Reviewed by Larissa
TITLE: Show Me Wonders
SERIES: Water, Air, Earth, Fire, Book 3
AUTHOR: Riley Nash
NARRATOR: Liam DiCosimo, Wyatt Baker
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 8 hours and 46 minutes
RELEASE DATE: April 11, 2023
BLURB:
Wait for me. Never let me go.
I fell in love with Jackson Moreno in hell, the only two survivors trapped in a catastrophic tunnel collapse. But when rescue comes, I discover he has secrets darker than I could have guessed. He disappears from my life as quickly as he came, and I can’t afford to chase after him when I have to raise my daughter alone.
I fell in love with Jackson Moreno six years later, on a bright summer afternoon, cleaning the lobby of a small-town bank. But he’s still running, and I’m struggling to keep my little family afloat.
I fell in love with Jackson Moreno in three feet of snow, surrounded by garbage and filth, after we lost everything. Because sometimes a tatted bad boy and a shy dad who loves knitting are destined to be together, no matter how many years and miles and memories pull us apart. No matter how many times we have to start over.
If we refuse to be broken, I believe someday we’ll find each other for the last time.
An epic, moving story of second chances and love that defies all odds, featuring a double gay-for-you relationship full of first times, hurt/comfort, a demisexual main character, and mental health representation!
This book contains some mature content related to mental illness and violence. For a full list, see the author’s note in the front of the book using the “look inside” feature.
REVIEW:
As Riley Nash works through the four classical elements of nature, so do we. With Show Me Wonders, the third book in Nash’s Water, Air, Earth, Fire series, Nash brings us earth, aptly represented by the harrowing tale of Oliver and Jackson, who are buried alive by a landslide. Nash grounds us in this gripping, traumatic story of two complete opposites falling in love in the direst of circumstances by muting Ollie and Jackson’s full use of their five senses. Without sight, the men are truly tapped into the other man’s voice, emotions, and indefatigable will to survive. They connect through listening and touching, and that physicality is what facilitates the organic gay-for-you journeys for both men. The cave-in literally traps them in isolation where it feels like the world has stopped even as hours in the dark drag into days.
Their strange, unexpected connection is immediately tested when they are rescued, and all of the sights and sounds of their very different realities come crashing down. Ollie is profoundly impacted by the horrific events, suffering from agoraphobia-induced panic attacks, and he feels emotionally disconnected from just about everyone, except Jackson, who never leaves his thoughts. They are given a second chance at a happy ending years later, and it’s there that we see the beauty of the connection they forged in the depth and darkness of the earth. They fit like Yin and Yang, understanding, respecting, and supporting each other like no one else can.
Nash’s creativity and incisive writing are what keeps the reader connected to these men and their painful stories even when it hurts (and it hurts a lot). The story is textured and complex, with twists and turns and challenges that seem insurmountable. I started to doubt that Nash would be able to bridge the gap and bring these men together for a HEA, as Nash keeps us wondering until very deep into the story.
If you read the second book, Make Me Fall, you will recall the brief appearances of Ollie, who is Gray’s client, and the very obvious foreshadowing of a complex relationship between Ollie and Jackson. The stories overlap in timing, so they can be read separately, but the best experience is to read the series in order.
Liam DiCosimo and Wyatt Baker do a terrific job narrating the audiobook. Their performances are solid on their main characters, although a bit shakier on the side characters, especially any female or children’s voices. But their performances are invested and capture the emotional complexities of their characters. In the context of this story, listening to this story without seeing the story on the page seems apropos for Ollie and Jackson’s falling in love through listening and feeling, not seeing.
Nash takes an unusual approach to the audiobooks in this series in that they’ve had a different narrator duo for each book. It keeps the stories and the characters in them distinct, but connected. Overall, Show Me Wonders is a wonderful, if at times difficult, love story that is worth your time and best experienced in audio.
RATING: 
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