Reviewed by Annika
TITLE: Tea or Consequences
AUTHOR: KC Burn
NARRATOR: Darcy Stark
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 7 hours, 24 minutes
RELEASE DATE: December 19, 2017
BLURB:
Riley Parker: temp, twink, geek… sleuth?
Maybe Riley isn’t living up to his full potential, but being a temp executive assistant suits him. He’s never bored at work, he’s got friends who let him geek out, and he’s got a carefully crafted twink exterior… which might be getting constrictive now that he’s on the other side of 30. Life isn’t perfect, but it’s comfortable.
It all unravels when he takes a job working for a tea-obsessed cosmetics queen, the owner of Gautier Cosmetics. During the launch party for a new product, Riley finds his boss dead under suspicious circumstances, and the homicide detective is none other than Tadeo Martin, Riley’s high school obsession who never knew he was alive.
Tad drafts Riley to get the scoop on the inner workings of Gautier, and for Riley, it’s like a drug. His natural inquisitiveness is rewarded with more and more Tad. Unfortunately, his snooping puts him in the running for two other roles: suspect and victim. The killer doesn’t care which.
REVIEW:
I quite enjoyed listening to this story. It might be a story we’ve heard variations of countless of times before. But that doesn’t mean we can’t listen to it again and again. Because there’s something about that secret high school crush coming back into your life, turning it upside down that’s appealing. And personally, when you add in a murder mystery, I’ll be jumping of joy.
Riley loves his work as a temp executive assistant. His boss might be very strict and demanding, but he loves the challenge and variation his job offers. That is until he finds his boss dead in her office, making everyone he works with a suspect. Added to that, his high school crush Tad seems to be the detective in charge of the case. And him.
The two had chemistry, you could feel that right from the start. Watching them dance around each other was entertaining – especially with Riley being on the oblivious side in the beginning. Early on Riley insert himself into the investigation, he is a natural snoop after all. And it did get him into trouble more than once. But luckily he had a knight (detective) in shining armour (badge) to swoop in to save him. The mystery and investigation wasn’t always credible, but they were entertaining, so I didn’t mind in the least.
It wasn’t only the main characters that I like, there were a few secondary characters that I fell for as well. Especially Cody. His grief was the most palpable for me. Theirs was a love that never would have been easy, constantly being judged and frowned upon by others, still they stayed the course. I wished they’d had more time together.
I only have one complaint and that was that last chapter. It was too neat for me. Sure we got that HFN that I wanted for these guys. They deserved it. At the same time I don’t feel it was all that believable. The red bow was a little too shiny for me. Then again, this was a romance novel, so I’m not sure it could have ended any other way.
Darcy Stark really enhanced this story. He lived in it and he made the listener live in it too. I loved how he made the characters and events feel real. I loved how he made Riley’s voice squeak or break when he first met Tad, it made me smile. It’s those little things that might seem unimportant, but they do so much for an audiobook. It shows that the narrator goes that extra mile to enhance the production.
Tea or Consequences is definitely a book to pick up when you are looking for something low on angst with a murder mystery to spice things up.
RATING: 
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