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Spires #2

e-ARC and ALC provided By NetGalley, Sourcebooks Casablanca and Dreamscape Media. 

Author: Alexis Hall

Narrator: Will Watt

This is a rerelease of Waiting For The Flood with additional material: WFTF and Chasing The Light. 

In WFTF, Edwin Tully lives alone in the house he used to share with Marius, his partner of 12 years, who left him. He lives a quiet life, tending to damaged books and his crotchety neighbor. When a flood comes, it brings Adam Acre, a civil engineer who’s in charge of avoiding major damage to the area. They connect over tea, sandbags and “wellies”. The prose in this one is quite lyrical and a bit different in tone from more recents works by Hall. Chasing The Light is the added, longer novella that shows what happened to Marius. We find him on Christmas Eve when he flees his parents’s house after seeing Edwin (and Adam) at their Christmas dinner. A dinner he wasn’t expected to attend. When walking about, he slips on ice, sprains his ankle and lets his phone slip into the river and doesn’t know how he’ll get out of this pickle. He’s rescued by Leo, a man-bun wearing bearded man who lives on a boat. The attraction is instant, Leo is lovely, but Marius is lashing out like a wounded animal – one that Leo has no problem tending to. The style of this one is more in the vein of Hall’s more recent works and it’s great to see the two sides of a love story that’s over and how these two people find new love in their lives. A very interesting take.

Narration: Will Watt is quickly becoming the voice of Alexis Hall and I’m very good with that. He’s particularly amazing in this one, going from stuttering Edwin to Adam’s gentle voice and from Marius’s sarcastic tone to Leo’s calm and kid of sad demeanor. Amazing work!

Thank you, NetGalley, Sourcebooks Casablanca and Dreamscape Media for allowing me early access.