All Chained Up

Devil's Rock, Book 1

By: Sophie Jordan

Narrated by: Christian Fox

Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

There are bad boys, and then there are the men of Devil's Rock....

Some men come with built-in warning labels. Knox Callaghan is one of them. Danger radiates from every lean, muscled inch of him, and his deep-blue eyes seem to see right through to Briar Davis' most secret fantasies. But there's one major problem: Briar is a nurse volunteering at the local prison, and Knox is an inmate who should be off-limits in every way.

Knox feels it, too - a shocking animal magnetism that drives him to risk his own life to protect Briar's. Paroled at last, he tries to resist her. She's too innocent, too sweet, and she has no idea what Knox is capable of. But a single touch can lead to a kiss - and a taste...until the only crime is denying what feels so right....

"When the prison doors are open, the real dragon will fly out." (Ho Chi Minh)

©2016 Sharie Kohler (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers

Loved the first half and the last hour.

Danger is a great aphrodisiac, especially on top of (or underneath 😜) a bad boy antihero.
The smolder! Whoo!

But then it’s hours of needless conflict, where neither one of them opens up about anything.
Instead, it’s a lot of passive aggressive “just sex” … which got less and less sexy.

There’s a lot of over the top jerky characters, like hyperbolically bad… as befits the cover and the series. Cutting out the middle angsty parts, the overdone jerks provided the equally overdone groveling parts towards the end… which I admit I ate up with a Cherry Garcia loving, cat-ate-the-canary grin on my face.

Awesome

I took a stab at this series. So glad I did. What an incredible writer and awesome narrator. It deserves a listen over and over good job!!!!!!

Hot dang

The perfect amount of bad boy and tender romance mixed with the vocal stylings of a pro. Moving onto the next.

WONDERFUL

This was a wonderful read/listen for me. The complete devotion between the 2 was awesome. There was a good story line to it as well. I love the fact that the hero doesn't sleep around and only wants her especially after the first meeting. I cannot stand when he or she still sleeps with someone else after meeting each other.

The narrator did an awesome job.

I look forward to book 2, but will probably skip book 3 Fury on Fire North Story because of this (if only the sounds of him with other women didn’t drift through their shared wall) Nope no thank you. I wish the series didn't take that direction.

love it

I even have actual book so I wanted to listen and I love it ..

You Can Judge This Book by Its Cover

Yep, the cover says it all. Sexy super-ripped hunk with the dragon tattoo. Romantic fantasy, heavy on graphic eroticism. Listen with the lights dimmed and your earbuds in.

If anyone had told me a couple of years ago that I’d ever enjoy this kind of book, I’d have laughed at them. But advancing middle age does strange things to a woman’s taste. First Loretta Chase got me hooked on her semierotic historicals. Then Audible put Kresley Cole’s “immortals after dark” series of paranormal demiporn on sale, and wham-bam thank you Kresley! I’m ashamed to show anyone my ITunes audiobooks page anymore!

So this one is a modern setting, no paranormal stuff (but a fair amount of fantasy if you look at it one way). Knox Callahan and his brother North are serving time in Devil’s Rock, a maximum-security prison, for murder (they went after the scumbag who raped their 16-year-old cousin and things got out of hand). Briar is a nurse helping out one of the doctors from the practice she works for (I though it was a nice touch that her motive wasn’t altruism but a desire for a promotion). Knox and Briar are both “all chained up,” she emotionally and he both physically and emotionally. Neither of them has had sex in a loooong time.

Knox gets beaten up in a dining room brawl over a stolen biscuit. Briar examines his injuries. Instant Electricity! Knox heroically rescues the infirmary staff. He gets parole. Months pass. Knox and Briar meet by chance. They get together. They have sex. A lot of sex. They both think it’s just great sex. Until they both realize they’d like it to be more, but each is afraid to tell the other. Misunderstandings and breakups ensue before the happy resolution.

Pretty standard romance plot line. I think there are 4 basic ingredients to making this kind of story a tasty dish for the target audience:

(1) the hero has to be interesting, attractive, and …arousing. Knox scores a 10 (maybe a 12).

(2) the reader has to like/admire/identify with the heroine. For me Briar started low on this score, but halfway through she’d won me over to at least an 8.

(3) the writing has to be at least clear and engaging, with some humor and common sense. Sophie Jordan is much better than “at least,” she’s very good.

(4) the narrator has to be able to pull it off. In my opinion, Christian Fox is as good as Robert Petkoff (narrator of the “Immortals After Dark” books), and that’s as good as it gets. Some may wonder why characters born and raised in the west Texas badlands have zero Texas accent. I was fine with that, I really enjoyed Fox’s interpretation.

A penultimate chapter returns us briefly to Devil’s Rock, where North Callahan still hasn’t made parole. There’s been a prison break that sets up the next two books in the series; #2, “Hell Breaks Loose” is already out, and #3, “Fury on Fire” is promised for the winter. I must admit (blush) I’ll probably be listening.

Enjoyable Listen

This book is all around enjoyable. I have listened to it 3 times since I purchased it.

Meh

I did love that it was written in third person. I do so detest the exhaustive internal monologues so many romance authors lazily use. I also love Christian Fox’s narration. The story is exceptionally well-written and does have some decent narrative content. For those reasons, I gave the overall rating of 4 stars.
Here’s where this review gets down to business. While the story does have some content, it still lacks so much in order to be of interest. I always have difficulty when the angst in the story is caused by one stubborn character who simply refuses to have a relationship with the other person on the premise of being “bad for her.” While it does make for a valid trope, it’s so over-done and frustrating when there is no other conflict. Very little actually happens in the story, and it has a strange pace. It’s like he’s fascinating and broody at the beginning, she seems to have some dark twisty secrets, there’s a bit of drama, some hot sex, but then the excitement fades quickly. Repetitive sex scenes, he leaves, they pine. He comes back, then leaves again, and they pine. Then he proposes. Seriously, that’s it—with the exception of the random chapter setting up the next book about Knox’s brother. While it isn’t necessarily bad, it isn’t great either. Despite the progression of the story, it was just missing something, and therefore it was pretty lackluster.