Audiobook Review: Wake Me Up Inside (Mates #1) by Cardeno C.

Zev Hassick is surprised and confused when he finds himself attracted to his best friend. His very human, very male best friend. Zev is the son of the pack Alpha, regarded as the strongest wolf in generations, born to lead. And everyone knows a male shifter has to mate with a female of his own kind to keep his humanity. So shifters can't be gay, right?

Jonah Marvel wants a relationship with Zev, his best friend, the man he has loved since childhood. It wasn’t easy to maintain that relationship over years spent living apart while Jonah studied to become a doctor. And then things grow more difficult when Jonah becomes his own patient. Before he can make a life with Zev, he has to understand his past and cure the unexplained ailments that plague him.

Zev and Jonah know they’re destined for each other, but they’re facing traditions ingrained over generations and long-buried secrets that may threaten any future together.

Narrator: Charlie David
Listening Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins

I’m kinda odd. I don’t re-read books anymore because I like to keep the first feeling I had with a book. But with audio, it’s different. I love listening to a book I’ve already read to see how different the story looks while being told to me. With someone bringing the characters, the setting and the romance to me in a new way that I see it with new eyes… or rather new ears? You get what I mean, right?

Anyway.

I adored Zev and Jonah when I first read their book. Their story is endearing and fluffy and sexy and romantic and so freaking fracking angsty with the separation but I loved it.

And then…
Then Charlie David took over and told me the same story with so much feeling that I was either swooning, squirming or screaming in frustration and delight waiting for Zev and Jonah to get their HEA.

Let me say, Charlie David as a narrator does not just read the story, he becomes it and by becoming it he pulls you in on a deeper level than you ever expected. I felt everything with Zev and Jonah. I felt the pull of them wanting to be together but not understanding the why of it yet. I felt the affection Jonah had for the wolf he calls “Pup” and how he always felt safe with the wild creature. I felt the horrible separation and what it did to both of them and I felt. I felt and I felt some more and then when I didn’t think I could feel anything more, Charlie David panted in my ear.

I need to take a moment for station identification… when you read a book and it says the character panted, you know what panting means and what it sounds like. Some narrators just read that “he panted” but Charlie David took it a step farther and he panted. It sounds so simple but that action, that really becoming the character took this story to a whole new level and took my blush a few shades darker.

Yup. I’ll say it. The panting was hot!

I don’t know what else to say other than fantastic story. Fantastic narration. Fantastic paring of Jonah and Zev.

This was…

Yup.

Fantastic!