Grin and Bear It by Sam Hall
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
These guys are smoking hot—and my students’ uncles—and I swear I didn’t mean to drunk dial them…
Grin and Bear It
My life is a mess, and so is my house, but I’m a good teacher, right? So why are some of my best students going off the rails?
I meant to ring their uncles to let them know what was going on. But not like this. I drunkenly dump out all of my problems down the phone line, thinking it was my bestie on the other end.
But it was them. And now they want to fix everything, including me.
I’m terrified to let them in, wanting to claw back some kind of professional distance…but these guys? They think I’m their fated mate, and they’ll do anything to make me happy.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long to realize they’ve got a big, fat, hairy secret—one that could make an even bigger mess of my life.
Another terrific bear shifter reverse harem!
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙💜❤️🩷
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘📔
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌍
Character development: 🤓😀😘🤩
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Dual Narration
The heroine: Ellie – she is a high school teacher in Australia and can tend to be a bit of a hot mess, always running late and her life was chaos more often than not. She owned her own home at a young age, but it was a fixer upper and in need of a bunch of fixes. Her best friend Colleen was her roommate and a great friend but didn’t like her boyfriend Derick, who rarely took Ellie out, and even when he did, he always met her there, never picking her up. Ellie found out the hard way that Derick viewed her as only a side piece to hook up with.
The Heroes: Nash, Lin, Cole, Tyson – They are all bear shifters and uncles to a pair of teenage twin boys whose parents recently died. Nash had been screwed up since his brother was killed by shifter hunters while on vacation in America. The guys own a construction contracting company, one is a painter, one is a plumber, one an electrician and one is a builder.
The Story: The twin boys in Ellie’s class got in trouble for using their phones in class to show the class a picture of her in a bikini from her trip to Bali a few years ago. The picture should not be accessible to students because of the social media policy of the school and Ellie had only posted it on her instagram which was private aside from a few close friends. Ellie was afraid that having the picture go around the school would end up labeling her as a sexual predator. Later that night after her life started to fall to pieces, she called her friend and immediately went into a rant about everything that went wrong before she noticed that she had called the Walker twins’ guardian Nash and not her friend.
I liked Nash, he immediately helped Ellie by directing her to calm down and even after finding out what his nephews had done that day, he came over to Ellie’s house and helped her fix her plumbing. He did a quick fix and brought the rest of his guys over the following day to have a better look at her plumbing issues. They included the twins as punishment for what they did the previous day. I thought it was pretty funny that Ellie assumed the guys were all gay since they aren’t related but live and work together and are all guardians for the twins.
“I wanted to accept Nash’s offer. Perhaps he and his guys were a part of a kindly bunch of gay tradesmen that helped hapless women out of their DIY nightmares.”
That above quote about her assumption made me laugh. It’s such a relatable moment—jumping to conclusions based on surface-level details. And Ellie’s life being a chaotic mess just makes her feel more real. The way the bear shifters swoop in with their construction skills to patch up both literal and metaphorical damage is such a satisfying element.
The twins were fifteen years old, and they were hurt and angry about the loss of their parents and they had been getting into a lot of trouble because of it and Nash had been depressed and barely able to get out of bed until he met Ellie, so he and the guys had basically no knowledge of the problems. I enjoyed the story about the fractured family especially the dynamic between Ellie and Nash, and how the loss of the twins’ parents shaped their guardians’ lives. I love how Nash steps up, not just for Ellie but for his nephews, showing that rugged competence doesn’t have to mean emotional detachment.
This audiobook was narrated from multiple perspectives, done in dual narration by Sofia Lette and Dorje Swallow. These same two narrators did the first two books in this series, and I really enjoyed the narration in those books. Sofia has a nice, soft voice with a very pleasant tone. She is very expressive, and I love the Australian accent. Dorje Swallow has a great voice and a sexy Australian accent as well. He does a fantastic job.
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