Devotion

Forbes Mates, Book 1

By: Grace R. Duncan

Narrated by: Joel Leslie

Finley Cooper is tired of waiting for his destined mate to be ready to claim him. In deference to human laws, he's already agreed to wait until he's 18. But now his birthday has come and gone-and his mate has a new set of excuses. Finley doesn't understand it any more than his wolf does, and he's beginning to wonder if fate made a mistake.

Tanner Pearce wants nothing more than to claim his mate, but he worries that Finley is too young. Tanner will never forget what happened when his best friend mated at Finley's age, only to have that mate end up feeling trapped and breaking their bond. While rare, it can happen, and the fallout Tanner witnessed as his best friend tried to deal with the break has haunted him for years.

When Finley finally has enough, he threatens to find someone who will claim him if Tanner doesn't, and Tanner realizes he needs to come to terms with his fears or risk losing his mate forever.

©2015 Grace R. Duncan (P)2017 Dreamspinner Press

Narration

The narration of this story is awesome. I started another audio book before this one and the narration killed it....This the second book different series that has been narrated by joel leslie and wow...I think the only critic is less use of the wordy baby...other wise the plot line was great. just enough story vs erotica to keep the listener going will be listening to the second book next month

Decent Read(listen)

I had never read this author, not my cup of tea. Narration was just OK

Great Performance

This book felt a little lopsided to me. The overall performance by the narrator was great; however, once the resolution happened between the protagonists the story fell off. I enjoyed for first half of the story with the miscommunication between the two love interests but once that was resolved the ending of the book felt like it dragged on. Overall, it was an okay book but I wish the supporting characters would have had more to do with driving the story instead of the misunderstanding between the protagonists.

My first shifter book, loved it.

I absolutely loved this book.

This is my first book in the shifter drama. I heard about shifter books and decided to see what the fuss is about. Ths book was a great way to be introduced to what shifters are and why people like these type of books.

I listened to this on Audible too, and my favorite narrator Joel Leslie did the voice work. He did a terrific job as usual with the voice acting and making it easy to distinguish each character.

Only issue i had with the book, and this is a minor spoiler but it's mentioned very early, is one of the main reasons the main character has concerns with claiming his mate. So apparently he has to mate in front of his entire immediate family and the elders. He just does not want to, clearly never wants to, finds it an invasion of his privacy and wants to protect his partners body from being exposed to that.
The book does a LOT to make that agonizing for the reader and i feel like doesn't do enough to ever help alleviate that anxiety. I at no point felt relief about this situation and was anxious every time this was brought up. I didn't really like the excuse this has to be done and it sorta ruined some of the romance for me with how its portrayed. I felt somewhat sick to my stomach and by the end, still felt sick about it.

Another issue i had, is there's a lot of repetition, i found myself very easily skipping ahead and not losing track of anything as some of the story drags. Like stuff would happen in the story and it just gets explained over and over again too many times. I think i even skipped an entire chapter when i noticed nothing was happening other then a ton of tensions explaining over and over. It doesn't at all ruin the book though and i know why it was done. It felt like it was done for tension building to make you more anxious about what's happening but maybe executed too much because like.... We get it... There's tension, stop explaining it to me for an hour with no real movement in the story.

The romance though is extremely tense, the story to back it up holds up solidly. I also love love lovvve the world building too as it was explained in a way that was easy to follow with characters being introduced slowly.

I think this book despite some of the prior issues mentioned is highly recommended for new comers to shifter dramas because after this, I'm hooked and want more.

Great narration

Any additional comments?

Joel Leslie does a terrific job with the character voices and Devotion is simply a pleasure to listen to.

He is, in fact, the reason I didn't hurt something when I realized that yes, I remember I had enjoyed reading this story, but, uh oh, I'd forgotten about the truly awful miscommunication and heartache that could have been cleared up WITH ONE SINGLE CONVERSATION.

For almost half of the story Tanner and Finley are separated. However, once they're reunited the sexy times begin and I have one word for you: KNOTTING.

So, yes, the sexy times are sexy, but lordie, I wanted to wrap my hands around Tanner's throat and throttle him.

Regardless of the miscommunication, I enjoyed the dual POV and getting to see both Tanner and Finley's sides, the flow is good, and the world building entertaining enough to keep the reader/listener engaged until the end, helped largely by Leslie's narration.

I'm looking forward to getting Jamie's story on audio next!