Liar City

Sugar & Vice, Book 1

By: Allie Therin

Narrated by: Joel Leslie

A 2023 AUDIOFILE EARPHONES AWARD WINNER

A murder has Seattle on edge, and it falls to a pacifist empath—and a notorious empath hunter—to find the killer before it's too late

It’s the middle of the night when part-time police consultant and full-time empath Reece gets an anonymous call warning him that his detective sister needs his help. At an out-of-the-way Seattle marina, he discovers that three people have been butchered—including the author of the country’s strictest anti-empathy bill, which is just days from being passed into law.

Soon, Reece’s caller arrives: a shadowy government agent known as The Dead Man, who is rumored to deal exclusively in cases involving empathy. He immediately takes over the investigation, locking out both local PD and the FBI, but, strangely, keeps Reece by his side.

As the two track an ever-growing trail of violence and destruction across Seattle, Reece must navigate a scared and angry city, an irritating attraction to his mysterious agent companion, and a rising fear that perhaps empaths like him aren’t all flight and no fight after all…

"Readers will be yearning for more the minute they finish the final page." —Library Journal, starred review, on Starcrossed

Sugar & Vice

©2023 Allie Therin (P)2023 Harlequin Enterprises, Limited

When does the next book come out? I can't unread this, my heart

The whole thing was exciting, it had funny bits, I love the bond, the mystery the everything. When I got to the end though,... You hate that you need more is all I can say. My heart is not okay.

Clunky and unsatisfying

I like this author, but not this book. The premise is clunky and overwrought, and the explanations of it become tedious. The implied romance hardly exists, the noirish storyline is oddly boring, and the whole experience was unsatisfying.

Almost DNFed, but glad I did.

I can’t say I enjoyed listening to it, but that was because I went in imagining I’ll be getting a romance akin to the author’s previous books.
It is not.
It’s a drama with an overwhelmingly oppressive atmosphere throughout. I had to make myself continue several times because of the amount of angst and things just kept turning from bad to worse for the protagonist.
However, it is a well written book that did leave me satisfied.

loved the audio ❤

this is one of the best audio books for me this year love the Sarcasm in this book I would recommend and as always love joel Narration

Fascinating story, amazing narration

This story was the perfect beginning of a series. It laid the foundation for so many characters who are all well developed.
Joel Leslie is phenomenal as always!

Wonderful ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

I found Liar City to be funny, fast-paced, and enthralling. Leslie is one of my favorite voice actors, and I loved this performance. I’m looking forward to the next book in the series! I’m not sure where some of the less-than-5-star reviews are coming from. Maybe they’re due to expectations based on Therin’s other books? Possibly there was an expectation of more romance, but this seems like a slow-burn romance series, and those expectations will likely be met in later installments. Also, given Evan’s personality and background, it would be out of character for anything of that nature to develop so quickly.

WOW.

I recognize Joel Leslie's narration from the spin-off of the Big Bad Wolf serie by Charlie Adhara, Pack of Lies.

I'm glad he is getting a whole serie to narrate. His theatrical style of narration really shines here with the humour, the witty banter.

The writing, the story...just WOW. Actually, let me listen to this again...

Soooo good!

Love the plot! This was such man original premise and it turned out great. I’m already reaching with gimme gimme hands for the story to continue.

I’ve never heard of this author before but you better believe I’m going to look if she has more books bc she is an incredible storyteller.

Quite different.

I liked the story. Im interested to see where this series is going to go.

Gotham-esque … with a lot less personality

There were some interesting concepts, like a world grappling with empaths capable of weaponizing emotions. The overall vibe was like Minority Report or Jessica Jones or any number of comic book arcs where the populace fears what they don’t understand and therefore try to contain, convert, or corrupt. But the execution of the story failed on multiple levels.

To start, all details are reserved for the murder mystery and slowly revealing what makes empaths tick. So much time is spent on making empaths out to be a kind of super species that the rest of the world, and characters, got washed out. This story took place in Seattle, but it could have been set anywhere.
Was there ever a description of rainy days, the Needle, Reese’s sister, etc. to help me picture the people and places?

Narrator Joel Leslie excels at campy, exaggerated stories (the Hidden Species books, for example).
His style is more cartoon than comic book. Here, that style meant Reese’s sarcasm felt too cute, as if Reese was the teenage, ditzy damsel with the heart of gold instead of an adult cognizant of his empath responsibilities. Nicknaming Reese “carebear” while people around him die gruesome deaths, and while empath-phobic hate mongers do horrible things, just highlighted the feeling that I was listening to two different stories. And aside from some heavy handed dialogue about LGBTQ, this felt like your standard MF slow burn romance, with Reese as the quirky girl and the Dead Man as the dark, dangerous, emotionally unavailable guy.

The Dead Man was too aptly named. He was a robotic boogeyman so lacking in personality that I felt zero romantic chemistry. I’m sure he and Reese will eventually get together, somewhere several books down the line … only I don’t really care to wade through more books about discrimination, fear, hate and abuse in an alternate modern-day world to get to the lukewarm romance on the other end.