Reviewed by Larissa
TITLE: A Very Filthy Game
AUTHOR: Lauren Blakely
NARRATOR: Joe Arden, Shane East
PUBLISHER: Lauren Blakely Books
LENGTH: 7 hours and 8 minutes
RELEASE DATE: February 2, 2023
BLURB:
A sinfully sexy MM romance narrated in duet by Shane East and Joe Arden!
Lately, I’ve been full of questions. One hot summer night, I find all the answers when I kiss another guy for the first time. But he disappears, leaving me wondering who my mystery man was.
I can’t stop thinking about him. Even on the ball field, I’m daydreaming about his hungry hands, and the filthy things he whispered in his posh British accent.
Somehow, I still win one of the biggest games of my career, and afterward, the man surprises me with an invitation: “Meet me in a private suite.”
When I RSVP, he makes me an offer–one chance to try all the things I’ve never experienced. Then we’ll walk away. But once will never be enough.
Soon I’m locked into an intense lessons-in-seduction game with the secretive billionaire who keeps love at a distance, all while he pushes the boundaries of my brand-new desires.
Then, I learn that all my desires come with a terrible cost, as he breaks down the walls around my heart.
REVIEW:
As the title promises, Lauren Blakely’s A Very Filthy Game is filthy indeed. Subtlety has left the building. Rafe and Gunnar hit us with a sledgehammer of testosterone and wanton lust. The pheromones practically waft off the pages. For a potent story like this, Blakely calls on her most potent narrator pair, Shane East and Joe Arden – and sets them loose with this story in duet narration. And boy does #Eaden deliver.
AVFG is an extended version of Blakely’s novella Thirst Trap, which East and Arden also delivered in duet narration. I reviewed Thirst Trap (full review here), and the narration is stunning as one would expect with East and Arden at the mics. However, Thirst Trap’s story itself is lacking because it’s too rushed, too superficial. It cries out for more time with Rafe and Gunnar, to understand better their attraction, motivations, and connection. In AVFG, Blakely heeds the call and gives us what Thirst Trap is missing.
AVFG is a racy, explicit, intense story of two men with perfectly compatible desires, extreme self-confidence, and a very high risk tolerance. Blakely didn’t have the room in Thirst Trap to play out Rafe and Gunnar’s sexual journey fully. But in AVFG, Blakely gets her kink on as she has Gunnar explore his exhibitionist cravings in Rafe’s safe hands. Rafe and Gunnar have an intuitive, instinctive understanding of each others’ wants and needs and an insatiable desire to satisfy them. They are refreshingly, unflinchingly honest, and unapologetically themselves, and Blakely shows how very sexy that can be.
Rafe and Gunnar’s romance is high-octane, all in, drama. It reads “like a late-night, sexy erotic soap” as Blakely admits in her Author’s Note, and as such, tips over into eye-rolling territory on a few occasions. In the first part of the book, in particular, Rafe and Gunnar seem only capable of conversing with each other using words dripping with sex and dirty promises. It’s all posturing, innuendo, power plays, and titillation. However, about halfway in, we start to get to know these men as people, not sex objects. What their priorities are, what drives them, and why they are falling for each other but don’t want to.
East and Arden, or #Eaden as they are affectionately called, are magic in duet narration. Even the super-charged, soap opera-esque lines come across as authentic as East, in particular, digs into the sexual tension. You can hear it in the tightness in his voice, the restraint in his energy, just waiting to be unleashed. There’s something so deliciously dirty about hearing East’s proper, cut-glass British accent speaking some very improper, filthy promises and orders for Gunner to follow. It’s seductive, transfixing, and irresistible. Arden’s easy, laid-back style of narration for Gunnar is so fitting here. It has a core of strength, an undercurrent of excitement, and a malleability that allows him to bend to Rafe’s will because he knows that will is directed towards fulfilling his fantasies while providing him with the safety to explore. Blakely undeniably picked the perfect narrators to bring Gunnar and Rafe to life. Blakely’s sinful, sexy, sultry world is made simultaneously accessible and forbidden. They are magnetic and absolutely perfection together. Auditory bliss unparalleled.
A Very Filthy Game is very different from Blakely’s more nuanced, deeply emotional stories. It’s hard-hitting, more visceral and less emotional. The story is virtually no-angst because Rafe and Gunnar communicate so well. There’s little room for confusion. It’s the reality of their lives that drives them both to and away from each other. The tenor of the story mirrors the personalities of the men it features.
On paper, AVFG is an enjoyable story if you like sex, sex and more sex, especially if it’s racy and kinda kinky. However, in audiobook form with East and Arden at the helm, this is not the same story. Sure, it’s the same words, but they make it into a wholly different experience. In their hands, A Very Filthy Game is superb – an audiobook I highly recommend.
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