Reviewed by Sadonna
TITLE: One
SERIES: Angels of Wrath
AUTHOR: Paulina Ian-Kane
NARRATORS: Michael Ferraiuolo & Declan Winters
PUBLISHER: Podium Audio
LENGTH: 8 hours and 18 minutes
RELEASE DATE: June 4, 2024
BLURB:
Michael Caldwell—medical examiner, odd, blood obsessed.
His new life in Chicago consists of performing autopsies and eating chips while watching old detective series. Until…
He’s suddenly standing in front of me. Leather jacket, washed-out jeans, jet black hair. His deep, green eyes are so intense on me I can barely breathe. It’s in his crooked smile, bold flirting, and confident—borderline conceited—behavior that I get lost.
The fact that he protects me five minutes later during an attempted robbery only reinforces my crazy-instant attraction toward him, though.
But there are shadows hiding in his gaze. And his apathetic yet possessive attitude confuses me. Makes me care. Makes me crave.
Then secrets come out, and my life turns into a thriller movie.
Now, I’m left wondering how this all started. And when the answer comes, I know I can never go back to my uneventful life. Would I even want to? Would I be able to leave him?
“Never again,” he whispers.
This is an action-packed romance with an HEA and no cliffhangers. It features an over-the-top possessive psychopath and a peculiar medical examiner with a stomach made of steel. There’s violence, torture (only of very bad people), dark humor, amazing side characters, and very spicy scenes with blood play. Morality’s grey area is quite stretched in this story.
This is book one in the Angels of Wrath Series. Each book follows a different couple.
REVIEW:
I gotta say, I’m not sure how I feel about this book. It’s not the darkness I have an issue with. My first MM read was Special Forces by Aleksandr Voinov, so familiar with the territory. I just was unsure how the relationship between Michael and Raph is described. The whole Michael just going along with the the possessiveness and immediate “attraction” during a robbery. Something was just off. There is a LOT of info dumping here – setting up the series, but it was a lot and affected the pacing for me. There are a LOT of secondary characters as expected in a series kickoff and I hope they become more defined in the next books. I didn’t love the writing style if I’m honest, but that might be because of these two characters in particular. Truly not a fan of “piglet” as a pet name although there is a reason for it that comes out later. There were parts I liked, but I’ll be honest – the sex scenes were not sexy to me. Spit as lube?? Ugh. I didn’t necessarily have a problem with the bad guys getting what’s coming to them, but the fact that psychologists were part of it seemed a bit off. The violence is pretty bloody though, so if that’s a trigger for you, you might want to give this one a pass. I’ll probably move on to the next book. Recommended with reservations.
I bumped this up a 1/2 due to the quality of the performances of the narrators. Declan Winters is soooo good at the growling, menacing, controlling voice of Raphael. Michael Ferraiuolo was fantastic as the submissive and likeable Dr. Michael Caldwell (niggle – it takes 9-11 years post graduate study/residency/fellowships to be a hematologist, so the ages was off unless he was a boy genius). The rest of the “stepbrothers” are more difficult to place in the voice world here, but I’ll be interested to see what they do with the next books. There is a lot of violence and if that’s not your jam, you may not enjoy the story. I did like the characterizations, even if I didn’t really find myself very invested in the “romance” in this story. These are two of my favorite narrators, so I will probably listen to the next one if they are indeed the talent engaged for the next in the series.
RATING: 
BUY LINKS:
Amazon