Reviewed by Annika
TITLE: Job Hunt
SERIES: The Power of Zero #1
AUTHOR: Jackie Keswick
NARRATOR: Fox Ballard
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 9 hours, 38 minutes
RELEASE DATE: February 11, 2016
BLURB:
You don’t greet your new boss dressed like an underage rent boy. But when Jack Horwood – ace hacker and ex-MI6 operative – opens the door to Gareth Flynn, he’s too busy to worry over details like that. And anyway, his potential new boss is his former commanding officer – the same guy Jack has had a crush on since he was 17. So he should understand, right?
When he applied for the job in Nancarrow Mining’s corporate security division, Jack had hoped for peaceful days repelling cyber-attacks. Maybe a bit of corporate espionage on the side. His plans didn’t include rescuing abused children, hunting pimps, or dealing with his overly protective and hot-as-hell boss, Gareth Flynn.
Walking away is not an option. Jack never takes the easy way out. More than that, meeting Gareth raises old ghosts that Jack needs to put to rest. Rescuing kids. Taking risks. Saving the day. Jack can do all that – but deciding what to do about his attraction to Gareth isn’t the sort of cloak-and-dagger game Jack plays well. Yet Gareth, strong and smart and always on hand when needed, might be Jack’s salvation.
REVIEW:
I love being thrown into the thick of things, hitting the ground running so to speak. I think Jackie Keswick tried to do that with the beginning for this book, but didn’t quite get there, it also wasn’t in the beginning of a story. It was a strange mix of both, a mix that didn’t work for me all the way. I felt lost for a long time, wondering if I had missed a few chapters in the beginning, wondering about just about everything. That’s not a pleasant feeling. I don’t mind questioning, and trying to figure stuff out, but I don’t enjoy questioning if I missed part of the story as nothing really made sense.
That feeling kind of stayed with me throughout. I couldn’t quite get a grip on the characters or the plot, how it all tied together. Jack was an interesting and colourful character for sure, but who was he, and what did he really do? And who did he work for, himself, a company, law-enforcement all three and then some? I fully admit I couldn’t keep up all the way, heck I got lost right in the beginning and couldn’t find myself back on track and that might all be on me.
The boys broke my heart, more than anything I wanted them to find safety and happiness, to heal. And with Jack’s help they have a chance. And maybe the boys can help Jack heal as well. When it comes to Jack and Gareth we were told there was a connection between them from way back when, but I couldn’t really feel it, but maybe that becomes apparent later on in the series when they spend more time together, as it was they were too busy to save everyone to get much alone time together.
I felt like production-wise this book had a couple of issues that coloured the experience. The flow of a book is really important and how we experience it is highly individual. Fortunately, the listener can adjust the speed to fit their particular need, so in general I rarely have an issue with the speed of the narration. And that part worked well, he had a good pacing. But what didn’t work quite as well was what felt like eon long pauses between scenes and chapters. They were loong. More often than not I was thrown out of the story and more than once I had my phone up making sure the book was still on and the battery hadn’t died.
Added to that was the drums. Yes, drums. Between every chapter there was a few seconds of drumming. Now I’m all for some added sound effects where it fits – a phone ringing in the background or a slightly distorted voice when talking on the phone. It enhances the moment. But any kind of music between every chapter isn’t for me. It’s too much and pulls the listener even more from the story.
Now to the good parts. I liked listening to Fox Ballard. He lived in the moment and he was the characters. I loved that he had so many different accents he switched between; it gave it an edge. As did the slightly distorted voices for the phone calls. That worked really well for me, and I would have been a happy camper if the long pauses and the drums had been removed, but you can’t win them all.
In the end I think this book ends up on a solid three hearts for me.
RATING: 
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