Reviewed by Ro

TITLE: Waylaid

AUTHOR: J.M. Snyder

NARRATOR: Nick Johnson

PUBLISHER: JMS Books

LENGTH: 5 hours, 20 minutes

RELEASE DATE:  August 16, 2024

BLURB:

It’s only supposed to be one night. Until it isn’t.

When the Queen’s guardsman enters my inn, the last thing I expect is to be propositioned. But this far north, it can get lonely at times, and my bed fits two easily enough. The guardsman is lithe and fae, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t interested. Besides, what’s one night between grown men?

I don’t expect to see him again. But rumors of war bring him back to me, and what starts as a one-off soon blossoms into so much more …

REVIEW:

The connection is immediate when the green and golden-eyed guardsman comes into the bar. The barman, who is the narrator and is never named, wants this guardsman. As the story progresses, they end up in bed. This is despite the tavern having no roof due to a storm. “So, you have no beds here?….”.  Well, “Only mine…”.

So begins a sort of affair. The tavernkeeper and the guardsman. One is stuck in a remote village, waiting for his man (fae) to show up, and the other is constantly out in the world. The fantasy aspect here is just slight, it is mostly these two and how a tavernkeeper falls in love. I liked them together, even though sometimes there were months when they were apart and the loneliness of our tavernkeeper was palpable.

Just an aside – the cover model looks exactly as I would have expected.

This is the first time I’ve listened to Nick Johnson narrate, and I was not disappointed. He speaks accents with ease and has enough differing voices for each character to make each individualized. This is one of the problems I sometimes have with audio—I listen on my commute to work, and if I can’t differentiate, I get lost. That didn’t happen here. His voice is melodious, and I enjoyed listening.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

Amazon