AudioFile Magazine praised the audio version of Senator Sherrod Brown’s latest book as “intriguing,” not just for the Ohio Democrat’s prose, but the “thoughtful tone” of co-narrator Leon Nixon.
That silky voice is perhaps best known for a number of erotic novels, including Hood Boyz Fall In Love Too 3, Nobody Can Love You Like Them Roughnecks Do 2, Fallin’ For a Miami Hustla 3, and Mated to the Cyborgs.
Nixon, a former police captain, has made a name for himself narrating steamy novels that have received thousands of reviews on Amazon. Those books are considerably more popular than Brown’s Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America, which is ranked 919,374th on Amazon’s best seller charts.
Brown devotes each chapter of Desk 88 to a different senator who once sat at his desk. At several points throughout the book, Brown quotes lawmakers using the N-word. The pallid Brown, whose narration is limited to the chapter titles, lets the African-American Nixon read the slur, which comes twice from the Mississippi Democrat Theodore Bilbo, once from strategist Lee Atwater, and once from former vice president Al Gore, who was himself quoting Strom Thurmond.
A spokesman for Brown did not respond to a request for comment.
Among the figures Brown profiles is former Ku Klux Klan member and Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, whom the senator calls a “complicated but necessary inclusion in a book about great progressives who sat at Desk 88.”
Fortunately for Brown, Nixon is no stranger to controversy. His voice often divides audiobook lovers, who carry out heated debates in the Amazon comments section. Reviewers were split on Nixon’s narration of What Happens on Vacation: A Flirty Vacation Romance, which details the fictitious African-American senator Jessup Outlaw’s winter romance.
One listener dismisses Nixon’s voice as “boring,” while another calls him “soothing,” and praises him for guiding “readers into discovering love.”
Nixon’s best performance, according to Amazon reviews, comes in The Right Player: A Sports Romance. One fan said Nixon’s voice was “perfect for an evening on the couch. With your eyes closed so, you can listen and see the story unfold in your imagination.”
Listeners also raved about Her Naughty Suitor (Falling for a Rose), in which Nixon voices a real estate mogul with a “desirous craving to explore everything about” the book’s female protagonist.
“Oh my Gawd!! Lord, help me. I need a cigarette or a drink after reading ‘Her Naughty Suitor.’ And I don’t smoke nor drink,” one reviewer wrote on Amazon. “I LOVED IT!!!!”
Brown is not the first Democrat to intersect with the world of romance novels. Two-time failed gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams once moonlit as a romance writer, cranking out books including Never Tell, the tale of a criminal psychologist who falls in love with a journalist as they seek to uncover the identity of a serial killer.
Nor is Brown’s book the first foray into politics for Nixon, who took a break from bodice-rippers to help narrate an audiobook of the January 6th report.
