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    Grip
    Grip
    Grip
    Audiobook14 hours

    Grip

    Written by Kennedy Ryan

    Narrated by Maxine Mitchell and Jakobi Diem

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Resisting an irresistible force wears you down and turns you out.

    I know-I've been doing it for years.

    I may not have a musical gift of my own, but I've got a nose for talent and an eye for the extraordinary. And Marlon James-Grip to his fans-is nothing short of extraordinary.

    Years ago, we strung together a few magical nights, but I keep those memories in a locked drawer and I've thrown away the key. All that's left is friendship and work.

    He's on the verge of unimaginable fame, all his dreams poised to come true.

    I manage his career, but I can't seem to manage my heart. It's wild, reckless, disobedient-and it remembers all the things I want to forget.

    Contains mature themes.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateAug 8, 2017
    ISBN9781541477605
    Grip
    Author

    Kennedy Ryan

    A RITA® Award Winner, USA Today and Amazon Top 12 Bestseller, Kennedy Ryan writes for women from all walks of life, empowering them and placing them firmly at the center of each story and in charge of their own destinies. Her heroes respect, cherish and lose their minds for the women who capture their hearts. Kennedy and her writings have been featured in Chicken Soup for the Soul, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, Glamour, Cosmo, TIME, O Mag and many others. She has a passion for raising Autism awareness. The co-founder of LIFT 4 Autism, an annual charitable book auction, she has appeared on Headline News, Montel Williams, NPR and other media outlets as an advocate for ASD families. She is a wife to her lifetime lover and mother to an extraordinary son.

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    Reviews for Grip

    4.5/5

    179 ratings11 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      This book was amazing. I hung on to every word and I am now taking applications for my Grip.. lol thank you so much because not every black man is a Thug ❤️
    • 5/5
      The love dynamic between Grip and Bristol is so compelling. I loved listening to the back and forth between them and that both loved each other so much. Bristol just wasn’t ready to put her walls down because of the importance everyone else in her life place her as second. Kennedy did such a great job combating what goes on in our world today and the struggles that people with darker skin face on the daily. Even though it’s a longer book, it didn’t seem like it took that long to listen to. It was very captivating.
    • 5/5
      This was about a good 10 Stars EASY! Loved It!!!!
    • 5/5
      This book puts rock-star romances to shame. Before starting this series, I was hoping for a bit more original rock-star romance than what we get from so many writers these days. I went in blind thinking it's about time I read a Kennedy Ryan although I was a bit scared.

      Boy, oh boy! This book is so so much more than a romance. First of all, it's an original mixed-race rapper romance with amazing dialogue and relevant messages.
      The characters that KR created are utterly relatable. I felt so much through them. I got so invested in their story, their reactions, their pain, their joy and their love.

      At the end of Flow I was mildly invested. I don't like cheating in books and Grip had technically cheated on his then girfriend Tessa and had lied to Bristol. The story could have gone either way.
      What I didn't anticipate was the most infuriating, frustrating but also romantic story. There is an 8 year gap here, just so your know in case that's a thing for you.

      At 15% I was angry and sad reading Chaz and Greg's story (Grip's cousins), two brothers on opposite sides of the law.
      At 30% I was crying for Bristol. For her unfair childhood, her absent parents, her lack of relationship with her brother, her awful mother that always kept her at a distance and made her feel less than and undeserving of love.
      At 50% I was ready to throw my kindle after the most painfully infuriating will they won't they dynamic I've ever read.
      At 60% I was swooning so hard over Bristol and Grip's epic love story and perfect chemistry.
      At 70% I was so angry over Grip's unjust experiences with the police, the shame and lack of control in that situation.
      At 90% I wanted to set my kindle on fire. The conflict was so so good. Infuriating, but good.
      At then the end came and it mended my broken heart and made the world right again.

      This book deals with so many hard-hitting and relevant topics: child neglect, date rape, police brutality, racism on all sides of the color spectrum, abuse of power, the challenges of mixed-race couples.
      It was the perfect mix of angst, romance and depth, one of the most original and amazing romances I've read and I can't recommend it enough.
    • 5/5
      I love the story, narrators and especially the message this book tells. “Try to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes”.
    • 4/5
      I wasn’t sure about this book at first. I thought it was going to be your typical young black boy wants to be a rapper but doesn’t make it until he meets the white girl story. But I should have known Kennedy Ryan wouldn’t write the regular.
      I really enjoyed this story. It is one that everyone should read.
    • 4/5
      "Dude had serious game.” Grip laughs. “No one writes about love and sex and passion like Neruda."

      Okay Grip, you've convinced me. I'll add Neruda to my reading list.

      Grip is an interracial romance between Grip- a rapper/musician- and his manager Bristol. They navigate the media and the public eyes' notion that black men only date white women as a symbol of "making it". They navigate racial profiling and police brutality and they navigate their feelings for each other. I wish we got more of their conversations like we did in the prequel. Those were stimulating and I don't think we get enough of them in this one. Hopefully they'll be back for the final part of the series.
    • 5/5
      Kennedy Ryan Can do no wrong! This was perfectly paced, had great narration, and was overall one of those books you just feel in your soul
    • 3/5
      Audio-book: Narrators - Jakobi Diem and Maxine Mitchell

      I struggled a bit with Ms. Mitchell’s initial performance in the prequel Flow but either I acclimated to her voice or her performance was fine tuned because I found her to be very satisfactory without the issues of a monotone I had experienced before. She did both male and female well and I was never once taken out of the story due to the character’s voices. Mr. Diem once more killed it with his portrayal of Grip/Marlon and I was enthralled with the depth of emotion he exhibited.

      This picks up eight years after the prequel and interestingly enough, Bristol is working as Grip’s manager as he’s making it big and they are friends. Huh? I wondered if I had missed another book somewhere in between. There was a ton of angst here as well as decisions and actions that once made would affect a large portion of these character’s lives. Bristol kind of annoyed me with her push, push, pushing away even while she wanted to pull Grip to her.

      While Grip loved Bristol and wanted nothing more than her, he was attempting to move on with his life. She has shot him down enough and I didn’t blame him for wanting to just go forward instead of being held in some kind of limbo as a result of that one week/kiss/night eight years before. But when Bristol arranges and pushes another woman on him I wanted to scream at her for her idiocy and I certainly didn’t blame Grip for taking what was being offered even if it was a bit on the “I’ll show you” side of things.

      This was in my opinion a mess of emotions and drama all wrapped in some of the hot social topics of our times that was the one thing in this story I was actually cheering for. Overall, it was an okay read/listen, but some of the choices made were aggravating even if I understood why they were made. This was a completely “It’s me, not the book” issue and I was disappointed I couldn’t love this as much as the majority did.

    • 2/5
      The female narrator is horrible for this book. She doesn’t sound the characters age and is cringy sounding like a black male. Trying to say “saditty” and failing nearly ruined the rest of the book. As for the actual story, it’s probably a fantasy for people who likely aren’t reading this book.
    • 3/5
      These books that are split into series are not for me. I respect the hustle, its hard for a writer to make a living, but stretching a story that should have been a 400 page book into a 1000 page series makes for stretches of repetitious and eventually absurd angst. Notably, this installment in the series is over 400 pages on its own, and it would have been much better as a tight 250. I loved the novella that started this series and I continue to love Grip and Bristol but at least 50% of this book was padding. Also, apart from the book's length, the Scooby Doo level villain is the worst.Still, Grip included a lot of things I love:* As noted, I love the central couple individually and together;* This is a genre romance so this is pretty key -- the sex is sexy, though perhaps on the downside there is not a ton of it;* There are many references to Neruda, who is the swooniest of poets but who somehow manages to avoid sappiness by making his poems earthy and dead sexy;* People have honest discussions about race, and that is refreshing. Sometimes they veer into "teachable moment for white people brought to you by the Blackish writers" territory but I forgive that and acknowledge that it might be useful for some readers. There is an exchange where Bristol says something like "tell me when I display clueless privilege and tell me what I missed." And much much later that happens, and Grip reminders of of that request, and he does as asked, and they have a conversation, and Bristol learns something. Empathy is built brick by brick. I will take it. I know it is not the job of BIPOC people to educate me, but I also know that I owe more than I can say to my freinds who are BIPOC or members of other marginalized groups who have taken the time to help me see things that have become so normalized for me that I don't recognize how diminishing they might be to others who don't experience them from my place as an American-born white middle-class girl from the Midwest who then lived in large eastern cities and got some degrees and worked for many years to preserve the status quo, at least on weekdays. That is how we process things. We bring our experiences and our identities -- "what's past is prologue" and all that. We need people with other lenses to help us see things from different perspectives. I think Ryan is doing that for others, and I salute her for it;* There are some interesting conversations about hip hop (I think Grip is supposed to be Kendrick -- though I think he is supposed to look more like A$AP Rocky) and about the music business.There were times i thought this was going to be a 2 star -- a very sloggy stretch in the middle was very problematic -- but a strong ending brings it to a 2.5 star, and I will listen to the final book in the series. Speaking of which, I did listen to this, and liked the reader who voiced Grip, but I didn't like the reader for Bristol in Book 1 and didn't like her any better here. For one, she sounds super middle-class Mid-Atlantic and she is supposed to be an NYC born-and-raised debutante type -- her accent and especially the rhythm of her speech and the flat pitch were totally off for that. Also her voice was just vaguely unpleasant to listen to, for me at least.