Narrated by James Edward Jones

I read The Head Game, an antagonists-to-lovers hockey romance with a touch of While You Were Sleeping thrown in, late last year and thoroughly enjoyed it, so I was looking forward to experiencing it again in audio. Narrator James Edward Jones is new-to-me, and I will admit that it took me a while to get used to him; he delivers a more than decent performance, but there are some flaws in it I couldn’t ignore.

Star player Nico Arents and referee August Manning always wind each other up the wrong way while on the ice, with outgoing, cocky Nico taking great delight in needling the straightlaced August. But things change when all that tension boils over into an explosive hook up one night when both men, for very different reasons, are feeling particularly vulnerable and in need of comfort.

It’s a one and done though – they can’t stand each other outside the bedroom.

When Nico collapses and has a seizure during a game and is rushed to hospital, a desperately worried August follows, and when on the ward, blurts out that he’s Nico’s fiancé simply so he can get some information. Nico has a brain tumour (non-cancerous) that has been affecting him for some time and when he has another seizure, he’s rushed into surgery. When his family arrives – they’ve flown in from Europe – they’re delighted to meet their son’s fiancé… and August is stuck in the lie.

This is a nicely-done fake-relationship story. August comes clean about the ‘engagement’ with Nico as soon as he feasibly can, but it’s been leaked to the media and they’re both in a lot of hot water with the league. August is in a lot more trouble than Nico, as their supposed relationship will call into question ever decision he’s ever made on the ice, and he’s potentially looking at the end of his refereeing career. This is all the more poignant because, when he was sixteen, August decided not to try for a career as a player because he didn’t want to live in the closet; now, ten years later, there are more queer, out players, so perhaps he gave up a dream he didn’t need to in order to pursue another one – and now that dream career is on the line.

There’s a lot of humour in the story, and while the characters are believably in their twenties, they’re mature – even Nico, who is prone to recklessness – and they’re good for one another. Nico and August have great chemistry and their romance is well-developed; spending so much time together over a short period of time engenders closeness and intimacy and I liked watching them slipping into an easy, comfortable domesticity without even realising it.

In terms of the narration… the pacing is a little on the slow side, but Mr. Jones’ voice is easy to listen to (despite his sounding like he has a blocked nose!), and he reads expressively – but I wanted a little more than an expressive reading. When the text says a characters laughs or sighs, I want to hear it, but that doesn’t happen here, and because Mr. Jones reads rather than acts, some of the immediacy and animation that should be present in the character interactions is lost.

His characterisations of the leads work well; Nico sounds appropriately flirtatious and lighthearted where August’s lower-pitched dialogue is considered and his very dry humour is nicely articulated. Mr. Jones differentiates fairly well between them, although it seemed to take him a chapter or three to really settle (a couple of times early on, it sounds as though he’s mixed up August and Nico’s voices), and the sex scenes are a little… dispassionate.

There’s a fairly large secondary cast, including Nico’s parents (dad, mum, and two step-mums) and Skylar, Nico’s bestie, plus a handful of teammates and hockey-adjacent characters. The character differentiation is fairly subtle and sometimes I had to rely on the dialogue tags to know who was speaking. Nico’s relatives are Dutch, so Mr. Jones gives them all a vaguely all-purpose European/non-American accent, and while it’s easy to identify Nico’s dad, that’s not the case with his mum and step-mums, who all sound pretty much the same. The other secondary characters are mostly men, and again, I mostly had to rely on dialogue tags, but as those characters don’t appear too often, it wasn’t too much of an issue. Most of them have featured (or will feature) in books of their own, but as this is the first audiobook I’ve listened to by this author, I can’t say if the characterisations are consistent or not.

In the end, I enjoyed the listening experience but wasn’t wowed by it. I loved the story (and would 100% recommend The Head Game in print), but while the narration is by no means terrible, it wasn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be.

Breakdown of Grade: Narration: B; Story – B+

Running time: 12 hours, 44 minutes

Note: At time of writing, this audiobook is available exclusively from the author’s online store.