Reviewed by Larissa

TITLE:  All or Nothing

SERIES:  The Chosen One, Book One

AUTHOR:  Macy Blake

NARRATOR: Michael Dean

PUBLISHER:  Self-published

LENGTH:  6 hours and 31 minutes

RELEASE DATE:  November 12, 2021

BLURB:

Have You Been Chosen?

Sawyer Smith is preparing to take on the world, and with his graduate degree only days away, he’s hoping to convince his gorgeous best friend and neighbor to come along for the ride. There’s only one problem; Draco has a secret, a big scaly secret, and it’s about to change Sawyer’s life forever.

When three mysterious men move into the new mansion across the street, Sawyer is plunged into a fantastical world he never knew existed. Discovering that Draco is a dragon shifter and a guardian of The Chosen One – a creature sent by the Goddess to restore the realm’s broken magic – is only the tip of the paranormal iceberg.

Being drawn into this strange new world is challenging enough, but then Sawyer finds himself attracted to all The Chosen One’s guardians: not only Draco, but also quiet and fierce vampire Andvari, sweet mage Henry, and ruthlessly smart griffin Eduard. 

And, oh yeah, it turns out not all magical creatures are friendly. Forces aligned against The Chosen One are out to destroy the guardians so the prophecy can never be fulfilled.

The biggest problem of all, though, is that once The Chosen One is found, Sawyer will have to return to his boring human life…alone. 

But in the paranormal world, there are no half measures. As danger mounts, Sawyer must choose between walking away from the men he’s grown to care for or risking it all for a chance at a future together.

REVIEW:

All or Nothing, the first book in Macy Blake’s absorbing Chosen One universe, follows the prequel, Sweet Nothings, in reading order.  However,  All or Nothing actually came first; it and book two, Nothing Ventured, were published before the prequel.  I call this out for context because All or Nothing struggles to find its footing, and it’s likely because it started the series.  It feels like Ms. Blake was still figuring out where she wanted to go with the series.  While her writing skill is evident from page one, the story itself seems conflicted, like it’s not sure what its purpose is.

All or Nothing is a character-driven book. Ms. Blake gives us the framework for the Chosen One prophesy and explains that eight guardians have been preordained to protect the Chosen One with their lives once he appears.  The book introduces us to the first four guardians – Henry, Draco, Eduard, and Andvari.  We learn that each of these men represents a different clan – e.g., Eduard is a griffin, Andvari a vampire, Draco a dragon. Henry is human but is the seer needed for the other guardians to prepare for the Chosen One’s arrival and help protect him once he does arrive. 

But in this book, we don’t get much more on the universe, how it is structured, why there are these different factions, how they interact, why/how these guardians came to be …  To be fair, much of this will likely be teased out in later books as this is a continuing storyline.  But it does make All or Nothing feel like it’s missing something.

Turning to the content, the story is billed as a “harem romance”. I think Ms. Blake started constructing the story that way with the intention of keeping Sawyer as the center and the “guardians” each having relationships with him.  But “harem” implies that the guardians would not have relationships with each other that live separate and apart from interactions with Sawyer.  Perhaps Ms. Blake did too good a job with her character and relationship development if that was her goal because we see relationships form between the guardians, as well as between the guardians and Sawyer.

To that point, Ms. Blake does create a spicy, sexy story here with the men all getting to know each other and quickly falling for each other in an instalust to instalove type dynamic.  She does a nice job establishing their relationships, and I enjoyed their banter and interactions.  But a good portion of the story is devoted to the sexual escapades of these men in various permutations of couples and throuples.  I didn’t struggle with it, notwithstanding my general hesitation about MMM and MMM+ romances, because the relationships make sense in context. However, I did find the alacrity of it all to be a bit jarring.  This is particularly the case concerning Henry.

The prequel Sweet Nothings introduces us to Henry and lays the groundwork for the world-building and Chosen One storyline to come.  But in that story, Henry is ten years old.  The epilogue of Sweet Nothings jumps forward eleven years, showing Henry at twenty-one.  When All or Nothing opens eight months after that, Henry is now almost twenty-two.  He’s an adult on his own away from his Jerrick pack family, learning about his magical powers as a “seer”.  But it takes some time for the reader (or at least this reader) to make that mental shift. So it creates some cognitive dissonance concerning Henry in light of the highly sexual content of All or Nothing. That dissipates as the story progresses but it distracted me for a good while.

The best part of All or Nothing is the characters themselves so having Michael Dean bring those characters to life on the audiobook through his suburb narration is a huge boon. Mr. Dean’s vocal choices for each character are spot on. He captures Eduard’s erudite, highfalutin attitude in his languid pacing and snobbish tone. Yet, he delivers it with enough dynamics to make his affection for the others come through with a softness to his tone that’s quite endearing.  Similarly, Mr. Dean gives Andvari a voice fit for a vampire. His speech cadence is methodical, slow, almost trance-inducing, especially when paired with the hiss-like susurration that underlies the rise and fall of his voice.  Draco’s voice is more robust and rumbly, befitting a dragon.  Henry’s voice has the highest pitch reflecting his youth.

Overall, I recommend the All or Nothing audiobook.  Despite my comments above, I found the book to be an enjoyable, engaging read, and it served its purpose in creating a connection with the characters and piquing my interest in what lies in store for them is subsequent books.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

Audible 

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