Narrated by Shaun Grindell

Garrett Leigh is another of those authors I’ve not managed to get around to reading yet, and once again I’m really pleased to see her novels being released in audio format so I can play catch up! Dream, the first book in the Skins series, is an angsty but deeply romantic story featuring two young men who are struggling to adapt to big changes in their lives – and not always dealing with them well.

Dylan Hart has been in love with his best
friend Sam for years, even though he knows Sam isn’t into him “that way” – and he’s
been (sort of) content to make a regular third in Sam’s relationship with his
girlfriend, Eddie (their story is told in What
Matters, although it’s not necessary to be familiar with it in order to
enjoy this novel). As Dream opens, Dylan
has finally admitted to himself that it isn’t enough for him, and that he needs
to cut the ties if he’s to stand any chance of finding the sort of love they
have.

Hurting and miserable, Dylan wants to
forget, even if it’s just for the night, so he heads for Lovato’s, a club that
caters for all kinds of sexual kinks and tastes and where he knows he’ll find
what he needs. And he does. A hot, rough sexual encounter with a man who
practically fucks him through the mattress and blows his mind.

Angelo Giordano returned to London in order
to help his mother run the family business – a delicatessen in Romford – in his
father’s last months, and is now, after his father’s death, shouldering all the
burdens associated with trying to keep the business and his own head above
water. His career as a dancer with the English National Ballet came to an
abrupt end during a stint in New York owing to a sudden illness, and the
crippling medical bills have left him with practically nothing. His only escape
from his health problems, his money worries, the business that’s sapping his
energy, are the nights he’s able to spend at Lovato’s having anonymous hook-ups
and indulging his penchant for being watched. Something about the slender,
blond (and blindfolded) man waiting naked and ready for him on this particular
night elicits an unexpected reaction in Angelo; he wants to touch and caress
which isn’t what this is supposed to be about – and even though it’s against
the rules, he demands to know the guy’s name.

Dylan works as a debt counsellor at the
Citizen’s Advice Bureau in Stratford and struggles with an increasingly heavy
workload. He’s still missing Sam and Eddie, but that last session at Lovato’s
has definitely helped him start to refocus – though now he has to focus on his
job; his next client is due in a few minutes and he hasn’t had time to read
through the notes from his telephone consultation. But his mind empties when
his office door opens to admit the most beautiful man he’s ever seen; who for
some reason is scowling at him.

The last person Angelo had expected to see
again was the guy he’d nailed so hard at Lovato’s the week before – and
certainly not sitting across the other side of a desk ready to discuss his
financial situation. At the end of the meeting, when Dylan points out that
Angelo has actually come to the wrong office – he lives in Romford and should
go to the CAB there – Angelo gets annoyed and as he leaves, he throws out: “Thanks for your help, Dylan, but I gotta say, you did more for me last
week when I railed you at Lovato’s.”

He immediately regrets it, realising he’s
let his temper and his frustration get the better of him, but doesn’t have the
time or energy to go back and apologise. Yet fate throws him a bone when he’s
on his way home later that day and spies Dylan getting off the bus; Angelo
manages to catch up to him and apologise for his behaviour that morning.

That marks a new beginning for them as they
embark upon a tentative friendship which is underpinned by the strong currents
of attraction running between them. As they start to build something more,
outside of the club and their sexual encounters there (there’s a threesome,
voyeurism and a bit of light bondage, if you were wondering about the Steam
Factor!), both men have to learn to open themselves up and to trust more than
they ever have – and it’s not always easy. When Angelo finally tells Dylan
about the illness that ended his career and put him so badly into debt, it’s a heart-breaking
story, but Dylan’s reaction is both sweet and unexpected:

“I’m
never going to think any less of you when you’re unwell. It’s part of who you
are, but it doesn’t define you.”

– and there’s never a sense of Dylan as
Angelo’s saviour, because these two take care of each other. As Dylan sees Angelo, so Angelo is able to truly see
Dylan, realising that this compassionate, caring man worries endlessly about
being able – or not, given his caseload – to help everyone who asks for it and
being in danger of burn out because of it.

I haven’t listened to Shaun Grindell
before, although I’ve seen his name around quite a lot and I knew I wouldn’t
have to worry about any mangled accents seeing as he hails from my side of the
pond. I was pleased with the “Britishness” of both the story and performance
and on a personal note, this story takes place in areas of London I’m very
familiar with and have lived in, so things like the speech patterns, accents
and vocabulary were comfortingly familiar. Mr. Grindell’s characterisation of
the principals is very good and fits them nicely; Dylan’s accent is like mine –
what is usually called Estuary English – while Angelo’s diction is a little posher
(although not much) and his manner is a little sharper. Mr. Grindell conveys
the emotional content of the story well when it comes to the interactions
between Dylan and Angelo, but it took me quite a while to get used to the way he
reads the narrative portions of the story; he has an almost a sing-song way of
delivery that sounds rather unnatural, and to be honest, I didn’t much care for
it. It’s odd that a narrator can deliver dialogue so naturally, but then lose
that naturalism in other parts of the story; and although I did sort of get
used to it, the juxtaposition was still difficult to listen to.

With that said, I did enjoy the story and
liked the central characters very much. Angelo is perhaps a little more well-defined
than Dylan, but they’re both an appealing mixture of strong and vulnerable, and
by the end of the book, they’ve both come a long way from where they started. Dream wasn’t an unqualified success; there
were a few inconsistencies in the story, and as I’ve said, the narration was
problematic, but I’m probably going to give another book in the series a try.