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Axe to Grind

Four axe-wielding, flannel-wearing lumberjack psychos hiding out in the Pennsylvania mountains, and Blair just walked right into the middle of it — because where else would the daughter of an infamous hitman end up? M.T. Addams went full unhinged with this one, fam. You’ve got your grumpy/sunshine chaos (Rhett vs. Santi energy is chef’s kiss), a possessive Soft Dom who will rearrange your brain chemistry, murder games in the woods that somehow make the spice hit harder, and then Ledger — the godfather, the dad’s best friend, the forbidden pull that simmers so slowly it nearly breaks you. The MMFMM setup builds with real intention, the MM sword-crossing is a bonus for those who want it, and Blair is not a passive prize — she was forged by darkness, not new to it. That cliffhanger is genuinely disrespectful and you’ll need the second book immediately. Go in with triggers checked, but if psycho men and murder as foreplay is your thing? One-click, no hesitation.

Book Description

They’re axe wielding, flannel-wearing psychopaths… and I can’t get enough of them.

As the daughter of an infamous hitman—living in the shadows meant survival.

But when trouble finds and chases me up into the mountains of Pennsylvania, into the arms of my dad’s best friend and his three roommates, I quickly learn what darkness truly is.

These four men are meant to protect me, instead I’m drowning in their sins.

Between playing Rhett and Santiago’s murderous games to accepting Wes’s possessive stake over my body, I know I’m in trouble. Yet, it’s the undeniable, insidious whisper of a forbidden desire constantly taunting me and Ledger that confirms I’m willing to sink into an unholy level of depravity to sate the hunger simmering in my veins.

Falling into sin is easy. Staying alive to enjoy it is another.

With the trouble that brought me here not far behind, I have to make an impossible decision:

Return to the shadows to protect the men I’m falling for or stay and fight—knowing that if I fail, I lose everything.

This is a dark why choose lumberjack romance. Axe to Grind is book one of the Gnarly Pines duet and must be read first in order to understand what happens in book two. As always, please check for TWs (found author’s website) before diving into any of MT Addams’s stories.

 

TROPES: 

  • Sexy Psycho Lumberjacks
  • Dad’s Best Friend
  • Forced Proximity
  • Psycho Golden Retriever
  • Grumpy/Sunshine
  • Soft Dom
  • Serial Killers/Murder Games
  • MM
Genre, Tropes & Kinks
Triggers
⚠️ DETAILED TRIGGERS ⚠️ (contains spoilers)

Content Warnings

This one carries real weight in the trigger department, so eyes open before you dive in. There are suicidal ideation and a suicide attempt by one of the MMCs — on-page and present. Murder, unaliving, and violence are central to the world-building and the MMCs' lifestyle, including murder games in the woods ("The Hunt") that Blair gets pulled into. Torture is present but notably not directed at the FMC and not by the MMCs. Child abuse and childhood trauma are woven through Blair's backstory — she was raised and harshly trained by her assassin father under brutal conditions. Stalking, tracking, and spying are active elements from the MMCs. Coercion, power dynamics, and degradation appear in the spice. Multiple reviewers flag emotional and psychological intensity throughout, with manipulation hinted at in the plot twist involving Ledger. Standard violence and trauma/PTSD run throughout.
Book Meta
Publication Date2026-05-08 Relationship Pairing(s)MM RH Darkness Score7/10
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Here is something most of us learned the hard way. A dark romance can be a four-star read on the page and a five-star read in your ears, or the exact reverse. The book never changed. The voice did. That gap is wider in this genre than almost anywhere else in fiction. And right now the entire audiobook industry is arguing about who — or what — should be doing that voice work. So let's talk about it. ## Why Voice Matters More in Dark Romance Most genres treat audio as a simple delivery system. You are driving to work or folding laundry, and the story goes in through your ears instead of your eyes. That is fine, and it is why audiobooks exist. Dark romance does not work that way. **In this genre, the voice is part of the threat.** Think about what our books actually run on. A man says something calm and completely terrifying. A heroine says no and means it, or says no and does not mean it, and the entire scene turns on which one it is. A stalker hero narrates a conversation the heroine has no idea he is overhearing. None of that is plot, and all of it is tone. On the page, you supply that tone yourself, using whatever your imagination hands you. In audio, a stranger supplies it for you. When that stranger is the right performer, the book becomes noticeably sharper. When they are wrong for the book, a scene that should feel genuinely dangerous ends up sounding like a man reading a grocery list in a low register. That is the whole argument in one sentence. **A narrator is not reading your dark romance to you — they are performing a second lead character.** ## Single, Dual, Duet: Know What You Are Buying Plenty of readers use these three words as though they mean the same thing. They do not, and the difference changes the whole listen. **Single narration** means a single performer voicing every character in the book. That is fine for single-POV stories, but it gets risky in dual-POV dark romance. 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As of 2026, the standard ACX upload path still asks for human narration, while Amazon's separate Virtual Voice program is where most AI-narrated titles live. Other retailers generally require authors to disclose AI narration at upload. So AI audio clearly exists, but it is not labeled the same way everywhere yet, and that last point is worth watching rather than treating as settled. Readers, meanwhile, have already voted. The 2026 Written Word Media reader survey found that **more than 80% of readers prefer human narrators, while under 1% strongly prefer AI voices.** I think those readers are correct, and not for sentimental reasons. Dark romance depends on the tiny details: a breath before a line, or a word delivered flat when it should have landed warm. Those choices are interpretation, not pronunciation. A synthetic voice can pronounce every word correctly and still completely miss what those words are doing underneath. There is a real counterpoint here. AI narration means smaller authors can finally afford audio at all, and a backlist that would never earn out a human narrator can reach listeners in a week. For readers with vision issues or reading disabilities, more audio is a genuine accessibility win, and that matters considerably more than my personal taste does. My honest position: **AI narration works as a floor and fails as a ceiling.** Use it to make a book exist in audio. Do not use it on the book you want people to fall in love with. ## Where People Are Actually Listening That same survey found only about **22% of readers listen to audiobooks at all**, which is dramatically lower than BookTok makes it feel. Among the readers who do listen, **51% borrow through Libby or Hoopla, and 48% use an Audible subscription.** That library number deserves far more attention than it currently receives. 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