Reviewed by Stephen K.
TITLE: Touch & Go
SERIES: The Midwest Series #3
AUTHOR: Brigham Vaughn
NARRATOR: James Edward Jones
PUBLISHER: Two Peninsula Press
LENGTH: 9hours and 15 mins
RELEASE DATE: October 12th 2021
BLURB:
It was supposed to be a secret fling.
Micah Warner spent his whole life dreaming of pitching in the big leagues. Signing with a minor-league team near Chicago puts him one step closer to making that a reality. But there are no out players in pro ball, so any involvement with a man must be discreet.
Physical therapist Justin Lamb loves his job with the Cougars. A romantic at heart, he wants to find lasting love – with a man or woman – but traveling with the team makes it difficult to maintain a long-term relationship.
Micah offers Justin a no-strings-attached way to blow off some steam, and Justin reluctantly agrees. It doesn’t take long before they’re both in over their heads, but falling in love will risk everything.
With their careers and relationship hanging in the balance, they have one last play to make.
It’s time to take a swing for real and lasting love.
REVIEW:
I went into this book with with low expectations. Though I’d enjoyed the first two books in this series, they both both featured the main character of this tale in a pretty irredeemable way. Micah was depicted as a toxic, closeted loner with a lot of internalized homophobia, an overwhelming desire to realize his dream of becoming a major league picture, and little regard for anyone or anything else.
That’s basically true here as well. Though there are romantic moments in the beginning of this tale, no real redemption begins until his “midnight of the soul” toward the end. There are some explanations made. They do make the character a bit more sympathetic, but the fact is, for the most part Micah is a hard guy to like. Even when you understand his background and his point of view, it’s clear that there’s still a ways to travel before he’s going to be a likable character.
On the other hand, Justin, his main love interest, who we met briefly in book 2 is a pretty likable guy from chapter one. This book actually starts at about the same time as book 2 and just follows different characters ending with a few chapters beyond the ending of the second book. It also introduces us to the characters that book 4 concentrates on.
This book doesn’t actually suffer from the literary flaws that bothered me about book one. I went back and re-listened to book two as part of my process in developing this review. Some of the flaws that I picked up on in my first pass at that material, were not as pronounced upon my second exposure. Though I think book 2 is my favorite in the series so far, book 3 does a better job with rehabilitating it’s main character than I expected. It’s eminently readable and fans of the earlier books should definitely give it (and Micah) a chance.
Though the couple here start as “just sex” it’s clear that the story is more about the “feels” and while the sex is satisfying, it’s not the main focus of the story.
One particular part that I enjoyed here was the shaving scene. When I was in middle school I read the short story Espuma y nada más (Just Lather, That’s All) by Hernando Téllez. Since then I’ve always had a bit of a shaving kink.
As with the other books, this one is narrated by James Edward Jones. He once again does a credible job as narrator. The pacing is good, and the main characters voices are different enough that the dialogue sections are clear with the voice acting adding slight shades of personality to the characters. Though the naughty bits here are less significant than in the predecessor, Mr. Jones does a good job with those sections as well.
RATING: 
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