Reviewed by Anna Lynn
TITLE: Retribution
SERIES: The Protectors
AUTHOR: Sloane Kennedy
NARRATOR: Joel Leslie
PUBLISHER: Self-Published
LENGTH: 8 hours and 3 minutes
RELEASE DATE: July 15, 2017
BLURB:
“You’re a hero every f–king day, Tate,” I said softly. “Don’t ever forget that.” (Hawke)
Ex-Special Forces soldier Michael “Hawke” Hawkins has spent every day of the last 10 years waiting for the moment he would get to watch the life fade from the eyes of the men who brutally murdered his wife, but when he finally gets the break he’s been waiting for, the trail leads him to someone he wasn’t expecting.
After nearly two years of running, 24-year-old Tate Travers has become an expert at hiding…until the day a dangerous stranger shows up looking for vengeance and threatens to destroy the fragile life Tate has managed to build for himself and his five-year-old son. Except the life Tate has been struggling to hold on to started unraveling long before Hawke showed up looking for the same men Tate has been running from…his own father and older brother.
Retribution – it’s all Hawke has wanted since the day he held his wife’s hand as she took her last breath. And he won’t give that up for anything or anyone…not even the tormented young man trying to give his little boy a better life. Because Tate is the only one who can lead Hawke to the men he’s been searching for. And if it means forcing the young man to confront the past that nearly destroyed him, then so be it.
Only the last thing Hawke expects to feel is something besides the hatred that has driven him. And he definitely never expected to feel it for a man.
But when it comes down to choosing between the unwanted feelings Tate stirs in him and the revenge he’s finally close enough to taste, will Hawke be able to give up the one thing that has kept him going for a second chance at a future he gave up on ever having?
REVIEW:
This is the third book in the series The Protectors written by Ms. Sloane Kennedy. This third installment is also voiced over by Mr. Joel Leslie. We all know, for those who are familiar with the work of Ms. Sloane Kennedy, that this series is much loved. It is about a group of men who have sworn to protect those who have been abused sexually, kidnapped and sold through human trafficking, sexually-slaved and other such heinous crimes. They are the ones who take care of those who have escaped the arms of the law. They take care of those who have repeatedly committed the crime even after being incarcerated for it and somehow released again. But these men have also been through so much in their personal lives. They have lived through horrors you and I could never imagine going through, least of all, surviving it and living on with their lives, no matter how hard things get.
Michael “Hawke” Hawkins has had his life ripped apart when his wife died brutally in the hands of rapists, arsonists and downright despicable human beings. His wife was pregnant with their first child when she was killed. They have been trying to have a child for a few years before she became pregnant. It was all taken away just like that. And the men who committed such a heinous crime got to go on with their lives, no persecution, no judgment and still free to roam the earth. He vowed to never stop looking for them. Meeting and helping Ronan Grisham obtain his own justice has forge a new friendship between these two men and the start of an underground organization whose main purpose was to look for men whose heinous crimes went unpunished by the law or might have been punished and they were incarcerated but somehow they have been released again.
Tate Travers has been on the run for two years now. He has been dreaming of the day to be able to run away from his father and brother. Run away from severe physical and mental abuse. He was finally able to do it two years ago. But fate has a way of making it more challenging for him every day of his life. On the day he decided to leave, his brother had a child with him in their trailer. When he asked his brother whose child was he, his brother told him to mind his own business. Even though he still left and proceeded with his plan, he couldn’t just leave the child behind so he brought the child with him. Now, two years since then, after fleeing time and time again, never staying in one place for a long time, someone from his father and brother’s past came knocking. And on top of all that Tate has been struggling with, he finds out that his son has Leukemia and he has no way of having him cured because he just couldn’t afford it.
After seeing and realizing that Tate Travers had nothing to do with what happened to his wife and was in fact also a victim of his father and brother, Hawke offered to help Tate with his child’s medical needs provided Tate also help him look for his father and brother. Tate accepted the terms because what was more important to him was for his child to get the medical care needed in order to fight against his illness, it doesn’t really matter what happens to him in this quest for his two tormentors as long as his child gets to live.
This is one of the hardest books to read in the series, at the onset of the story I started crying already. In fact, it happened several times throughout the story. All the books in the series are high in angst but there are a few books that rank higher than that and this is one of them. Mr. Joel Leslie’s amazing talent was able to capture all the angst in both Hawke’s/Michael’s and Tate’s stories. The anguish and the pain that each man felt can be heard in every inflection and emotion-filled word that comes out of Mr. Leslie’s voice. And as I have mentioned in my previous review, being able to interject different emotions into your voice thus making the listeners feel all of it while listening to you requires tremendous talent. Mr. Joel Leslie has that in spades. Such an amazing talent! Ms. Sloane Kennedy’s books are known for their high angst and Mr. Joel Leslie was able to bring all of that angst and more into his voice while narrating all these tales of characters whose pain are palpable and heart-wrenching. Congratulations on yet another bestseller Ms. Sloane Kennedy! Definitely worth reading and listening to~
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