Review: Common Goal

Common Goal by Rachel Reid and Cooper North
My rating: 3 of 5 stars 

Veteran goaltender Eric Bennett has faced down some of the toughest shooters on the ice, but nothing prepared him for his latest challenge—life after hockey. It’s time to make some big changes, starting with finally dating men for the first time.

Graduate student Kyle Swift moved to New York nursing a broken heart. He’d sworn to find someone his own age to crush on (for once). Until he meets a gorgeous, distinguished silver fox hockey player. Despite their intense physical attraction, Kyle has no intention of getting emotionally involved.

So, I relistened this book to find out why it did not keep me focused, the first time. This is a so called 'slow burn' but there is no tension. For some reasons the protagonists decide not to make a move and that is it, for most of the book. I like to get offered a reason to finish a book. I mean, other than the question if the couple ends up together, which some authors make tantalizing, there is nothing here.

The narration was good but the sound quality eas not perfect. I regularly heard a low vibration buzzing underneath the low vowels. 

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Review: Spring of the Wolf

Spring of the Wolf by Iris Foxglove and Kris Antham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the cold spring air of Lukos, a man wraps a cloak of fur around his shoulders and transforms into a sleek white wolf, racing across the countryside...

Zephyr has always been cursed. The same fur that gives him the ability to shift between wolf and man allows others the power to control his will. Doomed to follow any order given by one who holds his cloak, Zephyr steals it from his tyrannical foster-father and takes off into the wilderness.
Dragan Wolf-Breaker has spent his life leading the people of Lukos and raising his daughter, Elena, as a single father. When the injured white wolf who collapsed on his door turns out to be a man mistreated by those who were supposed to protect him, Dragan slowly begins to earn Zephyr’s trust by showing him that his submission is a gift, not a curse. 

A compelling story and well-narrated. As in the first audiobook, a few things niggle at me when listening. Like, a hare digging a burrow. Or a tub big enough for a grown man to float in, that is ready in half an hour, while all the water has to be made warm with a kettle above a fire.
But what counts most is: the society and characters are lovely. The narration was beautiful.

I loved this novel and would have rushed to the next, but those are MMF.

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Review: Tiepolo Blue

Tiepolo Blue by James Cahill and Barnaby Edwards
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A mid-life coming-of-age story charting one man's sexual awakening and his spectacular fall from grace in 1990s London, raising questions about art and beauty, sex and censure.
Cambridge, 1994. Professor Don Lamb is a revered art historian at the height of his powers, consumed by the book he is writing about the skies of the Venetian master Tiepolo. However, his academic brilliance belies a deep inexperience of life and love.

When an explosive piece of contemporary art is installed on the lawn of his college, it sets in motion Don's abrupt departure from Cambridge to take up a role at a south London museum. There he befriends Ben, a young artist who draws him into the anarchic 1990s British art scene and the nightlife of Soho.

How to rate an unfinished audiobook? I recognized good penmanship and the narration was great. But the story is so depressing I dislike it. I prefer gay romance. The foreboding feeling when following Don's lonely life, manipulated by a villainous character, was too strong for me. Don is a naive idiot and I don't want to know more about his life after listening 50%. I was waiting for the love interest but am afraid that will end depressing, too.

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Review: The Endless Road to Sunshine

The Endless Road to Sunshine by Nicky James and Nick J. Russo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My name is Jason Atkinson, and I married a serial killer.
The life I knew, the man I loved, and the world I believed in was nothing but a lie. He stole my trust, my happiness, and my faith in humanity, and I’m not sure how to move on. 
With my mental health hanging by a thread and a media circus following me everywhere I go, escape seems like the only answer.
But Skylar Dawson, a student almost twenty years my junior, has a different plan.

If this audiobook was a paperback, I would call it a pageturner because Jason allows all kinds of weirdo's in his life, including Skylar, and I was constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. The writing and characters were good, except at the end when the story turned into clichés.
Narration was good, but sometimes he lost my focus and couldn't I determine which point of view I was hearing.

Edit to add: one annoyance was the millennial Skylar wanting to research newspapers and not going online but filing through actual newspapers. Even the author has never done this before, because she believes you can research 18 months of papers in 2 hours tops.

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