortless in my opinion. It shouldn’t require a conscious effort on the listeners’ part to follow along the story, at least not in terms of who, where and when. Both Kale Williams and Tristan James have so similar voices and way of narration that you needed to really focus to know who was narrating and if it was the past or the present. I’m not saying that it was in any way bad – it just felt unnecessary for the dual narration as either Williams or James could and would have narrated the whole book with the same result.
RATING: 
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