Reviewed by Larissa

TITLE: Deliverance

SERIES:  Darkest Skies, Book 2

AUTHOR: Garrett Leigh

NARRATOR:  Dan Calley

PUBLISHER: Fox Love Press

LENGTH: 7 hours and 56 minutes

RELEASE DATE:  September 13, 2021

BLURB: 

Banished gangster Benito Martell is living on the edge. An explosive hook-up in a club gifts him the relief he craves, but nothing about his life is ever so simple. Complications abound, and before long, he’s falling for the only man who can save his family from eviction.

Recovering addict Mickey Larwood has worked hard to leave his past behind. He can’t look back, not even for the beautiful Benito, the last soul on Earth he expected to steal his heart – a soul who’s knee-deep in the underworld Mickey has run hundreds of miles to escape.

Benito can deny it all he wants, but Mickey can smell trouble a mile off.

And Benito is trouble with a capital T. As his desperate lies unravel, so does the fledgling love that’s grown between them. If Benito wants deliverance from his old life and a future with Mickey, old ghosts need to die.

If they don’t kill him first.

Deliverance is an angsty standalone MM romance novel, with second chances, found family, friends-to-lovers, and buckets of hurt/comfort themed loveliness. Trigger warnings for addiction and childhood trauma.

REVIEW: 

Deliverance, book two in Garrett Leigh’s superb Darkest Skies series, is like the darkest espresso: dark, intense, heavy, and bittersweet, yet absolutely delicious.  This love story of two morally ambiguous yet endearing men, Mickey and Benito, is raw and gritty.  Everything from their characters, to their relationship, to the plot itself is powerful, deep, and riveting. 

Mickey and Benito’s first encounter together, a sex club hookup, sets off a blazing inferno of need, want, and alpha male dominance.  But their strong emotional connection attaches immediately and doesn’t let go, quickly becoming addictive.  This is no quickie or even a one-night stand.  It’s so much more and they both know it, although they can’t explain it or accept it. Falling in love is not something either is looking for, and with it comes a ton of complications. 

Both Mickey and Benito have been forced into horrible actions and paid the price for it.  Now it’s hard to figure out if there’s a way back from that.  Are they doomed based on bad choices and horrible actions?  Are they inherently bad people or is there potential for redemption?  

Mickey definitely believes there’s something better.  He’s worked hard to get there and has already turned his life around.   But he is much further along on that road than Benito. Benito wants to be a better person and leave the crime and ugliness behind.  But as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and it’s not clear if Benito’s desire to be better will translate to actual change.  As such, Mickey’s risking it all by falling for Benito.  But like calls to like and they are more similar than different.  But together, they have the potential to burn it all down around them, destroying each other in the process. 

Dan Calley narrates the audiobook of Deliverance.  He is a new-to-me narrator.  It’s certainly not the first time I’ve heard of him, but it is the first time I’ve had an opportunity to listen to him.  It appears he is Garrett Leigh’s narrator of choice. For example, in addition to this series, he also narrated Ms. Leigh’s Angels in the City (which I listened to after Deliverance) and gave an enjoyable vocal performance there.  It’s obvious that he’s a master of accents and possesses a great deal of skill.  However, his narration in Deliverance felt a bit “off”.  

Ms. Leigh’s Darkest Skies series is, on the whole, a highly emotional, deep, angsty set of reads with a lot of darkness fighting against hope, light, and love in our leading men.  Deliverance is that, and then some.  But Mr. Calley’s performance, while on point for things like pacing, consistency, and his authentic accents, fell short in his monotone delivery, lacking the requisite intonations or applying the wrong ones.  

Intonation or inflection is crucial to the listening experience.  It has to be right or else it changes the meaning of the words and the feeling of the narrative.  A prototypical example of this phenomenon is saying the same sentence with and without a rising inflection. A rising inflection makes a statement sound like a question.  It adds ambivalence, inquisitiveness, and depending on the context, even hesitance, and insecurity to the words. 

Intonation choice definitely impacts the content.  The absence of it creates an emotional void in the words, which is particularly off-putting in a highly charged, complex, emotional story like Deliverance.  At times, Mr. Calley applies a rising inflection where it doesn’t belong. It distracted me, taking the edge off what should be an edgy story.  As a result, Mr. Calley’s narration didn’t work for me here.

Deliverance is full of raw emotion, angsty and deep.  It’s two men trying to be better but fighting the pull to fall back into who they were before.  Idealism and reality butt heads and seeing how it plays out between Mickey and Benito, rooting for them and hoping they can find a way … well, it’s the best kind of addictive read.  I highly recommend this title, although you may do better without the audio.  Give the sample a listen and judge for yourself.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

Audible

Amazon