Reviewed by Larissa

TITLE: Best Man

SERIES: Close Proximity Book 1

AUTHOR: Lily Morton

NARRATOR:  Joel Leslie

PUBLISHER: Self published

LENGTH: 6 hours and 36 minutes

RELEASE DATE: September 29, 2021

BLURB: 

Zeb Evans doesn’t do messy.  

The product of a disorganized and chaotic childhood, Zeb likes order and control, and as the boss of his own employment agency he can give that to himself. Life runs along strict lines and he never mixes business with pleasure. Everything in his life lives in neat, alphabetized boxes. Until Jesse. 

Jesse Reed is Zeb’s complete opposite. He’s chaos personified. A whirling cyclone of disorder. He’s also charming and funny and a very unwanted distraction. Which is why it comes as a complete surprise to Zeb to find himself asking Jesse to pose as his boyfriend for a few days in the country at a wedding.  

Zeb doesn’t do impulsive, but as the time away progresses, he finds himself increasingly drawn to the merry and irreverent Jesse. But can he bring himself to break the hard-won lessons he’s learnt in life? And even if he can, how could Jesse be attracted to him anyway? He’s so much older than Jesse, not to mention being his boss. 

From the best-selling author of the Mixed Messages and Finding Home series comes a warm and funny romance about one man’s fight for control and another man’s determination to circumvent it.

This is the first book in the Close Proximity series, but it can be listened to as a standalone.

REVIEW: 

I’ve read Lily Morton’s captivating Close Proximity series before, but listening to the audiobook for the first series book, Best Man, provided an altogether different experience.  Hearing Zeb and Jessie’s gorgeous romance through Joel Leslie’s glorious voice felt like coming home.  The Best Man audiobook conjures feelings of cuddling up by the fire with a comfy blanket and a warm cup of tea. Ms. Morton’s story invites you in and entices you to stay for a while.  Mr. Leslie’s superb vocal performance wraps you up in the overwhelmingly heartwarming, sometimes heartbreaking, often hysterical, and solidly happy-ever-after romance of one of my favorite MM couples.

Complete opposites with a twenty-year age gap, you’d think ordered employment agency owner Zeb Evans and his exuberant, chaotic employee Jessie Reed wouldn’t fit together romantically.  Zeb certainly thought that too. But not Jessie. He knew he and Zeb would slot together like yin and yang.  While he hardly dared believe Zeb would ever feel the same, he cautiously, yet persistently, allowed himself to hope.  

Zeb’s tight control tethers him to a comfortable life but within clearly defined lines. Still, Jessie is irresistible.  His fun, funny, generous and loving nature is infectious.  He infuses Zeb’s ordered life with something it sorely lacks: life, light, and laughter. 

Jessie is one of Lily’s most endearing characters and the perfect foil for Zeb.  He’s whip-smart with a rapier wit, intuitive and invested in the people around him. Jessie is a study in contradictions and easy to love for his steady loyalty, generous spirit, and deeply loving, Tasmanian-devil-like personality.

Jessie is truly the best man, especially for Zeb, but Best Man at its heart is Zeb’s story. Lovely Zeb has borne the mantle of responsibility since a very young age and now doesn’t know how to want anything for himself.  Ironically, Zeb chooses to own his own business to exert control over his life, yet even the business he chooses is directed towards meeting the needs and wants of others.  

Best Man’s premise derives from Zeb’s agreement to be his ex-boyfriend’s best man (chew on that for a minute), despite the obvious pain that situation would cause. Zeb’s control and self-denial begin to crack, though, when he begrudgingly admits his need for a plus one to the wedding. He asks Jessie to accompany him and pose as his boyfriend, but even then, it’s as a paying client of the agency rather than a personal request for help.

Best Man is a breathtakingly beautiful, poignant story that also manages to be funny and frisky.  Ms. Morton’s narrative overflows with detail and complexity, told through her trademark crisp, evocative, snarky tones.  Ms. Morton’s dialogue is hands-down the best.  The cadence, content, and character of her banter is unrivaled. 

As always, Ms. Morton centers her story on her multi-dimensional, flawed, yet unerringly lovable characters. Her couples are as unexpected as they are apparent, the latter made clear as the romance unfolds. Zeb and Jessie’s relationship is a perfect example of that: an improbable pairing that comes together with realness and sincerity that makes their love easy to feel and understand.

The Best Man audiobook is a decadent treat. I listened straight through with rapt attention to Mr. Leslie’s invested emotional performance. Joel Leslie’s voice is a delicious and welcome earworm. I still clearly hear in my head his breathy delivery of Zeb’s wonder, the wry tone of Jessie’s humor and irreverence, the sinful moans and exultations of Zeb and Jessie’s passion, and the vocal breaks of Jessie’s heartbreak.  His narration is the best kind of addiction, and I’m proud to say I’m hooked.  

The Best Man audiobook showcases the perfect marriage of Ms. Morton’s expertly crafted words and Mr. Leslie’s consistently impressive vocal performances.  Their frequent collaboration breeds familiarity that fuels Mr. Leslie’s thoughtful and intuitive narration. It also enables him to take minor liberties with the text, changing or dropping words here and there. For the most part minor and largely unnoticeable, unless you were following the text while you listened as I was. Perhaps it will bother you if you are a purist, but Mr. Leslie’s interpretation of Ms. Morton’s words is 99% faithful and 1% artistic license. In the end, if anything, it enhances the listening of the sublime story told. 

You can’t help but fall in love with Zeb and Jessie falling in love in Best Man, and I’d happily fall in love over and over again with them through the Morton-Leslie magic.  Best Man sits atop my leaderboard of best MM romances.  The Best Man audiobook is truly the gold standard.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

Audible 

Amazon