Reviewed by Morgan
Title: The Right Words
Author: Lane Hayes
Narrator: Michael Ferraiuolo
Series: Right and Wrong #1
Heroes: Luke Preston/Michael Martinez
Genre: MM Contemporary
Length: 7 Hours, 20 Minutes
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Release Date: September 15, 2015
Available at: Amazon, Audible and iTunes
Add it to your shelf: Goodreads
Blurb: Escaping an abusive relationship left Luke Preston anxious and spouting panic-induced poetry. Desperate for a fresh start, Luke accepts a job remodeling a tired old beach house for a professional soccer player and his model girlfriend. While his passion is literature, not sports, focusing on the renovations eases his anxiety. Until the job he signed up for turns out to be more complicated than advertised.
Sidelined with a serious injury, soccer star Michael Martinez decides his beach house is the perfect place to recuperate. Remodeling might be the diversion he needs to keep his mind off his busted knee. Falling for the pretty designer with some quirky habits wasn’t on the drawing board. Unfortunately, Luke didn’t build a big enough closet for Michael to hide in. Having a star-powered sports career used to be all Michael lived for, but he’ll have to reevaluate his plans and find the right words if he wants to build more than a beach house with Luke.
Review – Book: Luke is just out of an abusive relationship. He’s an English major who found design as an unexpected career change where he’s got the talent but needs a job. He gets a hook up for a job through a friend to renovate a house of a professional soccer player, Michael.
Michael is an injured pro who is deep in the closet. He’s got an ex who is blackmailing him for money by threatening to “out” him.
At first Michael resists the renovation, but later changes his mind after meeting Luke. They keep the relationship strictly professional at first, but the attraction can’t be denied.
Between the blackmailing, Luke’s issues, and Michaels reluctance to be an “out” professional athlete their relationship has a rocky start but the story ends on a very sweet, and romantic note.
**
I fell in love with Lane Hayes through her Better Than Series. I’ve enjoyed some of the other books in the Right and Wrong Series especially book two. I guess you could say she’s hit or miss with me. I either really resonate with her characters or I don’t at all.
Unfortunately this falls more in the latter. Though I really liked Luke (we see him in later books in the series), I didn’t care for him as much here. He was a little too harsh in his judgment of Michael. Though he gave lip service to letting him come out on his own, I felt he really pushed that decision on him without giving him time to adjust.
Michael was a nice enough guy, though nothing about his personality really stood out for me. He felt a little bland. The story was sort-of a generic closeted athlete meets out and proud twink. I wanted more of his Hispanic heritage to leak through, especially considering how important that ends up being to the final decision to come out or not.
There were blocks of info-dumping (i.e. when Luke tells Michael his “story”) that felt stilted and less like a real conversation between two people and more like a way to get the story out to readers.
In general, I’m still a fan of the author and am excited to read the next installment, but this one just didn’t do it for me as much as some of her other work.
Review – Audio Book: The narrator did a mostly great job with this. On the one hand, Michael Ferraiuolo clearly demonstrates his ability to use a Spanish accent and to speak the language, but he gave almost no accent to Michael. I’m not sure if that was intentional or not, I thought (and I could be wrong) that he’d have had more of an accent. I loved some of the other inflections he used – especially for Brandon, and I think he has a great grasp of emotion and inflection while doing the dialog.
I think that the audiobook is the way to enjoy this book, because he does add to the experience with his narration.
I’d give the book 3 of 5 stars, the narration 4.5 of 5 stars and overall 4 of 5 stars.
Overall Impression: I really liked it
*I received a copy of this book from the publisher in return for a fair and honest review.*
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