Pent Up

By: Damon Suede

Narrated by: Christopher Kipiniak

Pent Up: Mix business with pleasure and take cover.

Ruben Oso moves to Manhattan to start his life over as a low-rent bodyguard and stumbles into a gig in a swanky Park Avenue penthouse. What begins as executive protection turns personal working for a debonair zillionaire who makes Ruben question everything about himself.

Watching over financial hotshot Andy Bauer puts Ruben in an impossible position. He knows zero about shady trading and his cocky boss lives barricaded in a glass tower with wall-to-wall secrets and hot-and-cold-running paranoia. Can the danger be real? Is Andy for real?

What's a bullet catcher to do? Ruben knows his emotions are out of control even as he races to untangle a high-priced conspiracy and his crazy feelings before somebody dies. If his suspicions are right, Andy will pay a price neither can afford, and Ruben may discover there's no way to guard a heart.

©2016 Damon Suede (P)2017 Dreamspinner Press

great Listen

I enjoyed this listen. fun characters, good narration and just enough steamy fun. would listen again.

Good story. Good narration.

Damon Suede has an interesting way of developing characters. Their personalities are very distinct, and I can relate to them even if I don't share any of their experiences. This book takes some interesting twists and turns. Not all of them are entirely believable, but they make for an entertaining story.

I read this book first, and I decided to listen to the audiobook because I liked the narrator. I enjoyed experiencing the story in audio as well as reading it. I just wish there were another book. The core plot is resolved, but I wanted more resolution.

This is a good read if you are looking for a well performed audiobook with complex characters and a romance built around potential danger.

Loved the book

What made the experience of listening to Pent Up the most enjoyable?

I lOVED the guard.

What did you like best about this story?

The guard

What about Christopher Kipiniak’s performance did you like?

The voices

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Loved this story.

Any additional comments?

I wished we would have been able to see more of their life and after they got together.

marvelous

Thus was the best gay romance I have even seen
it's so beautiful to describe in here. after 20 books, finally I saw one that's matters. it's a huge deal to get this one

Pent up Sexual Tension

I loved this cover and the blurb was intriguing.

However, the story let me down. I did understand that the weird thoughts Rubin had were to show his character but to me the constant 'he has a face made for punching' and stuff like that was a big turn off. it showed me nothing. However, I did like the white bread comments it did show a difference in the two. And I loved the difference in the two men. I loved the sexual tension throughout the story and how the two men both being straight fell for each other. But the suspense and mystery let me down and left me confused.
I think the narration also made this story for me.
If you like bad men, rough bodyguards, gay for you, interracial romance and lots of sexual tension you may like this one.

Overall Excellent

Pros: the narrator is really good. I didn't care for either of the voices he chose for the two main characters, but he's undeniably a really talented voice actor. His voice for Ruben sounds like Liev Schreiber in the X-Men movies. I pictured Andy as played by Chris O'Donnell. don't know why, it just worked. Good story, fun and with twists. Their first few efforts at physical intimacy are realistically awkward, which I appreciated. I think their relationship is doomed but I don't even mind.

Cons: so much angst! I love the straight-until-they're-not thing, so that angst was ok, but THEN there's the relationship angst and the class angst and the addiction angst and whew, it's just a lot.

Pent Up

After becoming sober and getting divorced, Ruben decides to leave Florida and start a new life in New York with his brother. He moves into his brother's tiny apartment and takes a job with his brother's bodyguard company. And, on his way to his first official day in the office, things get crazy and crazy continues to the end of the book. Seriously. This book is a crazy soap opera tale. I was confused through most of the book about what was happening.

Before I get into all the crazy, I was lost most of the time by Ruben. He kept referring to "bulls eye face" and I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. Ruben definitely had a way of speaking that was uniquely his. He was vulgar, brash, bitter, a jerk, unlikable, annoying, homophobic, and depressing. Ruben was Latin but was raised in a family that prided itself on being American and denying their roots so he had no connection to his Latin heritage. But, I felt Ruben was derogatory about that culture and the many mentions of his brown skin. Andy was a rich guy, pretending to be whatever he thought he should be and most the time seemed to be playing a game that I had no understanding of. I never felt like I got to know him or understand him. But, this story is told from Ruben's POV so that's too be expected. I actually found both MC's to be unlikable and never felt my opinion change.

The narrator of this story is Christopher Kipiniak. He had a good pace, and gave characters distinctive voices. I thought his voice for Ruben was gruff and gravely and his Andy voice was smarmy, exactly how they came across in the book. He had many characters for this story and he seemed to handle them well. He expressed the appropriate emotions throughout the story and didn't seem to have weird pauses in his sentences. To be fair to the narrator, I really didn't pay that much attention to his voice as I was so confused by the story and what was going on.

Some of my favorite books have been double GFY, so I was really interested in this book. I've only read one other book by this author, but he definitely has a raw, gritty style to writing and though I'm no delicate flower, maybe that's just a style that doesn't work for me. But, I know there are many people who are going to love it for this style. There is a mystery to this story, but truthfully, I was so confused by what was happening that I completely missed this part of it and didn't believe there really was a mystery. Maybe this is one of those books that I needed to read first, before listening to since there's so much going on.

Overall: 3.5
Performance: 4
Story: 3

shit soap opera

the characters have no real development. they are just one dimensional horny guys. the entire premise is based on a thin thread and basically makes the main character into nothing more than a prostitute.

Couldn't finish it & couldn't return it

The plot had potential. The MCs weren't interesting. If there was a plot twist I couldn't be bothered to finish it to find out.