Aspen and Keene share a party game, a dare and one kiss, and the description of this audiobook is written from inside one of their heads. Hold on to that first-person frame, because Liam DiCosimo alone carries ten hours and twelve minutes in which two young men talk almost exclusively to each other. The book is filed under erotica, described as a new adult college romance with scorching dirty talk, and the copy signs off by calling it intended for mature listeners. Not readers. Listeners. Somebody was thinking about this edition.
What We Made of It
Sassafras gives the cleanest summary of the setup. Aspen and Keene have been friends since birth, and the friendship has turned codependent, each of them forever doing whatever the other wants. A childhood game called Don't You Dare then launches everything they have assumed about themselves into somewhere else entirely. LauraP. supplies the mechanics: both leads open the book believing they are straight, until a truth-or-dare kiss lands and one of them registers that he enjoyed it rather more than the assumption allows. Years pass. The escalation begins. erin wells, arriving at CE Ricci for the first time, describes being hooked at once and held on edge waiting to see how the two would resolve their differences.
Escalation is the plot. The narrator starts inventing riskier dares, ones that toe lines the pair never meant to approach, and gambles a lifelong friendship on where they lead. Dani's trope list names the rest: best friends to lovers, MM college romance, baseball, bi awakening, a guaranteed happy ending. The entry signed Not Alice adds the complication that gives the book its stakes, a question about what being out would do to Keene's career, and admits to missing some of its weight through unfamiliarity with the sport.
What Makes Don't You Dare Worth Hearing
Ten hours and twelve minutes with a single reader is the arrangement, and it deserves thought. A romance told in the first person by one of two men, in which the other man is the entire subject, asks a narrator to build a second person out of dialogue alone. Liam DiCosimo has no duet partner listed. That can be the best version of this material, since the beloved stays filtered through the lover's ear, or it can press two voices into one. Nothing in the column says which, and here the silence genuinely costs something.
What the column does supply is a sample of the prose. Dani quotes the book at length, a passage in which one of them dares the other to let himself be loved wholly, completely, and out in the open where the world can see, with the speaker's throat constricting around the words as he pushes them out. That is the register: earnest, direct, unembarrassed, first person throughout. Dani also grades the book in symbols where numbers would go, a row of four stars followed by three peppers and a half, a spice scale the star field on this page cannot carry. If it lands for you on the page it will land harder aloud, and if it makes you wince, ten hours is a long stretch of wincing.
Heat level is stated plainly, then confirmed. The description promises scorching dirty talk and a whole lot of bi-curious exploration. Dani grades the spice on its own scale, apart from the stars. Not Alice, otherwise lukewarm, calls the explicit scenes well written and on point. LauraP., the lowest-scoring entry here, raises no objection to the heat either. What saves it from being only heat, on that same evidence, is that both leads are working something out about themselves, with no audience in mind.
Points to Consider
For once the numbers on this page hold up. Twelve votes produce the displayed 4.4, which means the ballots total exactly 53 stars out of a possible 60, leaving the book seven short of a clean sweep. That is a real figure, arrived at by addition, and it fits the five visible bodies: two fives, two fours and a three. If you have learned to discount star lines on listings like this one, this is the rare average you can take at face value.
Two details in the column deserve a look up front. The Not Alice entry is dated April 2022, more than two months ahead of the June 2022 release from Podium Audio, so whatever it describes, it is not this edition. And Sassafras recommends specific chapters, naming 33, 36 and 37 as the best in the book, a generous tip on paper and an awkward one by ear, where reaching a numbered chapter means scrubbing through a player and never turning to a page.
The filing is blunter than the book. This sits under erotica, while the description calls it a new adult college romance and the column reads it as a friends-to-lovers story with a bi awakening at its center. Most of these responses care more about the emotional arc than the explicit scenes, and one of them, from erin wells, is mostly about going through all the emotions alongside the characters. All five entries break off before finishing, Sassafras's included, which stops just as it opens a new thought.
The Right Listener for Don't You Dare
MM romance listeners who want a bi-awakening story with a long friendship underneath it are the audience, and Dani files this among favorite reads in that category. It works for anyone who likes friends-to-lovers escalation played slowly, since these dares build across years rather than weeks. Baseball readers get a sports backdrop that Not Alice found consequential even while missing some of it. And the happy ending is promised in the tags, which for a good many listeners is the entire point. Podium Audio put the recording out in June 2022, and the column has kept adding to it ever since. Listeners who want a long build are served as well, since the description talks about a simmering attraction that grows with passing time, and ten hours gives that growth somewhere to go.
Press play elsewhere if explicit content is not what you came for, because the description promises scorching dirty talk and the tag says erotica, and both are accurate. Give it a miss if one reader voicing two men who talk constantly sounds like a problem, since no second narrator is listed anywhere. And treat the sports thread as load-bearing: one reviewer found the career stakes hard to feel without it. Press play elsewhere if any of that is a deal breaker.
Quick Take
- Voice: Liam DiCosimo is the only reader listed for a first-person romance in which two young men talk almost entirely to each other, with no second voice in the credit.
- Big ideas: best friends to lovers, bi awakening, a dare that keeps escalating, a baseball career at stake
- Atmosphere: Charged, tender, explicit
- Worth it?: A ten-hour MM college romance with the most reliable star line on this shelf and one reader carrying both leads.
Good to Know
How explicit is the Don't You Dare audiobook?
Very. The description promises scorching dirty talk and a great deal of bi-curious exploration, then closes by saying the book is intended for mature listeners. Not Alice, otherwise lukewarm about it, calls the explicit scenes well written and on point. The tag on this listing reads erotica. Nothing about the heat is being undersold.
Who voices Aspen and Keene in this audiobook?
Liam DiCosimo, alone. No one else appears in the credit, which matters more than usual here, because the story is told in first person by one of two men who spend ten hours talking mainly to each other. A single voice has to build the other one out of dialogue. No review reports how that goes.
What does the 4.4 rating on this page actually add up to?
Something unusually solid. Twelve votes produce a displayed 4.4, which means they total exactly 53 stars out of a possible 60, seven short of a clean sweep. The five visible responses fit that shape: two fives, two fours and a three. Unlike most listings, this average is arithmetic, not a rounding accident.
