Narrated by Iggy Toma and Alexander Cendese

May Archer’s The Gift – the second book in her Love in O’Leary series – is a cute, low-drama, fake-relationship/GFY romance set in a small town in upstate New York where everyone seems to know everyone else and has their nose in everyone else’s business. That intrinsic busybody-ness is part of what sets this particular story in motion, when one member of the community, thinking to spare a friend from the gossip-mongers, basically announces to everyone in town that he (who is gay) and said friend (who is not) are romantically involved.

Daniel Michaelson moved to a small house in
the woods outside O’Leary some months earlier after his big city life imploded
and his career went tits-up. Wanting to get away from everything – his friends,
his family and, most of all, reminders of his failure – he keeps himself to
himself, travelling into O’Leary rarely and, unbeknownst to him, gaining
himself a reputation as a bit of an oddball. Towards the end of the previous
book in the series, that reputation caused the O’Learyans to become suspicious
of him, the rumour mill even going so far as to suggest that he may have been
involved with the recent disappearances of a couple of hikers – and it’s this
suspicion that causes the town vet, Julian Ross, to give Daniel an alibi by
telling everyone they’re a couple.

Which… they’re not, although they’ve
actually been friends for a few months, since the day Daniel rescued an injured
owl and rushed it to Julian’s surgery. They get together regularly to share a
meal and talk about books, watch movies and just hang out, but that’s all there
is, or all there can be between them because while Julian is very much
attracted to Daniel, Daniel is very much straight. He’s also very unforthcoming
about his life before O’Leary and his background; he clams up whenever the
subject of family comes up, he won’t talk about what he does for a living or
divulge anything about his past, and Julian learns to skirt around those
topics, even though, the longer their friendship progresses, the more hurt and
frustrated he becomes at Daniel’s unwillingness to tell him anything at all.

I like fake-relationship stories as a rule,
and in spite of the rather awkward beginning to this one, Julian and Daniel
make a cute couple and I liked them as friends, as a couple and as individuals.
Julian is a really sweet guy who longs for connection, but even though he’s
highly competent when it comes to his job, deep down, he’s insecure about his
attractiveness and so worried about meeting everyone’s expectations and keeping
them happy that he’s forgotten that he’s entitled to happiness, too. Daniel has
recently ended a marriage (to a woman) that lasted just a year, and is on the
outs with his family; like Julian he struggled under the weight of
expectations, but in Daniel’s case, he knows
he’s a huge disappointment to his parents – and to himself – given the
circumstances that sent him running off to O’Leary in the first place. The
trouble is, however, that when we FINALLY learn those reasons, I found myself
thinking “Huh? That was IT?” because they’re really anti-climactic and, to be
honest, make Daniel’s wound-licking seem a little pathetic. The revelations are
also too long in coming – which I’m sure also contributed to my general feeling
of “meh” once they came out; the author spent so much time building them up
that I’d expected something really serious instead of… well, what actually
happened.

In terms of the romance, the author creates
a really strong friendship between Julian and Daniel, which makes their
transition to lovers feel like a natural progression; they have good chemistry
and the author creates a strong sense of the attraction and connection they
feel for and to each other. Daniel can’t help feeling confused when he starts
to realise that he’s attracted to Julian when he’s never felt the slightest bit
attracted to a man before; but when he decides to acknowledge and accept that
attraction for what it is and try for something with Julian, I liked that he
didn’t try to second-guess himself. He doesn’t know if he’s gay, bi or
something else, and as far as Daniel is concerned, it doesn’t matter, labels
don’t matter. He’s falling for Julian, and he wants him in his life… and that’s
enough.

We met some of the secondary cast in the
previous book (The Fall); the
O’Learyans continue to be a likeable bunch for the most part, and I was pleased
that the main sub-plot was a lot less bonkers this time around.

I’ve listened to both narrators several times before, and have enjoyed their collaborations so far in Eden Finley’s Fake Boyfriend series, so I was pleased to see them teaming up again. Iggy Toma pitches his voice a bit lower and gruffer than usual to read the chapters from Daniel’s PoV, while Alexander Cendese lightens his up a bit to read those from Julian’s. I admit that I’d expected that to be the other way around, but it didn’t matter; I like listening to both of them, and they captured the essence of Daniel and Julian’s characters really well, so it’s still a win! They do an excellent job with the vocal characterisations across the board in fact, from crusty old Henry Mayor to the town gossip and mean-girl, Karen Mitchener-Martin who, in the hands of Alexander Cendese is, quite simply, a hoot. I’ve mentioned several times that his female voices can often seem caricature-like, but in many cases, the characters are supposed to be that way, so the voices work for me. Both narrators bring the town and its colourful inhabitants to life and are really good at picking up on the humour in the text, but most importantly they convey the strength of the emotional connection between Daniel and Julian really well.

The
Gift is an entertaining listen in spite of its
flaws. I enjoyed it a lot more than the first book in the series (the absence
of the bonkers sub-plot was a big help on that score), and although it’s a bit
cheesy in places, I liked the central characters and bought into their romance.
It’s an undemanding listen with a heavy helping of cute, and the excellent
performances from Iggy Toma and Alexander Cendese earn it a recommendation.