Hmm. Well. This book is slow-going. It’s definitely more romance-centric than what I was expecting since this wasn’t actually listed under the Romance category on Audible. I was expecting more rebellion and explosions? More suspense? Instead, this is a bit more light-hearted as far as the overall plot goes.
The book is fairly long, and I may not have finished it otherwise if it wasn’t for Kirt Graves’s narration. The narration is top-notch and can I just say that he does children’s voices VERY well?? He also does an English accent for one of the MCs – Kevin.
Although, I will note that the story is told in third-person but only Kevin’s speaking voice adopts an English accent and the narration of the story is still done in an American one. The story is a little choppy and since I listen to audiobooks at 2x speed, I got lost a lot between scene changes where days or weeks would pass with almost no warning.
This entire book is like a setup for the second book. It introduces you to the characters and the world. This is set in the not too distant future, where a select few corporations run the United States and we’ve fallen into a state where every citizen is monitored and you have the rebels living off grid, or in the “dust”, just trying to survive.
There are a few unanswered questions regarding how the rebel factions can be so organized and if they were once the military and somehow got edged out by the major corporations. I’m not entirely sure how that all came together.
At the heart of this story is a romance between the new commander, Aiden, and the logistics officer, Kevin. Aiden is a trans man and is anxious and new to being a commander. His first big assignment is a group of people who come from all walks of life called the Wildcards (okay, I totally still call them Wildcats because High School Musical is totally engrained into my psyche). They’re a failing group now ever since their commander Taylor died of cancer and now it’s up to a newbie like Aiden to get them back up to their previous numbers.
Aiden is precious and seems to do a good job as a commander? But the story seems to skip almost all the parts where he shows real leadership and shows him just trying to figure out how to get the Wildcards to work together. A lot of his anxiety stems from him not wanting the Wildcards from finding out he’s trans. In a world where it’s normalized to be genetically modified from birth, being homosexual is a crime, and being trans especially so. He makes it work off the grid, but he’s worried because he’s seen what can happen to those who aren’t deemed “normal”.
Something I love is that Aiden is never “outed” as trans because of something awful, but it’s only because he chose to tell people he’s trans. He does choose to tell Kevin his deadname, but I think that was the only time it came up.
I’m not sure I’ve seen an #ownvoices review for the book yet, so I’m not sure how this book rates for trans readers but the story doesn’t seem to fall into the usual horrid tropes in stories with trans characters for what it’s worth.
There are quite a few sex scenes in the back half of this book. It’s sweet how the characters ALWAYS ask for consent and I love how both Aiden and Kevin are equally awkward.
This one ends with a HFN seeing as there’s a hint at bigger things to come, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens to the Wildcards in book two. I know the text is already out, but I’ll definitely be waiting for the audiobook release!