Reviewed by Annika
TITLE: Unspoken Vow
SERIES: Steele Brothers #2
AUTHOR: Eden Finley
NARRATOR: Antony Ferguson & Joel Leslie
PUBLISHER: Tantor Audio
LENGTH: 9 hours, 20 minutes
RELEASE DATE: August 11, 2020
BLURB:
He’s everything I want but run away from.
There’s a long list of things I don’t handle well: Change. Relationships. Breakups.
But there’s one person above everything else I can’t seem to get a handle on. Brody Wallace.
In short, he’s perfect. The reality, he scares me. He’s the opposite of what I usually go for. He’s bigger. Intimidating. He reminds me of someone I’d rather forget.
When I need to find a new place to live, Brody offers me his spare room, but I have no plans on taking him up on the offer. He doesn’t know what happened to me five years ago, and I want to keep it that way. But with limited options, I find myself outside his apartment holding a full moving box and wondering: How can I do this without exposing the darkest part of my past?
REVIEW:
A few years ago Anders Steele was attacked by his ex-boyfriend and left for dead. It understandably left him with a lot of anxiety and trust issues. Something he was still working on, but still had ways to go. He doesn’t handle change well, or at all, so he’s been putting off finding a new place to live to the very last second and suddenly (or not so suddenly) he finds himself having to choose to live with his brother and his boyfriend, but living two people desperately in love isn’t appealing. Which is why he agrees to move in with said boyfriend’s best friend Brody. A man he’s both attracted to and wary of.
Anders broke my heart. All that pain. But pain wasn’t all there was to him love how much love he had to give, even if he didn’t know it himself. Anders’ his journey was beautiful, how he slowly let Brody in, how Lucky wormed her way into his heart. It was a book of healing, quiet and powerful. Moving.
The relationship between Anders and Brody was a slow-burn one, with setbacks, accidents but also fun times. I loved Brody’s patience and willingness to take things slow and how they both discovered something new and exciting in each other. On the surface it might seem that Anders needed Brody more than Brody needed him. And that might have been true in the immediate situation, but Anders gave so much to Brody as well, things he didn’t know he needed. I also loved Brody’s sister Rachel. She was funny and I can really see her and Anders becoming the greatest of friends – and causing a lot of trouble when they are together.
This book had a dual narration by Antony Ferguson and Joel Leslie and they did such a great job I didn’t want the story to end. Antony Ferguson narrated the parts told from Anders’ POV and he did such a wonderful job capturing this scarred young man. I could feel the anxiety pouring from his words and how much his past still haunted him. He also captured his wits and the odd snarky comment from Anders. They fit.
Joel Leslie portrayed Brody and he too captured him and the moments just right. There were several great moments in this book, sad ones, happy ones and emotional ones that both Ferguson and Leslie just nailed. One that I particularly liked was when Anders met Lucky the cat for the first time, it was downright funny and Leslie made me see the scene before me, how Anders was standing on the couch trying to get away from the moody and scarred cat. Both Ferguson and Leslie enraptured me and they made me fall in love with Anders and Brody.
This series caught me by surprise, I never expected to love it as much as I did. Sometimes great stories just sneak up on you and these have done just that.
RATING: 
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