Sports romance gets a Dungeons & Dragons makeover with the next book in the Magic and Romance series that follows half-giant Orok, forced into a PR relationship with a feisty, fan-favorite cheerleader.
Orok star defensive tank on the Philadelphia Hellhounds rawball team. Half-giant. Patron Urzoth, god of strength . . . only Orok’s tired of being tied to a god known for aggression. So (don’t tell his mother) he’s planning on renouncing Urzoth.
Until the cult of Galaxrien, Urzoth’s sworn enemy, ends up causing a lot of damage through their ill-advised attempts to summon him, and the followers of both deities find themselves blamed for the long-standing feud and its ramifications.
Alexo cheerleading intern with the Hellhounds. Smells like apples, which Orok only knows because he picked Alexo up. Accidentally—Orok publicly saves Alexo from a bar fight, and fans go feral for the muscly pro athlete being protective of the pint size dude-in-distress.
That’s enough to have the Hellhounds and Urzoth’s church both coming to them with a Orok and Alexo will start a PR relationship to put a positive spin on Urzoth. Orok is all set to refuse—and finally separate from Urzoth—when the team offers Alexo a starting spot on the cheerleading squad to play up the star athlete and cheerleader optics. It’s such an obvious dream come true for Alexo that Orok finds himself agreeing to the arrangement like the sap he is.
He can keep living a lie for a bit longer. But Orok starts to wonder if they can drop the fake part of this fake-relationship…
Orok star defensive tank on the Philadelphia Hellhounds rawball team. Half-giant. Patron Urzoth, god of strength . . . only Orok’s tired of being tied to a god known for aggression. So (don’t tell his mother) he’s planning on renouncing Urzoth.
Until the cult of Galaxrien, Urzoth’s sworn enemy, ends up causing a lot of damage through their ill-advised attempts to summon him, and the followers of both deities find themselves blamed for the long-standing feud and its ramifications.
Alexo cheerleading intern with the Hellhounds. Smells like apples, which Orok only knows because he picked Alexo up. Accidentally—Orok publicly saves Alexo from a bar fight, and fans go feral for the muscly pro athlete being protective of the pint size dude-in-distress.
That’s enough to have the Hellhounds and Urzoth’s church both coming to them with a Orok and Alexo will start a PR relationship to put a positive spin on Urzoth. Orok is all set to refuse—and finally separate from Urzoth—when the team offers Alexo a starting spot on the cheerleading squad to play up the star athlete and cheerleader optics. It’s such an obvious dream come true for Alexo that Orok finds himself agreeing to the arrangement like the sap he is.
He can keep living a lie for a bit longer. But Orok starts to wonder if they can drop the fake part of this fake-relationship…
Title: The Fake Divination Offense (Magic and Romance #2)
Author: Sara Raasch
Publisher: Bramble/Macmillan Audio
Expected Publication Date: May 19, 2026
Review:
Thank you to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this audio to listen to and give my honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
I was really looking forward to this book. I have been loving the queer books Raasch has been writing, especially the audio. The narrators have all been really great. I have listened to one other book by Vikas Adam before and enjoyed his narration enough so I was pretty confident he would do Orok justice. And I could not wait to hear Orok's story since there seemed to be so much more to him than what was presented in the last book.
Unfortunately I was disappointed with this book in so many ways. I hate that I have to write this review at all, to be honest. I went in with such high expectations and came away completely and utterly disappointed.
The narrator had such potential to bring Orok's character to life. And for parts of the book I did like how he voiced him. But for most of the book his voice was so rough and angry it made me disconnect with the character. I know the character has anger from his past, I get that. But it dripped into all his interactions. Vikas Adam truly overplayed the role for me, really trying to act out the character rather than just give him a voice to show us who he is. He was growly much of the time, I kept having to rewind scenes and turn the volume up because I couldn't understand what he was saying. He took a character I enjoyed from the previous book and made me dislike him. This was super frustrating for me. I also hated how he voiced most of the other characters, especially Seb and Alexo. It's like he didn't know Seb at all. If he had listened to the previous book, he would not have voiced the character the way he did for sure. And don't get me started on the long drawn out sex scenes that were totally over the top with Adam's narration. I love some good smut but his narration just made it uncomfortable more than anything else. The first scene truly made me feel like Orok was in charge, despite saying he wasn't, and Alexo just taking it no matter the consequences. Overall, I just didn't enjoy this as an audio book at all.
Now, given Orok's background and size, I get that he might be kind of a brute. But he didn't come off that way in the first book at all. And I understand he has some possessive tendencies, but it was so overdone. He didn't make me feel his connection with Alexo at all. Where was the chemistry I thought might be brewing. The book tried to make it a slow burn but it really wasn't.
And where is the banter I know Raasch infuses into her books? I maybe laughed once while listening to this, if that. The characters came off as super flat and that just slowed the pacing down for me.
I had to force myself to listen to the story. I just didn't care about the characters, the plot, or anything else, to be honest.
The best part of the narration was the newscasters at the beginning of the chapters where they were given voice. Those times were fun.
I understand the book was dealing with heavier topics with the abuse from the camp Orok and Seb attended, to the potential for harm to Alexo, but I just didn't even care.
And there were so many plot holes leaving things to feel very surface level at best,.This book takes place a few years after the last book and you're given barely any backstory to what happened during that time. Orok left to go play ball in Vegas and then leaves him team to come back to Philly. There were obvious reasons why, but they are never addressed or explored. Also, what is Rawball? How does it work? We see games in this book but I know nothing of what those games entail or how they are won/lost, This is a sports romance but we barely know or see antyhing about the sport. And the religion thing is honestly just confusing to me. I didn't truly understand Orok and his religion in book 1, but I got the gist. I thought it would be explored more in book 2, since that is such an important part of who he is, but it isn't. It's glossed over for the most part. All we know is he's not happy with it.
I'm sad to give this one two stars after loving the first book (and also Raasch's other series, Royals and Romance). I just didn't care about the characters or the story, Perhaps my expectations for this were too high. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it better in print. I will still read the upcoming books in both these series and I will hope they are done better than this one.
Author:
Sara Raasch has known she was destined for bookish things since the age of five, when her friends had a lemonade stand and she tagged along to sell her hand-drawn picture books too. Not much has changed since then — her friends still cock concerned eyebrows when she attempts to draw things and her enthusiasm for the written word still drives her to extreme measures. Her debut YA fantasy, SNOW LIKE ASHES, the first in a trilogy, came out October 14, 2014 from Balzer + Bray. It does not feature her hand-drawn pictures.
No comments:
Post a Comment