Reviewed by Larissa

TITLE:  Thirst Trap

SERIES:  A Men of Summer Novella

AUTHOR:  Lauren Blakely

NARRATOR:  Joe Arden, Shane East

PUBLISHER:  Lauren Blakely Books

LENGTH: 59 minutes

RELEASE DATE:  August 27, 2021

BLURB:

Some men are irresistible. Like that smoking hot British guy I meet at a nightclub. Trouble is, he disappears after our last dirty dance.

But I’m determined to find my man again.  And I’ve got just the plan — I’ll send him a thirst trap.

But his answer surprises the hell out of me…

REVIEW:

**NOTE: At this time, the audiobook for the standalone novella Thirst Trap, performed duet by Shane East and Joe Arden, is included in the audiobook for All in with Him, Men of Summer Book 3.

Lauren Blakely’s Thirst Trap lives up to its name.  Cleverly using a metaphor on a metaphor, Ms. Blakely creates this sultry, addictive novella about Gunnar, Declan’s showboat baseball teammate, and Grant’s favorite underwear designer, Rafe Rodman, as a thirst trap in and of itself.  It commands attention.  Look at me.  Read me.  Like a Matryoshka Doll, it compels us to open up the story, where we find yet another thirst trap within it.  

Gunnar’s racy Instagram selfie of him clad in Rafe Rodman-branded, rooster-adorned underwear provides a thirst trap in the most common Urban Dictionary sanctioned usage of the term.  But even before Gunnar posts the sexy photo, his lascivious club dancing, knowing Rafe’s eyes are on him, figuratively provides yet another thirst trap as fodder for this tale.

Metaphors aside, in Thirst Trap, Ms. Blakely plays to her strengths.  She uses vivid imagery to create a mood that pulls us into the story and renders us helpless to leave.  Not that we’d want to anyway.  

The club Edge serves as the locus of the crucial events in this story.  If you’ve already read All in with Him, you’ll recognize that Gunnar and Rafe meet during Grant and Declan’s pivotal club outing to Edge.  Gunnar joined them, along with their BFFs and partners, and other players from their teams, for a hot, sweaty, fun night of dancing.  Rafe and Gunnar are drawn to each other by an unspoken, magnetic, feral attraction under the strobe lights and pulsing club bass beat.  It thrums through them, revving up their desire for testosterone-charged, unapologetic, dirty sex. The scene Ms. Blakely creates is visceral and consuming, overtaking us and pulling us into its thrall.

If you haven’t already figured it out from my description, Thirst Trap focuses on one thing – physical, carnal desire.  It’s sexy, sweaty, gorgeous bodies radiating insane levels of cockiness and confidence.  An NSFW plot with a HEA.  While we get all the filthy details, we don’t get a whole lot of emotion because the “romance” aspect of the story is thrown in like an afterthought.  Nevertheless, the story arc, such as it is, embodies honesty in every regard.  Rafe and Gunnar know who they are, what they want, and are 100% honest at all times about their desire, especially for each other.

The word “intense” provides a perhaps overly general but apt description of Thirst Trap.  Rafe and Gunnar drive with the physical because that’s how they connect.  In that context, Ms. Blakely’s emphasis on the physical in the story makes sense.  However, I wish we had gotten more.  No doubt Ms. Blakely succeeded in delivering hot AF content.  But the pairing of Rafe and Gunnar, unexpected as it was, left loose story threads that could have been pulled and weaved into something larger … and longer.

For what it is, though, Ms. Blakely undeniably picked the perfect narrators to bring Rafe and Gunnar to life.  Joe Arden and Shane East provide their power duo narration in duet format.  *cheers*  This is the way they should be heard, with Mr. Arden’s smoky, growly voice for Gunnar playing off of Mr. East’s seductive, British-accented tone for Rafe.  Yummy.  They take Ms. Blakely’s sinful, sexy, sultry world and sink into it, crooking their fingers at us to follow them. Come on in, the water’s fine, they say.  More than fine, I’d say.

Yes, Mr. Arden and Mr. East are the narrators I wax on about in all of my Lauren Blakely audiobook reviews because of their unparalleled performance in A Guy Walks into My Bar.  In Thirst Trap, the source material falls a bit short, but their voices … devastatingly good, as always.

I’m giving the Thirst Trap audiobook a split rating, which I usually don’t do but feel I need to do here.  While highly immersive and enjoyable, the novella doesn’t provide the storytelling I’ve come to expect from Ms. Blakely and is nowhere in the league of A Guy.  The narration, though … well, Mr. Arden and Mr. East are auditory bliss unparalleled.  Doesn’t matter what they are voicing. Could be sex.  Could be the phone book.  While I clearly prefer the former, their voices are just as delectable on the latter.

The Thirst Trap audiobook comes as part of the All in with Him audiobook, the third and final installment in Ms. Blakely’s epic Men of Summer series.  Stay tuned for my audiobook review of All in, and in the meantime, I’ll give you a hint of what it’s going to say to tide you over:  Grab this audio.  Full stop.  Personally, I’d get it just to hear Joe Arden and Shane East in Thirst Trap – yes, they are that good.  But luckily there’s no need to choose because All in with Him is a winner too.

RATING: Book: Audio: 

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