Quick Take
- Read by: The narrator field carries Jacob Morgan alone, though the copy advertises a two-performer recording with Teddy Hamilton.
- At its heart: Enemies to lovers, a wedding-week deadline, single fatherhood, a no-strings arrangement with a deadline attached.
- Vibe: Sunlit, loud and flirtatious, with a soft center.
- Short version: Worth the nine hours when banter is the draw, less so if engineered premises bother you.
Ten drunk texts run this entire book, and the audiobook makes you sit through the fallout of every one. Mark, left alone with a bottle of single malt and a lifelong habit of protecting his baby sister, builds a case against her hasty marriage and sends it to the wrong thread: to her, to the groom, and to the groom's best man. Then he has to plan the wedding with that man and share a guesthouse too small for both of them in Miami. Sarina Bowen and Lauren Blakely wrote it together, and the recording asks nine hours and nine minutes of you.
Launch day itself produced the sharpest account of the appeal: a forbidden-adjacent romance, the drunk texts landing up front so that Mark is groveling from the opening, and what that entry called world class banter, equal parts steamy and sweet. Banter is the correct word for it. The novel runs on two men conducting an argument neither of them actually wants to win, and the wedding supplies a deadline plus forced proximity, which is the oldest and most dependable machinery the genre owns. Bowen and Blakely know exactly how dependable it is, and they do not pretend otherwise. What dates the book, in a way I found more charming than dated, is that the entire catastrophe is a threading error: the wrong recipients on the wrong message at the wrong hour of the night, a mistake that did not exist as a plot device thirty years ago and now drives an entire romance subgenre.
Where the book earns its length is in what sits under the flirting. Mark is a single father in New York with a life that cannot simply relocate, and Asher is a former athlete with a star-studded one that will not slow down. The copy withholds the real reason the arrangement has to end, and the withholding is fair rather than cheap, because the obstacle is logistical and adult instead of a misunderstanding waiting to be cleared up in chapter thirty. That is the difference between a romance that earns its length and one that should have been half as long.
Nine Generous Hours, Told as a Duet
A five-star written thirteen days after release is the most useful thing on the page, mostly because it refuses to overclaim. That entry graded the book 4.5, bought it the day it appeared because two favorite authors had collaborated, and admitted to reaching for it while nursing a David Rose and Patrick Brewer shaped hole after a Schitt's Creek binge. Did the novel fill it? Not quite, the entry says, before conceding that those particular shoes are close to unfillable. Read that as the honest ceiling: a warm, funny, thoroughly competent romance that will not rewire anyone's affections. The same entry is worth reading for who it assumes is listening, too, since it arrived as a reader of both men-loving-men and men-and-women romance following two authors across a line most catalogs still treat as a wall.
The audio case rests on the form. A wedding comedy built on argument wants voices, timing and the pause before a comeback, and the description advertises a two-performer recording rather than a solo reading, naming Teddy Hamilton alongside Jacob Morgan. In romance that pairing usually signals alternating first-person chapters, one performer to a man, though the record never spells the structure out. What is certain is that the publisher sold this as a duet, and a duet is the right instrument for a book whose comic engine is two people talking over each other. Nine hours is also generous for a three-day wedding, which tells you the authors were never in a hurry; the arrangement gets time to become a habit before either man notices it has.
Two Names Missing From Author and Narrator Fields
Read the written column carefully, because part of it belongs to other books. The entry filed from Germany in April 2022 praises the collaboration warmly and then attributes it to Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy, spends its length on Him, True North and Vino and Veritas, and closes by promising to finish that series. Those are a different partnership and a different shelf. Fandom bleed of that kind is common on co-authored romance, where readers arrive through one writer's earlier partnerships and end up grading the memory as much as the book in front of them. It is a genuine response from a real reader, and it is not describing the pairing this listing actually sells.
The credits have their own problem. The description opens by naming Sarina Bowen and Lauren Blakely as first-time collaborators, and the author field holds Blakely alone. The description names two performers, and the narrator field holds Morgan alone. The practical consequence is a search failure in both directions: a listener hunting Bowen's audio work or following a favorite narrator will not find this page, and the record gives them no way to know it exists. For a co-written, co-performed book, that is half the marketing missing. Both series fields sit empty as well, which is accurate for a stand-alone and still unhelpful, because it leaves no thread back to the wider catalogs that nearly every written response reaches for unprompted.
One Single Mother Called This an Unexpected Pleasure
Brazil supplied the response that found the thing most worth recommending. That entry opens on a long attachment to Wesmie, from the same neighboring fandom, and then lands somewhere unexpected: the child in the story and the difficulty of fitting love into a single parent's routine, which that reader met as a single mother and called an unexpected pleasure. That is the strand I would sell this on. Romance rarely lets a parent be tired, scheduled and still desirable at once, and the wedding week format forces the issue by putting Mark somewhere his ordinary life cannot follow him. Listeners who want their contemporary romance queer, funny and equipped with actual adult obligations will get every bit of what they came for.
Steam is the other filter. The description bills the book as irresistibly sexy and lists first times, champion-level flirting, fast cars and a secret to-do list among the contents, so anyone hoping for a closed-door wedding comedy should look at a different title. The engineered premise is the last caution: ten drunk texts, one guesthouse, three days in the sun. If contrivance on that scale reads as charming to you, this is a good one. If it reads as a writing-room whiteboard, no amount of banter will fix it.
A Few Questions About The Best Men
Is The Best Men part of a series?
The description calls it a stand-alone, and both series fields on the record are empty, so nothing here depends on earlier reading. Written responses that mention other titles are pointing at the authors' separate series rather than at anything this book continues or sets up for later.
Who narrates The Best Men audiobook?
The narrator field names Jacob Morgan, while the description advertises a performance by Teddy Hamilton and Jacob Morgan together. Treat the listing as a two-performer recording with one performer missing from the credits, which is worth knowing if you follow either name across catalogs.
How explicit is The Best Men audiobook?
Explicit. The publisher's contents list promises first times, champion-level flirting, fast cars and a secret to-do list, and bills the whole thing as irresistibly sexy. An April 2025 entry lands on the warmer side of that, praising the relationship and character development alongside the banter.
How long is The Best Men audiobook and where does it take place?
Nine hours and nine minutes, released in January 2022 by Troliver Books. Most of the story unfolds across three days in Miami, in a guesthouse shared by two men planning the same wedding, with Mark's single-father life in New York waiting at the other end of it.
