Title: Whiskey and Wry
Series: Sinner’s series, #2
Author: Rhys Ford
Narrator: Tristan James
Genre: Contemporary/ Dark Romance/ Murder Mystery
Length: 8 hours and 41 minutes
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press Audio (01-21-14)
Heat Level: Moderate to Explicit
Heart Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥ 5 Hearts
Reviewer: Tams
Blurb: Sequel to Sinner’s Gin
He was dead. And it was murder most foul. If erasing a man’s existence could even be called murder.
When Damien Mitchell wakes, he finds himself without a life or a name. The Montana asylum’s doctors tell him he’s delusional and his memories are all lies: he’s really Stephen Thompson, and he’d gone over the edge, obsessing about a rock star who died in a fiery crash. His chance to escape back to his own life comes when his prison burns, but a gunman is waiting for him, determined that neither Stephen Thompson nor Damien Mitchell will escape.
With the assassin on his tail, Damien flees to the City by the Bay, but keeping a low profile is the only way he’ll survive as he searches San Francisco for his best friend, Miki St. John. Falling back on what kept him fed before he made it big, Damien sings for his supper outside Finnegan’s, an Irish pub on the pier, and he soon falls in with the owner, Sionn Murphy. Damien doesn’t need a complication like Sionn, and to make matters worse, the gunman who doesn’t mind going through Sionn or anyone else if that’s what it takes kill Damien shows up to finish what he started.
Purchase Link: http://www.audible.com/pd/Fiction/Whiskey-and-Wry-Audiobook/B00HX1KW7U/
Review: Damien Mitchell knows there is something the people around him aren’t telling him, the truth about who he really is. He doesn’t feel any connection to the people who call themselves his parents, and he has haunting nightmares of a best friend and a car crash. With each passing day, Damien remembers bits and pieces, trying to put together the puzzle hidden within his shattered mind. He’s Damien Mitchell of the band Sinner’s Gin who supposedly died in a car crash along with two other members of his band. That’s what he thinks, but what if he really is crazy and it’s all just an illusion he’s created in his battered and bruised mind. When someone burns down the asylum he’s being detained in and kills his nurse, Damien escapes and goes after the one thread he can grasp in his muddled mind, SinGin.
Sionn Murphy (pronounced shown) is a former body-guard now pub manager slash owner with a past he’d soon rather forget as well. He lost someone on his watch. He now bears the scars of that loss, both mentally and physically. The first time he sees Damien playing outside his pub, he has all intentions of sending the guitarist packing. That is until he meets those stormy eyes that carry so much pain and need, it’s contagious. There is an obvious attraction between them that they both deny at the start, for various reasons. But circumstance keeps driving them together, and when a killer shows up to finish what he started at the asylum, Sionn goes into protection mode.
With a killer on the loose and his new lover in danger, Sionn reaches out to his rather large Irish family for help. It’s a shock to everyone when the one thing that brought Damien to Sionn has been with Sionn’s family all along. Can a family of very large, domineering, and mean as fuck Irish cops protect the brothers Damien and Miki, from the killer that has their names carved into his very sharp knives?
This quickly became a repeat listen for me. Not only are both books in this series wrought with emotion, passion, and dialogue worthy of a best seller. They are narrated flawlessly! From the various differing tones of Irish brogue that the Morgan clan posses, to Damien’s posh English accent and finally, Miki’s tortured soul tones.
Ford’s meticulously written witty dialogue, three-dimensional characters and a bad guy that will make your skin crawl and James art of storytelling were a match made in sexy man heaven! The psychotic assassin almost stole the show for me. James reads the killer, Parker, very monotone and cerebral throughout, his tone never changes. Even when he is gutting some poor woman like a fish, he’s just very matter of fact and devoid of emotion, much like his character.
While the chemistry between Damien and Sionn wasn’t quite as smoldering hot as Miki and Kane, it was still volcanic. There is something so beyond sexy about the Morgan clan, the need to protect their own is engrained into them. And their monarch, Donal, is so well spoken and accepting of everything that is thrown at them. Probably because his little spider monkey of a wife, Brigid, has enough fire in her for them both.
If you listen to audio books, get this one on audio! Oh…My…God. Sexy does not even begin to describe it. I highly recommend this book, this series. I was beyond entertained from start to finish. And Ford left it wide open for a third book! Although, I’m not quite sure the world is ready for three brooding and sexy ginormous Irish men from the Morgan clan.
** I received a copy of this audio book from Dreamspinner Press in exchange for an honest review through MM Good Book Reviews **
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