Genre/Tags: Gay Paranormal Romance *TW Mentions of SA & Torture

Author: Shannon Mae

Story Rating: 4 Stars

Narrator: Iggy Toma and Alexander Cendese

Narrator Rating: No Rating  (See review) 

Length: 16 hours & 16 minutes

Audiobook Buy Links: Audible, Amazon

Quinton

Getting kidnapped and held hostage in a human trafficker’s basement was not on my bingo card. Getting rescued by a paranormal being was also not on my bingo card. (Apparently, I needed to trade in bingo cards.) The guy who took me may be dead, but I know there are more people behind the operation, and I plan to shut it down. If I need to get the help of one of the creepy glowing-eyed dudes to do it, I will. It turns out Liam is incredibly sexy and really good with technology, too. He may be great at hacking into computers, but I’m determined to hack my way into his life.

Liam

Ever since I looked into the feisty human that Dexter rescued from a basement, I’ve been a little… obsessed. Is it wrong that I watch him all the time and hack into all his technology? I’m just trying to keep him safe. After all, he’s sticking his nose into some troubling areas, and I can’t deal with the thought of him getting taken again. Of course, I offer to help him when I discover his mission to take down a trafficking ring, although my motives aren’t exactly pure. The little human attracts me in a way that I can’t explain, and my hellhound thinks he’s mine, whether he wants to be or not.

Review: 

There are two relationships in this book, the MCs, Quinton and Liam, and the trauma bond, brotherly relationship between Quinton and Aiden because Q and Aiden are both survivors of being kidnapped. Both under different circumstances, but both still resulting in trauma. Aiden likes things to be more peaceful and safe, he does therapy, goes for walks in the woods, loves baking, but he understands why Q feels the way he does. Q deals with his trauma by getting angry and wanting to bring down the human trafficking ring behind his kidnapping. 

Fuck Marcus, and fuck his friends, and fuck everyone at that fucking bar who watched me leave with him. Fuck everyone who watched James lead me into the back, barely able to walk. No one had said a fucking word. Fuck it. We’d hunt them all down, and I would be fine.

Both of them have been working at Cassius’s coffee shop as well as living across the road from him and his partner, Kushiel, who I believe is an angel? They’ve looked out for the safety of both Q and Aiden since they were taken there by the Paradise Falls hellhound pack members. However, when Q decides to take matters into his own hands, the trafficking ring now knows he’s still alive, so the hellhound pack relocate them to their property for further protection. 

Liam is a computer and tech whizz and he’s been rather (over)protective of Q from the beginning, with cameras everywhere in Q and Aiden’s apartment. He sees Q as his but he hasn’t voiced that to anyone. Once Q finds out about the cameras, he sets some boundaries, but also likes the protected feeling he gets from someone watching over him and Aiden. Aiden feels the same as Q but they both have limits which Q relays to Liam. Initially he calls Liam a creepy stalker which eventually gets upgraded to sexy stalker as they connect. I’m going to chuck it out there and say the word stalker preceded by creepy or sexy, is mentioned seventy-nine times. It was used way too much and wears thin.    

I do love how Liam calls Q his little hellcat. And I was here for his boundaryless care because this is paranormal. For all that, he does give Q the space he requests, not only for him but Aiden as well. And for all his clueless space invading, Liam allows Q to set the pace in regards to sex, and if there’s to be a relationship – starting it, progressing it to anything further. So much so that Q questions at one stage whether Liam felt for him what he was feeling for Liam. Needing secure attachment was very real for Q. He’d had it with his mother and father, then they died and he was cut adrift. Then he was kidnapped to be sex trafficked.  

There is humour throughout the book and some of that centres on Q’s interactions with Dex’s partner, Toby, who’s a writer. I loved how this book started out with Toby inviting Q over to his place for a get together with his friends, Seb and Josh, but somehow making it sound like an invite to something freaky. Toby remains as random as random can be. Mostly, he’s excited about having another human as part of his newfound world. Q goes to Toby’s to see what in the hell is going on, being reassured by Toby’s friends that it’s just Toby being Toby, forever caught up in book plotting, it’s fine. I’d laugh every time Q had an interaction with Toby because he believes Toby’s some sort of supernatural being that he can’t quite pinpoint. Maybe a vampire with vampire minions, which he isn’t. He’s human. Q knows these guys are hellhounds because of how Dex rescued him, but Aiden was rescued by Jude and Corbin who didn’t show their hellhound side. From book #1, How to Flirt with a Hellhound, Q’s interactions with Toby were crazy. 

Hellhounds were fucking weird. I mean, I knew that Dexter and Toby were batshit, even though I still wasn’t sure what Toby was.  

For all the fun and mayhem, there are gentler moments in the book. Especially between Q and Aiden. The mindful and caring camaraderie of Q and Aiden provides pathos in How to Hack a Hellhound and makes it all the better for their relationship. Mae gave her characters permission to be vulnerable in regards to their trauma. If either were having nightmares or generally feeling insecure, they’d talk or sleep in the same bed for comfort. It felt real seeing both of these young men talking to each other and being able to cry in front of the other when they felt overwhelmed. It wasn’t often but it felt organic. Our society teaches men (and women are also taught to believe this as fact) that vulnerability is a male weakness when it is anything but that. Kudos to Mae.

 I was crying steadily now, and Aiden reached out and took my hand in his. I couldn’t seem to stop the tears.

Narration: I respect the difficulty of voicing multiple characters in audiobooks. I loved both of these narrators in How to Flirt With a Hellhound but in this one, Cendese had problems voicing secondary characters, including Dexter who he voiced in book #1. Toma was his usual quality, solid as a rock narrator.    

I’m hooked on this found family that keeps growing in the Hellhounds of Paradise Falls series. I already have book #3 that I’ll be reading shortly. Dex and Toby remain my favourite couple and story thus far. For this book, 4 stars overall.  

“We’re just…”
“We’re family,” I finished.
“Yeah,” he said, smiling. “Family. I like that.”