Reviewed by Larissa
TITLE: Unwanted
SERIES: The Unlucky Ones, Book 1
AUTHOR: Marley Valentine
NARRATOR: Jacob Morgan and Zachary Johnson
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 5 hours and 32 minutes
RELEASE DATE: July 15, 2022
BLURB:
From USA Today best-selling author Marley Valentine comes a brand-new emotional, second chance, gay romance.
Two halves of a whole, Arlo Bishop and I were both unwanted kids brought together by the foster system. Dealing with the aftermath of neglect and abandonment, we grew up side-by-side and found solace in one another.
We wanted.
We needed.
We loved.
Desperately.
But somewhere along the way, Arlo wanted and needed and loved drugs more. So I did the only thing I could and broke my own heart to save his.
Now, four years later, I’m back in L.A. and face-to-face with my past. Not only does the pain and hurt of our mistakes linger between us, but so do our feelings.
I didn’t plan on a second chance, fear of history repeating itself making it hard to forgive and even harder to forget. But with only one touch, one kiss, I was taken back to where it all started.
Two halves of a whole, Arlo Bishop and I were made for for each other. But we were no longer the unwanted foster kids.
We were grown men.
And I wanted nothing more than him.
Unwanted is book one in a brand-new, emotional LGBTQ+ series that follows a group of foster siblings who are banded together by their pasts. Each book can be listened to as a complete stand-alone.
REVIEW:
I must admit that the draw for me for the audiobook of Unwanted, the first book in Marley Valentine’s The Unlucky Ones series, actually had nothing to do with the author or the book itself. In fact, I jumped into this audio without even having read the blurb. Five words on the byline sold me on this audiobook, and it should sell you on it too: Jacob Morgan and Zachary Johnson.
Both narrators are excellent in their own right, but together?!? Wowza. What’s particularly unusual about this narrator pairing – Johnson as Frankie and Morgan as Arlo – is that they are both low voices – bass and baritone voices, respectively – deep, rich, and textured. Johnson’s is more resonant than Morgan’s, but Morgan has a flatter affect with a roughness to it that has an inherent just-rolled-out-of-bed sexiness. Typically in your dual and duet narrator pairings, one narrator’s natural voice sits higher than the other’s in pitch, or is very different in timbre. The lines are blurred here, though, yet neither narrator would be mistaken for the other, and the characters they inhabit are consistently distinguishable and intuitively portrayed.
Morgan and Johnson are a good match for Valentine’s story here. It’s emotional and gritty, tackling lost opportunities, broken promises, battles with addiction, and second chances for life and love. Sitting at the story’s heart is a found family dynamic between two brothers, Frankie and Lennox, and their foster siblings, Arlo, Clem, and Remy, who form a seemingly unbreakable bond with love and promises always to stay together. That is until Frankie breaks that promise.
The characters are now coming back together after four years of hurt with a maturity gained through a not-easy-life lived in the interim. Morgan and Johnson both have vocal gravitas – a maturity and weight that commands attention. Even in moments of love and laughter, they never lose their voices’ genuine, intrinsic authenticity, which works exceptionally well with the characters here and the meaningful story Valentine tells.
While the story is emotionally complex, especially as Frankie and Arlo rediscover each other and navigate what their relationship should look like going forward, it surprisingly lacks a bit of the emotional bite that Valentine so successfully conveys in Without You. Perhaps it’s unfair to compare the two because Unwanted is a beautiful, poignant story enjoyable in its own right, and Morgan and Johnson amp that up tenfold with their vocal performances.
While Morgan and Johnson both do a fantastic job, Johnson is truly the standout. He has a preternatural ability to translate emotion through pacing, dynamics, subtle breaks in his voice, pained whispers, emphatic shouts – he’s fully inhabiting Frankie, and you cannot help but feel Frankie’s story as you listen. Very few narrators achieve this type of subsuming performance, but I’ve heard Johnson do it before, and he does it again here.
I recommend the Unwanted audiobook. It’s a wholly satisfying listening experience that fills out Valentine’s terrific writing, giving impact to an emotional story in a way that the text alone does not convey.
RATING:
BUY LINKS:
[…] Reviewed by Larissa […]