Reviewed by Annika

TITLE: Tigerland

SERIES: Tigers and Devils #2

AUTHOR: Sean Kennedy

NARRATOR: Dave Gillies

LENGTH: 8 hours, 31 minutes

RELEASE DATE: December 15, 2014

BLURB:

After an eventful and sometimes uncomfortably public courtship, Simon Murray and Declan Tyler settled into a comfortable life together. Now retired from the AFL, Declan works as a football commentator; Simon develops programs with queer content for a community television station.

Despite their public professional lives, Simon and Declan manage to keep their private life out of the spotlight. Their major concerns revolve around supporting their friends through infertility and relationship problems—until Greg Heyward, Declan’s ex-partner, outs himself in a transparent bid for attention.

Though Simon and Declan are furious with Greg and his media antics, they can’t agree on what to do about it. Declan insists they should maintain a dignified silence, but both he and Simon keep getting drawn into Heyward’s games. Simon and Declan will once again have to ride out the media storm before they can return their attention to what really matters: each other.

REVIEW:

Tigerland picks up about three years after we leave the guys in Tigers and Devils. Simon and Declan are happily living together and going through life. The media attention surrounding them has died down and their families are accepting and welcoming. Life as they say is pretty good for them. That is, until another football player decides to come out of the closet and drag both Declan and Simon back in the spotlight – no matter what.

Just like the first book, Tigerland is as much about family and friendships as it is about romance and relationships. Both Lisa and Abe and Fran and Roger are always there for them when things are getting tough – or for a beer or two just because. I love to see them interacting and I loved to see that it wasn’t one-sided, that they were there for their friends when they struggled as well. So many times in books the spotlight always shines on the main couple and we rarely get to know about the lives of the secondary characters. That’s not the case with this series, they are as much part of the story as Simon and Declan are – they never take over, but it shows that they are genuinely involved in their friend’s lives.

As far as Simon and Declan goes, it’s nice to see that they’ve come a long way from when we first met them. They still need to work on actually communicating with each other and solve problems together but there’s no running away or thinking the worst. That uncertainty is gone.

When it comes to the narration and production of this book there has been a few major changes compared to the first book. There’s no music playing between the chapters, something I’m eternally grateful for. It made it easy to be swept away on this journey and forget about real life for a while. We also see a change in narrators and to be honest I can’t say that I was disappointed about that. Paul Morey did a good job with the first book, but I far prefer Dave Gillies and not only because he’s Aussie. But that accent did soo much for this book. This time I actually felt like I was in Australia, and the many Aussie terminologies wasn’t lost in translation like in the previous book. But most of all – Simon really came alive with his performance, his snark and runaway mouth was so present, and it really set the tone for the book that I think Kennedy was after.

All in all, I had a great time listening to Tigerland and I’m going jump right into book three.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

Audible

Amazon