Reviewed by Larissa
TITLE: Surrender
SERIES: Wrecked, Book 2
AUTHOR: Kelly Fox
NARRATOR: John Solo
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 6 hours and 54 minutes
RELEASE DATE: April 27, 2022
BLURB:
I have a feeling we’re all going to need a little therapy after this.
He survived the Rwandan genocide to become an NBA legend. I survived a few hours of truly amateur torture to become the guy who falls apart when someone drops a tray of dishes.
We both volunteer at my brother-in-law’s gym for combat vets, and we’ve been circling each other for a year now.
It’s possible that pairing a seven-foot wall of sunshine with me—the guy who gets snarky about that one time I got waterboarded—might just be the mother of all bad ideas.
An even worse idea? Let’s add a splash of kink to the mix.
Damn, but I feel safe when he puts his arms around me.
Surrender is a post-military hurt-comfort MM romance with gentle power exchange, a therapy office set next to a sex club, and a gym full of meddling, scorching-hot veterans.
This is the second book in the Wrecked series. Jake and Jean-Pierre first appear in Scout and the Lavender Girl.
REVIEW:
Kelly Fox’s Surrender continues telling the stories of the crew at Wrecked, a gym for combat vets who are having a difficult time reentering society and need a place to go to bond with and be supported by kindred spirits who understand the physical and mental scars they carry.
Like the first series book, Sanctuary, Fox leans into the hurt/comfort theme, and rightfully so, as these men have suffered mightily. We met both Jake, Wrecked’s yoga instructor, and Jean-Pierre, the famous pro basketball star, in the first book. They also appear in the related Scout and the Lavender Girl story, but it’s not necessary to read that first. Jean-Pierre is a genocide survivor, and both he and Jake, who has his own baggage, suffer from PTSD. The attraction between them is obvious – the groundwork is laid in book one – so picking up those threads here is easy, or should be. They are both endearing, intriguing, and complicated, but I struggled again to connect with them. Their relationship development feels uneven as well. I didn’t feel the chemistry between them, so while empirically I enjoyed seeing them together, I wasn’t really invested one way or another.
Often narration makes up for weaknesses in a story. John Solo is a skilled narrator with many MM romance titles under his belt. I have experienced variable enjoyment of his performances, mainly because he has a particular style that only dovetails seamlessly with certain characters and contexts. Surrender does not have those characters or contexts.
Solo does a nice job in book one, but he’s less successful here. His vocal performance feels invested- it is one of the things he does best, i.e. throwing himself into his roles. But here, it was a bit too much. The pacing felt overly slow, and statements were delivered with a deliberation that often felt overdramatic and lacked a natural cadence. Of course, the issues with the story itself are challenges Solo needs to overcome and he admirably attacks them, but ultimately doesn’t overcome them.
Notwithstanding the above, overall, the Surrender audiobook is enjoyable enough that it’s worth your time if you like Fox’s work or have read and enjoyed Sanctuary, but pales in comparison to the audios for Fox’s spinoff series Wrecked: Guardians. Admittedly, the audios were released for that series first, so I read the books in that order. Perhaps I would have enjoyed Surrender more if I hadn’t heard what comes later before reading and listening here.
RATING: 
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