Falls Boys by Penelope Douglas

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Aro

Hawken Trent. So polite. So sweet. Such an upstanding young man. A virgin, too, I hear. He never gets naughty with a girl. Probably because Jesus told him not to. And now here he is, trying to be the hero by protecting another girl from me.

He calls me a bully. Irrational. Unreasonable. A criminal. He can call me anything he wants, I’ve heard worse. And he can try to stand between me and my money, but he’s never had to fight for food. That rich, clean, school boy doesn’t have what it takes.

Hawke

I surprised her. You should’ve seen her face.

Just because I don’t have a record, honey, doesn’t mean I’m clean. It just means I’m better at not getting caught. That is until I realize I might’ve actually gone too far this time.

She’s there. I’m there. The scene of the crime. It’s dark. The police show up. We have no choice. We run. Down High Street, into Quinn’s bake shop, and I pull her through the entrance to the old speakeasy that everyone forgot was here decades ago.

The door locks, the cops circle the building, never knowing we’re right here, and I’m hidden in plain sight, indefinitely, with someone’s who’s awful. Mean. Rough. Dirty. A thief. A delinquent.

Until one night, lost in all of these rooms together, I don’t see any of those things anymore. She’s smart. Daring. Soft. Hot… Everything’s changing. It’s this place. It does something to people.

We have a silly urban legend in Shelburne Falls about mirrors. They’re a gateway. Don’t lean back into them. But we came through front first. I don’t care what the county records say. This was never a speakeasy. It’s Carnival Tower.

Fall Boys is a standalone new adult romance suitable for listeners eighteen plus. Listening to the Falls Away series first is helpful but not necessary.

Falls Boys

Fall Away Second Generation!

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙💚❤️💜
Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌏🌎
Character development: 🤓😉☺️😍
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Dual Narration

The heroine: Aro – she lives in Westin and works at a delivery service company with some pretty shady characters who grew up in the same foster home together. They deliver anything, collect rent and run stolen merchandise. Aro still lives with foster parents, she has a real mother, but she doesn’t want Aro and Aro helps support her sisters. Hugo, the boss whom she also grew up with, threatens that now Aro is eighteen, she better not mess up or come back empty handed or she will end up doing other work (on her back). She does collections and gets physical when she needs to. She is a tough one and she hates her life.

The Hero: Hawken Trent (a.k.a. Hawke) – a resident of Shelburne Falls (the other side of the tracks from Westin). Their claim to fame is Jared Trent, a former racer, who just happens to be Hawke’s uncle, from the book Bully and the Fall Away series. Hawke graduated recently and was student body president before that. People think he is a good guy, but there is much more to him than everyone thinks.

The Story: After a night of collecting for Hugo, Aro is robbed by two cops and she can’t go back empty handed, so she goes to find the Pirates (people from Shelburne Falls), planning to get money from some people who owe her. She gets into a fight with Dylan Trent a girl who owes her for stolen merchandise. The fight is broken up by Hawken Trent, Dylan’s cousin. She gets back at him by pick pocketing him and robbing his house.

This one is a wild ride from the very beginning. Aro and Hawke both get in deep trouble that night with both Hugo and his boss who is even more dangerous. The two end up hiding out together and plan to take down the cop in charge of the local drug trade before the cop gets to them first. There are a lot of throwbacks to the Fall Away series and Hawke’s dad is Jaxon from Falling Away which is my favorite book of the series.

I liked the story quite a bit, but I didn’t really like the fact that Hawke had issues with sex. He was a virgin and couldn’t get comfortable with a woman he didn’t have a deep connection with. I don’t have a problem with that, but I just like a Hero who is confident and knows how to please a woman. Hawke was confident in other ways, but I just didn’t like that part of him.

This audiobook was told in dual points of view via dual narration. It was narrated by Abby Craden and Axel Bosley. Abby Craden has an odd voice in my opinion. It is soft and feminine but has a kind of high-class whiny quality to it, like a wealthy girl who is above everything and doesn’t like to be bothered with the details. This was my first time listening to Axel Bosley, and he doesn’t have too bad a voice, but it definitely isn’t one of my favorites. The story was good, but I didn’t connect with these characters as much as I would have liked.

Blog|Goodreads|Facebook|Instagram|Twitter|BookBub

View all my reviews