Betrayal (Infidelity, #1)

by Aleatha Romig

[Melanie]

My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

4.5 stars

I went into this story pretty much not knowing anything about it. I’ve read Aleatha Roming before and I really enjoyed the first three books I’ve read (The Light Duology and Insidious). So I grabbed the first book in another series from her.

This is the story of Alexandria Charles Montague Collins. She comes from the wealthy Montague family in Savannah. The thing with southern money, they are all about keeping the family alive. The fact that her mother was the only Montague to have children and a girl at that, doesn’t mean that her mother doesn’t want to work to keep the family name around. Her mother really wants her to marry a good southern man from a good family to keep the bloodline going. Alex has other plans.

Betrayal is told from two timelines. There is the present and 6 weeks ago. Alex (as she prefers to be called), has just finished up getting her undergrad degree at Stanford. She’s been accepted to Columbia School of Law. In the “6 weeks ago” timeline, Alex and her best friend from college decide to go on a girls week in Del Mar. There, Alex decides to be completely impulsive and even go by a different name, Charli. Charli is going to do things that Alexandria or even Alex wouldn’t dream of. While in Del Mar she comes across Nox, a really hot guy staying in the Presidential suite. They decide to use their week as they can and then go back to their own lives.

In the “present” timeline, Alex has been summoned home to Savannah to meet with her mother and stepfather. Needless to say that Alex and her stepfather are not in a good relationship. There are a few flashbacks to her childhood. I wouldn’t like him either. There is also an ex-boyfriend who was never as much of a boyfriend as her mother would’ve liked.

This was a pretty amazing listen. Alex is a very strong willed southern woman who has seen the world outside of the South. She really wants nothing to do with her family. She wants to go to law school and make her own money. Nox is very much an alpha male. He exudes power. He takes what he wants.

As I listened to these two timelines, I was very curious about where this was going. I knew the two stories were going to come together at some point, but I had know idea how that was all going to come together. I will admit that I didn’t see it ending up the way it did. I really enjoyed both timelines. I thought the time with Nox was extremely hot. I was also very intrigued with the story with Alex at home with her family, even if I really despised them.

Hard time choosing a genre for this book. I looked at Goodreads, some people labeled it as a romance, dark, etc. I didn’t like calling this “Dark Romance”. I didn’t think it was dark enough for this genre. Amazon had it in Mystery, so I thought that worked better. So, Mystery Romance it is. There is a lot of trying figure out where the story is going. I had my headphones glued to my ears. I really wanted to know where this story is going.

One thing I really want to call out too. The name of the series is Infidelity and the title of the book is Betrayal. I won’t go into why the series or the book have these titles, but I will say that there is ZERO cheating in this book. I know that is a hard stop for many people (I’m not a fan of it either). I just don’t want that to be an issue for not trying this series.

Narration
4 stars
Samantha Prescott narrates almost this entire book. There is only a small part of this book that is told from Nox’s POV and those are the parts that Brian Pallino narrated. I think both narrators did a really good job with the narration. I can say that Prescott’s Southern accent isn’t a strong one, but you could hear when Alex was in Savannah. I thought that both narrators handled male and female character voices with ease. I liked the pace and tone. Prescott handled the very graphic sex scenes without a problem. I would listen to either of these narrators again.

**I like to thank the publisher for providing me with a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.