Before You Press Play
- Voice: Teddy Hamilton sits alone in the narrator field for a description written entirely in the male lead's first person, and the one reviewer who set out to grade the recording broke off first.
- Big ideas: Dark new adult romance, obsession and possession, a duet resolution, revenge collapsing into reconciliation.
- Atmosphere: Possessive, feverish, unapologetically extreme.
- Worth it?: A closing half that satisfies the readers who came for it, on a listing that warns you twice against starting here.
One reviewer here announced a rating list covering both the ebook and the audiobook, and the visible text stops before the audio ever comes up. ReaderAddict's entry, posted two days after release, is titled Great Ending to a Duet with Audiobook Review As Well, opens by naming the formats read, and then works down a checklist: HEA, yes. Relationship type, MF. Dark, not to me. Heat, four out of five. Romance, four and a half to five. Pacing, mid. And then, mid-sentence, it stops. The only reviewer who set out to grade the recording never reached that line.
Where This One Lands
That gap is the shape of this whole listing, and none of it is ReaderAddict's fault. The description runs to under a hundred words and consists mostly of fragments in the male lead's voice: a bet turned into a nightmare, she broke my heart, all mine for the taking. It names one person, Naomi, and nothing else about the plot. What it does supply is a category, dark new adult, and two warnings, that the book contains dubious situations some listeners might find offensive or triggering, and that this is the last part of a duet and is not stand-alone. For a book selling itself on extremity, that is a remarkably thin pitch, and it loads nearly all the informational weight onto the reviewers.
Teddy Hamilton sits alone in the narrator field, and the way the copy is written makes that worth a moment. Every line of the description is spoken by the male lead: she broke me, all mine for owning. A duet closing out from one side of the couple, read by one voice, is at least internally consistent with itself. What the credit will not tell you is whether the other half of the couple gets a voice of her own anywhere across eight hours and forty-five minutes, and no field in the metadata supplies the answer. A self-published listing has no house style forcing that detail into the open, and this one leaves it out.
Why Black Thorns Works as an Audiobook
Dark romance duets live or die on the second half, and the column is close to unanimous that this one lands. The entry from cdorsey76, written on release day itself, calls the Thorns Duet a favorite series and describes becoming instantly obsessed with Kent's work. Elsa 21 reports a whirlwind of emotions and credits Kent with dark romantic elements and unexpected developments, angst and heartache among them. Don Chargualaf, who guessed wrong about a twist in an earlier review and says so cheerfully, has enough affection for the supporting cast to nominate Kai as the standout. That is a readership discussing a world, not a book. Three graders here handed it five stars, and the enthusiasm reads as specific rather than reflexive.
Rina Kent is credited here as both author and publisher, her own name sitting beside the imprint Blackthorn Books LLC, and that explains the shape of everything around the title. Self-published dark romance travels on series momentum and reader loyalty, and this page shows both at work: reviewers arriving by way of a novella called Yellow Thorns, by way of Red Thorns as part one, and out of a back catalog they are still making their way through. Elsa 21's entry is largely a campaign, in capital letters, for a standalone book about Ethan and Agnus. The loyalty is as much the product here as the plot is, and the column reads like a community more than an audience.
What Gives Us Pause
Barbie51 supplies the only dissent here, a three-star grade, and it is precise about what bothered it: the pacing in the third act. It also mentions, without elaborating, having heard about the controversy surrounding this series, and then moves straight on. Don Chargualaf flags the pacing independently, saying things progressed kinda fast and wishing for more of Naomi's relationship with her father, and with a character called Mio. Two readers who otherwise disagree about the book agree that the closing stretch is compressed, and on a recording under nine hours a compressed final act gets felt, not skimmed past. Neither reader treats it as disqualifying, which is worth saying plainly.
Two more things this page declines to tell you. The first is what the controversy Barbie51 alludes to actually was. No entry explains it, and the description offers only that the book contains dubious situations some listeners might find offensive or triggering. The second is the reading order. Barbie51 came in through the novella Yellow Thorns and then Red Thorns, part one of the duology, while the series field records only Thorns Duet, position two, and makes no mention of a novella anywhere. Both omissions land in the same spot: a listener has to reconstruct from the reviews what the metadata should have stated.
Anybody planning to weigh this against the first half should also know these responses are spread across four years. Two responses were written within days of the July 2021 release, and the remaining three arrived in 2025, long after the fact. The early responses read as launch-week reaction. The later ones read as a series being discovered backward, by people working through a catalog. Both are useful, and they are not describing the same experience.
Who Should Listen to Black Thorns
Romance readers already inside Kent's world are the obvious audience, and the responses argue the case better than the copy does: a duet that closes properly, a twist about who Akira turns out to be that two reviewers separately tried to guess in advance, one of them correctly and one not, and a supporting cast people want more of. Anyone who reads dark new adult and prefers the tropes stated plainly will find a description doing exactly that, in the male lead's own possessive first person, before a single minute has been spent. It suits anyone who wants a duet finished in one go, since eight hours and forty-five minutes fits inside a long weekend without any strain.
Nobody should begin with this volume, and the page warns you twice over: the description rules out reading it alone, while Barbie51's entry lays out the novella and the first half that came before it. Listeners who need consent handled cleanly, or who want those dubious situations named before committing, will not find that naming anywhere in the copy. Standalone listeners have been warned twice, once by the copy and once by the reviewer who read the duet in order.
Common Questions
Is Black Thorns a standalone audiobook?
No. The description says outright that this volume closes a duet and cannot be taken alone, and the series field records it at position two in the Thorns Duet. Reviewers describe an even longer route in, beginning with a novella and continuing through the first half before arriving here, so the listing understates the reading order more than it overstates it.
Who narrates the Black Thorns audiobook?
Teddy Hamilton is the only name in the narrator field for a recording of eight hours and forty-five minutes. Since the description is written entirely in the male lead's possessive first person, a single reader is at least consistent with the copy. One reviewer promised a format-by-format verdict, then broke off before the audio portion.
What content warnings apply to Black Thorns?
The description carries one, and it is vague: a dark new adult book containing dubious situations some listeners might find offensive or triggering. No reviewer spells out what those are, and one mentions a controversy around the series without describing it. Treat that warning as substantive; it is not marketing garnish.
Is the pacing a problem in Black Thorns?
Two readers say so independently. The three-star entry names the pacing in the third act as its single complaint, while a five-star entry says things progressed kinda fast and wanted more of Naomi's relationship with her father. On a recording this short, a compressed final act gets felt rather than skipped over.
