My favourite Alexis Hall book is finally an audiobook, and it was worth the wait
I’ve been genuinely excited for this!
For Real, my pick for the best book in Alexis Hall’s Spires series, landed on audiobook on Thursday.
I’ve been waiting for this one.
The new recording is narrated by Shane East and Kishore Walker, and they sound exactly how I pictured Laurie and Toby in my head.
It’s a genuine relief. The original 2015 audiobook, narrated by Paul Berton and John Hartley through Audible Studios, effectively vanished when Sourcebooks acquired the rights to the Spires series in 2021 and began re-releasing the four original books, along with two new standalone instalments.
Prior to today’s release, fans on Reddit’s r/MM_RomanceBooks community were airing their frustration that the new audiobook seemed to have disappeared from listings altogether, worried the re-recording might be delayed again.
It wasn’t. For Real is now live on Audible, published by Sourcebooks, and the listing promises “never-before-seen content and exclusive bonus material” alongside the East and Walker narration.
READ MORE: ‘For Real’ flips the kink romance script and it might just be my favourite Alexis Hall book
As I wrote in my original review, For Real flips the usual power dynamic: Laurie is the burnt-out, 37-year-old submissive, and 19-year-old Toby is the dominant who’s still working out who he wants to be.
And let’s also mention that the Lemon Meringue scene hits differently in audio form!
Hall doesn’t write the Spires books as direct sequels, but he treats them as a shared world, with characters and settings threading between them even when the stories stand alone.
The connections get genuinely tangled. Toby briefly crosses paths with Marius from Waiting for the Flood during For Real‘s detour to Oxford, and two books later, in Pansies, a family photo on a supporting character’s desk turns out to show Angel — one of Grace’s lovers from For Real.
Fen and David, who turn up in Glitterland, even own the apartment below the one Toby shares with his mother.
For anyone working through the whole Spires universe — Glitterland, Waiting for the Flood, For Real and Pansies, it rewards close reading (or listening).
For Real is out now on audiobook, narrated by Shane East and Kishore Walker, via Audible.