Reviewed by Larissa

 

TITLE:  Dirty Slide

SERIES:  Dirty Players Book 1

AUTHOR:  Lauren Blakely and KD Casey

NARRATOR:  Tim Paige and JF Harding

PUBLISHER:  Nothing to Lose Productions

LENGTH: 2 hours and 12 minutes

RELEASE DATE:  November 5, 2021

BLURB:

A grumpy/sunshine, rivals-to-lovers, sexy standalone novella from #1 NYT Bestseller Lauren Blakely and newcomer KD Casey!

Don’t play dirty.

That’s the code I live by on and off the field.

The other?

Don’t get distracted.

Not by the media, not by hookups, and definitely not by our rival team’s ridiculously charming star player, who loves to whisper dirty nothings to me every time we play ball.

And sure, his offers are tempting, but he’s the love ‘em and leave ‘em type, and I want the real thing.

So I resist.

But the night he steals second on me in the biggest game of the year, the guy’s a whole lot harder to ignore. Especially after a filthy postgame kiss leaves me wanting all the things I can’t have.

What’s the risk in playing dirty just one time?

REVIEW:

I’m very much of two minds about the text version of Lauren Blakely and KD Casey’s Dirty Slide, the first in the Dirty Players novella series. However, I’m unified in my thinking about Tim Paige and JF Harding’s vocal performances on the Dirty Slide audiobook: They are excellent. But I’ll come back to that. On text alone, Dirty Slide has some flaws.  Whether you can overlook them is subjective, in my opinion.  Here’s why:

Dirty Slide provides a complex, dynamic romance between two rival New York baseball players, Chris Garnett and Josh Spencer. Ms. Blakely and Ms. Casey develop Chris and Josh multi-dimensionally in a storyline that intriguingly focuses on how two highly competitive rivals manage undeniable attraction for each other. How do they balance the need to win against their sexual needs and romantic desires? 

It’s a tricky premise, and, admittedly, I don’t think Ms. Blakely and Ms. Casey got it quite right. When the story opens, we have no baseline for Chris and Josh’s relationship other than being on rival teams and mutually lusting and longing for each other. Whatever it is, it certainly doesn’t prevent Chris from some dirty plays on the baseball diamond. Nor does it explain the “why” behind Chris’s alpha male, testosterone-fueled, arrogant peacocking for Josh, both on and off the baseball diamond.  What is clear, though, is that his extreme cockiness is polarizing.  It’s either going to tick you off endlessly, or you’re going to see it, accept it and maybe even think it’s hot.

I fell into the former category.  Josh falls into the latter.  If you are in the former category, it’s hard to understand those in the latter, which was the main problem I had with Dirty Slide.  I didn’t understand Chris and Josh, why they were acting the way they were, and why they’d make sense as a couple. I found Chris’s aggressive posturing and rubbing-salt-in-the-wound conduct towards Josh to be beyond the pale. This isn’t pigtail pulling. This is a deliberate effort to snatch a life’s dream – winning the World Series – from Josh’s clutches. Then flaunting it in his face while simultaneously expecting Josh to be entirely on board with a throwdown between the sheets (or against a car).

I acknowledge the first part. These are professional-level players who are expected to put their team and winning first.  To be fair, we even see our beloved Grant and Declan do that in the Men of Summer series. (The Dirty Players series loosely spins off from that series, and Grant appears here as Josh’s good friend and confidante.) However, Chris and Josh are less professional than their MoS counterparts with their inappropriate in-game flirting during the World Series (FFS), something Grant and Declan did not, nor would they ever, do.  

But the second part, Chris’s poor sportsmanship and entitlement complex, is a tough pill to swallow. I couldn’t understand how Josh could ignore Chris’s obnoxious posturing and quickly compromise his pride and self-respect for carnal desire. It made it difficult for me to like these two men or relate to them as a couple.

Dirty Slide might have worked better with more room for the relationship to grow.  I struggled with the bridge from where they start to where they end up.  The way Chris acts in the beginning is not the way he presents himself at the end. Josh even comments on his surprise at how they got from where they started to their HEA. Well, right there with you, Josh.

All that being said, there are lots of successful books written around characters we “love to hate”.  I’m one of those readers that struggles with those characters, hence my struggle here.  I’m sure a ton of readers will not similarly struggle. I also think that this is where the narration is a boon.  

The Dirty Slide audiobook features the voices of Tim Paige and JF Harding, who both do an excellent job of consistently delivering their characters and being in touch with the emotional content behind it. They got all the fundamentals right. Pacing, dynamics, intonation, tone, pitch. Check. Check. Check Check Check.  But the standout here is Tim Paige who narrates Chris.  

Mr. Paige’s vocal performances just get better and better. While I may not like Chris, it’s indisputable that Mr. Paige gave a spot-on interpretation of him. Holy hell, did he nail Chris’s arrogance and swagger. Mr. Paige’s voice has a low, smoky, almost growly quality to it. This story never reaches combustion level, and neither does his voice. But the story does maintain a consistent low boil that he perfectly captures in the simmering heat and fluidity of his delivery. The rough edges of Chris’s character get smoothed as the story goes on, and Mr. Paige’s vocal performance is entirely in sync with that as well.  

Overall, I recommend that Dirty Slide be enjoyed through the audiobook because it fills in some of the character gaps left by the text alone. The nuanced emotions both Mr. Paige and Mr. Harding deliver help us to understand Chris and Josh better. Their voices are also sinful treats regardless of what they’re saying. So while I never embraced #ChrisandJosh, the vocal performances did get me closer to understanding them. The Dirty Slide audiobook is a notable example of how excellent narration can elevate a story.

RATING:

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