Audio Book Review: The Palisade by Rosalind Abel

From The Blurb:

Confident businessman Joel Rhodes sees the small California town of Lavender Shores as nothing more than a business opportunity and a final stepping stone to the position he’s been working toward his entire life. It was supposed to be just one night in town to close the deal, and sleeping with one of the local men, no matter how gorgeous, meant nothing more than a few hours of fun. 

Andrew Kelly is perfectly content with the life he has in his hometown. So much so that the only thing missing is someone to share it with. Going to bed with a tourist was never meant to be the answer to his dreams, just a beautiful distraction. He could get back to looking for Mr. Right the next day. 

Both Andrew’s and Joel’s worlds are turned upside down when a few hours of pleasure get extended to a couple of days. Even that shouldn’t have been a big deal. You can’t fall in love in that amount of time. That isn’t how it works. However, if destinies collide, a few short days may be all it takes to find your soul mate. Even so, when secrets and motivations get tangled, fate may do nothing more than leave two hearts in pieces. 

Listening Length: 7 hours and 20 minutes

Karen's rating:

So...I'm just wondering...

Where do I send my dental bill? Because by the end of this one, I'm pretty sure I've got a couple of cavities...'The Palisade' was most definitely one of the sweetest...to the point of being cavity inducing books that I've read in quite a while...ok, listened to.

The only thing that might have beat the sweetness quotient on this would be the sex. Seriously the bunnies called and well...they're jealous...although me and the bunnies agreed we're not sure about the dirty talk...sometimes, it just wasn't working too well for me and I admit there might have been a raised eyebrow or two.

Ok, so once we get past the sweetness and the sex there is a story which starts with a really strong dose of insta-love and by that I mean 'wham, bam, thank you ma'am, whiplash inducing insta-love'. But thankfully the road to happiness wasn't all sunshine and light for these two and there were obstacles to be overcome before Andrew and Joel can claim their happily ever after. Add to this some rather interesting bordering on bizarre parents...mostly Andrew's father whose fixation on his gay son's love life and male penises...including Joel's was at times a wee bit disturbing but irregardless of all this there was a sweet little love story in here that kept me listening and wanting Andrew and Joel to figure things out and find a way to be together and the thing that really held things together and kept me listening was the narrator.


Kirt Graves gave a solid narration with this book and his voices ticked off the things that hold my interest with an audio book and kept me engaged to the end.

I've held off on this series for a while now but when I got the opportunity to listen to the, 'The Garden', the next book on audio, I decided that regardless of whether or not it could be read as a standalone I wanted to read/listen to the first book before I did that and truthfully I'm glad I did because while I probably could have listened to 'The Garden' without benefit of this story I think I'm going to be enjoy it more for having listened to 'The Palisade' first there's definitely background for Gilbert here that while not crucial, it's still going to be good to know.  So now you know what I'm up to next...yeah, that's right I've got 'The Garden' playing as I'm typing this so I'll be back later to let you know how that went.

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Reading gives us someplace to go, when we have to stay where we are.  (Mason Cooley)

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