Reviewed by Larissa

TITLE:  All Kidding Aside

SERIES:  Magical Mates, Book 1

AUTHOR:  Macy Blake

NARRATOR: Michael Dean

PUBLISHER:  Self-published

LENGTH:  7 hours and 48 minutes

RELEASE DATE:   November 25, 2020

BLURB:

Building houses for a pack of orphans might lead one griffin to find his heart’s home. 

Victor Eastaughffe knows three things for a fact: 

He does not have a mate. 

He does not like children. 

His duty is to his griffin clan. 

When Victor meets Orsen Riggs, a scruffy bear shifter, and little Gus, an orphaned red panda cub, his orderly, structured world becomes messy and chaotic. All the things he once held true suddenly don’t make sense. 

Asked to help the Smith pack navigate the difficult world of shifter politics, Victor realizes he might not know himself as well as he thought. Magic is in the air, and it’s making him long for things he never wanted before. But duty comes before all else, even at a price Victor no longer wants to pay.

REVIEW:

Macy Blake launches her Magical Mates series with All Kidding Aside.  This is a magical story filled with paranormal goodness, as the series name implies.  It focuses primarily on the Smith pack led by alpha Nick Smith, Sawyer Smith’s brother (Sawyer is the central character in the Chosen One series).  All kinds of supernatural creatures are beginning to find their mates again now that the magic in the universe has changed.  The trajectory of those relationships and the fallout from the events of The Chosen One series form the premise for this wonderful series.

While you technically can read All Kidding Aside as a standalone, I don’t recommend it. Magical Mates is a spin-off series that lives in Ms. Blake’s Chosen One Universe.  It takes place after the end of The Chosen One five-book series and the majority of the contemporaneous Hellhound Champions series.  If you follow Ms. Blake’s recommended reading order for her Chosen Universe books, there is only one book in the latter series that you will not have read yet – Hell Breaks Loose (Hellhounds Champions book four).  So to that point, I highly recommend you follow the recommended reading order.  Trust me – everything makes a hell of a lot more sense if you do so.

When All Kidding Aside was first released two years ago, I read it and loved it.  But it was my first Macy Blake book and I lacked all of the history and context provided by the previous series.  As a result, at the beginning of reading  All Kidding Aside, and at specific points throughout the story, I was confused about the connections between the various people – and there are a lot – and also all the types of characters: alpha shifters and their mates, the Chosen One, hellhounds, vampires, fae, Pegasus, pixies, Goddesses, and griffins, to name few.  The events of the previous series are the essential foundation for this series.  So while they are explained to the degree needed for this story, it takes a while for the pieces to fall into place.  

However, even without the context and with a steep learning curve, I loved this book, which should tell you how terrific it is.  Upon listening to the audiobook for this review, I fell in love with this book all over again and at a much deeper level because between then and now, I read the other series and had the needed context.  Add to that Michael Dean’s superb narration and the All Kidding Aside audiobook becomes next-level entertainment.

This sweet story showcases an opposites-attract romance between emotionally reserved, hyper-organized, always in control Victor Eastaughffe, a griffin shifter, and messy, big-hearted bear shifter Orsen Riggs.  Victor, who we first meet in The Chosen One series as Eduard’s cousin, has been enlisted by Nick to manage the finances and day-to-day operations of his pack of 40+ shifter children and the construction of cottages and other buildings for the expansion of the pack’s compound.  Riggs is a contractor/foreman hired by Nick to oversee the construction of the cottages.  

Riggs and Victor fall for each other almost instantly, neither understanding why until it is revealed that they are mates. (That’s not a spoiler, per the series name.) The story follows Victor and Riggs’ handling of that revelation and their falling in love with an adorable red panda cub shifter Gus, aka Gus-Gus aka the most endearing, awww-inducing character in any of Ms. Blake’s books to date.  Front and center in this story is Victor’s conflicted examination of everything he thought he knew about who he is and what he wants in life, and everything he believes about whether he deserves it and whether it’s too good to be true. Ms. Blake’s writing is clever, intricate and packs an emotional punch. The story checks all the boxes – romance, hot sex, drama, suspense, hurt/comfort, angst, a fantastic cast of characters and two loveable men in Victor and Riggs … and of course, the aforementioned adorable Gus-Gus. 

Michael Dean’s narration on the audiobook is top-notch. He continues the excellent, insightful characterizations of the characters in this universe (which I describe in more detail in my reviews of the audiobooks for The Chosen One series, all of which I highly recommend).  His pacing in this book feels a little slower than what I’m used to from him, but it works in context.  Frankly, I didn’t mind the slower pace because it prolongs a story that I wished would never end.  

Overall, All Kidding Aside is a fun, joyous, emotionally impactful listening experience that I would happily put on repeat.  I can’t wait to start the audiobook for Magical Mates book two, Stop Kidding Around. If it follows in the footsteps of All Kidding Aside, I expect it will be phenomenal.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

Audible 

Amazon