Absolution

I’ll admit, I hit play on *Absolution* expecting another ‘broken man saves broken woman’ trope—but within twenty minutes, Avelyn Paige gutted that expectation. This is a story about two people who *like* the dark, who find solace in the kind of violence that would break most people. The audiobook’s production is flawless, but the real star is the narration. Alexander Cendese’s performance as the vengeful angel (a term used loosely—this guy is no saint) is hypnotic. He doesn’t just *read* the lines; he growls them, like every word is a threat wrapped in velvet. Jillian Macie’s Ricca, meanwhile, is a masterclass in contradiction: her voice trembles with fear one moment, then hardens into something feral the next. It’s that push-pull that makes their dynamic so electric. That said, the pacing stumbles slightly in the middle. Paige lingers a little too long on Ricca’s internal monologues about guilt, which can feel repetitive when the external stakes are so high. And while the desert setting is vivid, I wished for more sensory details—more dust in the throat, more sunburn on the skin—to match the emotional rawness. But these are quibbles. The final act delivers a twist that’s both inevitable and devastating, the kind that leaves you staring at the ceiling long after the audiobook ends. If you love morally gray characters who don’t just *cross* lines but erase them entirely, *Absolution* will ruin you in the best way.