The Pact

An Arranged Marriage Romance

De: Suzanne Wright

Narrado por: Ivy Peterson

She should say no. Addison Davenport figures that most people likely would. But after having her life plans repeatedly derailed, she's come to wonder if her chance at marriage and kids ended with the death of her college boyfriend. So when business powerhouse Daxton "Dax" Mercier—a man who's suffered a similar loss, a man who's her first in every way—asks her to honor the fallback marriage pact they made years ago, she doesn't reject it out of hand.

Their partnership would be no more than a business transaction, but what's the point in holding out for love when it had granted her no guarantees in the past?

Maybe they could make a marriage work. Maybe. One thing is for certain: with the wounds of loss heavy on their souls and the fact that he's given up on finding the big L again, friendship would be all they'd have.

Love would never enter their picture. Ever. Not even for a moment.

Right?

Contains mature themes.

©2023 Suzanne Wright (P)2024 Tantor

Love

I love this book and the audio is amazing. Dax and Addison’s love story is one of my favorite books

wrong narrator for a Suzanne Wright story

I am guessing that to distinctively perform the male protagonist’s voice, that the narrator tried to pitch low (most phrases strained and jarringly distracting from that character and storyline), and the medium pitched “tween to young teen”-aged sounding female protagonist’s voice, there was no more range out of which to choose some of the other female voices which were either gratingly irritating or sounded like that of toddlers as opposed to twenty somethings and thirty year olds - creepily inappropriate - just ICK! The narrator’s voice would be best suited to performing children voices. The story itself was interesting and a really good one characteristic of Suzanne Wright’s excellent work. I wish the story could be re-recorded with any one of the former Suzanne Wright story excellent voice-actor narrators with amazing “body of work”, age appropriate, accurate word pronounciation, non-irritating, believably rich, male AND female character voices like Jill Redfield (Phoenix and Mercury Packs), Cat Doucette (Dark In You), Justine Eyre (Deep In Your Veins) and most of the character voices of Samantha Cook (Olympus Pride, with the exception of the “Blair” adult voice which gets into that too young sounding “ICK!”-zone so I can never re-listen to Blair’s story in that series of audio books).

The LOVE

I fell in love with suzanne wrights paranormal books first and I admit The Favor and Shiver are in with my favorites but this book down right stole my heart!! Just the way the characters nanavigate their love story just makes you keep reading. I loved how they found their way to each other it didn't seem to happen in a way that I could have predicted. suzanne always provides a twist!!

Re-visit The Favor; very similar story line

The book almost parrots one of my favorite books written by Suzanne Wright. There were a lot of similar scenarios in it. So much so the story line strongly reminded me of The Favor. It wasn't exactly the same but the similarities were very recognizable. That being said, if you liked The Favor then you'll like this one too. Although there were some points in it that just had me going, "COME - ON." Still it was a good listen. *spoiler* The 2 main characters are the children of main characters from The Favor and Shiver. They are Addison Davenport and Max Mercier; The daughter of Vienna/Dane Davenport and Kensey/Blake Mercier with Blake taking Dane's role in the story and Addison taking Vienna's. Unlike Suzanne's book Wear Something Red which features Jaxxon and Connor's daughter, Izzy, which features a lot of BDSM. Hard for me to relate the adult Izzy with the 3 year old Izzy in the Epilogue of From Rags. I won't knock the book it was just difficult for me to put aside Izzy's first persona to go along with the very graphic BDSM sex scenes. (You've been warned) That being said, yes, there is some of that in this book but there's more to this book then just sex (unlike Wear Something Red) so I was able to enjoy the story and fast forward thru the sex scenes. lol

Now for the narration...it's true that good book can be totally ruined by using the wrong narrator. Unfortunately, this is true of this book. Also unfortunately, it features only a single narrator so we don't get a break in between by someone more tolerable. It could be that Ivy Peterson just wasn't the right choice for this book or she needs to forget what she learned at the Erin Mallon's school of narration (those out there familiar with Erin's annoying habit of dragging out the consonants at the end of her sentences or in the middle of words know what I'm talking about) and stop talking thru her nose when reading a female character's voice. You can almost actually HEAR her sinuses vibrating. Then she narrates like it's costing her money for every minute she spends reading. Timing, cadence, and inflection are very important and this is something Ivy needs to learn about. I'm not saying she's a bad reader. I'm sure there's a book out there somewhere she narrated and did a wonderful job because the book suited her. This one was not one of them. In a perfect world...we would get the opportunity of enjoying this book with a MUCH more suitable narrator for it and get to REALLY enjoy the story line rather being distracted and annoyed by the discordant mismatch. But I don't see that happening. Maybe try the Kindle version....

next Gen Redwater

This book can be read as a stand-alone but you can enjoy it more if you read both books about the parents.
Refer to ‘Shiver’ for Dax’s parents Blake Mercier and Kensey Lyons-1.
Refer to ‘The Favor’ for Addison’s parents Dane Davenport and Vienna Stratton-2. Characters in the ‘Wear Something Red’ anthology are referenced in this story-3.

The idea of a marriage pact is a bit hokey but it’s executed well in this story and I very much like both main characters - Addison Davenport and Dax Mercier. The story, the characters, the dialogue, the humor, all slot together really well.

Peterson was not a good choice to narrate. There were too many times when she was ‘emoting’ theatrically or ‘reading’ for the kiddos which distracted from the story. It took you out of the story. Peterson was just ok for Addison. She kept irritating me when she tried to narrate male voices, most especially Dax. It was off putting.
Another issue was mispronunciations: It was Self depreCATING not depreCIATING. Whoever chose Peterson to narrate did it as a favor to someone. She was NOT chosen for her skills.

good mix

This book was a great mixture of the favor and shiver from the very beginning it's awesome familiar but it has its own original storyline and also to see where those characters from each perspective book lives went on to become I loved it

Loved It!

Addie and Dax were the perfect couple. This book was long and took you through their entire relationship. You got to see them let their guard down, learn about each other, and grow into the deep love and commitment that made them a true couple.

As always with Suzanne’s books, the secondary characters were just as awesome and made the story even more enjoyable. I hope we get stories on Dax's brothers and Addie's siblings. You know how much we love to see everyone get a HEA.

All of Suzanne’s books are worth the read many times over.

Voices

I really looked the book, my only
Complaint is the super preppy voices..I’m a repeat listener with all my audio books especially Suzanne Wright books, but I don’t see myself listening again due to the narrator..

Mostly Good

I liked the story and the characters, main and supporting, for the most part but did not like their monotone weird narration. Most of the dialogue sounded like an hours long job interview.

I didn’t realize I knew a some of the characters in this book. Glad to have my memory tested and realizing I liked revisiting these characters.

Great listen

This was a fun story about 2 old flames, who have given up on love. Years ago Dax and Addison made a deal that if she wasn’t married by her 30th birthday they were getting married. They both went through separate ways found love and tragically lost both. Now Addison‘s birthday has shown up and Dax won’t take over an answer. This is story with bitter exes, and they’re crazy partners, and meddling families. It was a great read. I would definitely recommend in the narration was great.