Reviewed by Larissa

TITLE:  The Christmas Deal

AUTHOR:  Keira Andrews

NARRATOR:  John Solo

PUBLISHER:  Audible

LENGTH:  8 hrs and 13 mins

RELEASE DATE:  October 7, 2020

BLURB:

Will fake boyfriends become the real deal this holiday?

It’s the most wonderful time of the year – except ex-Marine Logan is jobless and getting evicted. Worse, he’s a new single dad with a stepson who hates him. A kid needs stability – not to mention presents under the tree – and Logan’s desperate.

Then he meets lonely Seth and makes a deal.

Can Logan temporarily pretend to be live-in boyfriends to increase Seth’s chances at a promotion? If it provides a roof over their heads for the holidays, hell yeah. Logan considers himself straight – he doesn’t count occasional hookups with guys – but he can fake it. Besides, with his shy little smile, Seth is surprisingly sexy.

Make that damn sexy.

Shocked that Seth has only been with one man, Logan can’t resist sweetening their deal to teach him the joys of casual sex. No strings attached. No feelings. No kissing.

No falling for each other.

Easy, right?

The Christmas Deal is a steamy holiday gay romance from Keira Andrews featuring fake boyfriends, bisexual awakening, a clueless single dad with an angry preteen, and of course a happy ending.

REVIEW:

The Christmas Deal is not a new story; it was released in ebook form a year ago.  However, it is a new story to me, so I was able to experience it for the first time through the audiobook that was released a few weeks ago with John Solo as the narrator.  I’m familiar with John Solo as he is an oft-mentioned, experienced, popular narrator of M/M romance, but this is actually the first time I have listened to one of his audiobooks. So for me, I was starting from a clean slate when listening to The Christmas Deal, which is a unique experience given the amount of M/M I read and listen to. It provided me with the rare opportunity to really analyze the story and the narration without any preconceived notions or expectations.  My conclusion from this “opportunity” is that The Christmas Deal audiobook is a solidly narrated, sweet, sexy and engaging fake boyfriend romance, with a dose of angst and some crazy twists and turns, that ultimately delivers a well-deserved HEA.

Logan Derwood is a guy who’s been dealt a really sh!t hand, suffering a serious work-related accident for which he was scapegoated – unjustly blamed and fired. He’s still suffering some physical and emotional repercussions from the accident and he can’t get another job because his company won’t give him a reference. He’s almost out of money and is about to get evicted. Add to that the sudden death of his wife and a hostile teenager, his wife’s son, who has now been left in his custody and who blames Logan for his mother’s death and everything else wrong in his life. Enter Seth Marston, who relocated to Albany on the promise of a promotion – which he still hasn’t gotten likely because his employer tends to favor people with families and Seth has, well, no one. His boyfriend relocated with him and they started remodeling a house, but then he promptly dumped Seth, leaving him saddled with the renovation and alone in a new place with no friends. His family has disowned him (in shocking fashion), so Seth, who is absolutely sweet, patient, adorable and deserving of love, is all alone and lonely.

Seth’s promotion becomes a viable possibility again and his co-worker Jenna, Logan’s sister, sets in motion a plan to give Seth an insta-family so he can lock in the well-deserved promotion: that insta-family consists of Logan, who poses as Seth’s fake fiancé, and his stepson. Seth and Logan strike a deal that Logan will act the part and in exchange, he and his stepson get a place to live (with Seth).  But they have to be convincing through a number of unusual circumstances, so if they do a bit of hot and heavy practice in the romance/sex department, hey, it’s all for the deal, right?

The author crafts a convincing emotional connection between Seth and Logan, who are very different men with different baggage, but who discover that they are a perfect match.  John Solo does a great job of delivering that emotional connection through his narration.  He definitely is not just reading lines;  this is a vocal performance that is strong and expressive.  His dynamics are some of the best that I’ve heard from a narrator.  For example, when the text says whisper, he really whispers, and for the most part, he interprets the delivery from the text appropriately.  He modulates his volume in a way that adds to, rather than detracts from, the words he is saying.  He has good, consistent differentiation between the characters through his pitch, timbre and intonation.  However, his cadence and his pacing of the story as a whole, are too slow and dialogue is often over-energetic and attenuated where it shouldn’t be. The speed is so slow at times that about two-thirds of the way through, I started losing patience because the narration was delaying the story, and I found myself urging it to move along. But this isn’t just a matter of speed, unfortunately, because were it just that, you could likely solve it by speeding up the replay on your audible player. It’s the emphasis he puts on the words, or a syllable within a word, that is often too exaggerated, the sounds drawn out too long, and if you speed up the playback, it just makes the delivery sound wonky. Often, this overemphasis makes the words sound unnatural, and that’s when you are reminded that you are listening to a narrator, not a character, because that’s not the way a real person would talk. He does such a great job in so many other respects with his narration, that his undermining it all with the cadence and pacing is really a shame.

Overall, The Christmas Deal is a very enjoyable, heartwarming story, and if you have the time and patience, Mr. Solo’s narration really does provide a value-add to the emotion and interactions between the characters.  If I had to recommend an approach, I’d probably use both the ebook and audiobook, and do a combination of listening (alone or immersion) at times, and only reading at others, so you experience the best of both worlds.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

Audible 

Amazon