Category: audiobooks (Page 4 of 93)

Knockout by Sarah MacLean, narrated by Mary Jane Wells

October 12, 2023 / Kaetrin

Knockout by Sarah MacLean, narrated by Mary Jane Wells. Fantastic. Loved it.

I enjoyed last year’s Heartbreaker so much that I was eager to listen to Knockout, the third book in the Hell’s Belles series (and I have Bombshell, book one on my TBL). That they are all narrated by Mary Jane Wells, a favourite narrator of historical romance, only made me more keen.

Knockout was even better than Heartbreaker and I loved every minute of it. Detective Inspector Thomas (Tommy) Peck and Lady Imogen Loveless have been circling around one another for 14 months. Imogen is the daughter and sister of an Earl, so is far above Tommy’s touch. But Imogen is attracted to Tommy’s wonderful muscles and his dark beard. It’s fairly obvious that Tommy has been gone for Imogen for ages. Their flirtation is sizzling and very amusing. Imogen is smart and funny, always ready with a quip. I laughed out loud many times during the listen.

A series of fires in the East End have both the Belles and Scotland Yard (most particularly Tommy) investigating. But the likely culprits are too close to home and the Belles aren’t sure whether they should trust Tommy with the information they have put together.

In the meantime, Imogen has acted outrageously one too many times for her brother, Charles, and he has decreed that she should marry. Imogen, not interested at all in an aristocratic marriage, decamps. Tommy is asked, by the Home Secretary at the request of the earl, to locate Imogen. Imogen is not hard to find if one knows her at all and Tommy does – so that’s pretty easy. But an attempt on her life convinces Tommy that Imogen needs protecting and he offers to do just that for the earl until the lady is safely married. Imogen, for her part, agrees to participate in the marriage mart in order to flush out some of the lords the Belles believe are involved in the fires and this puts the lovelorn pair in close proximity.

There is risk and adventure and tension as the lovers are in danger from the shadowy and powerful men who wish to shut down all investigation into the fires. Tommy has a chance to rescue Imogen and, in true Pretty Woman style, Imogen has a chance to rescue him right back. Anyone who knows me, knows I love a good rescue!

Mary Jane Wells has the chance to show off her accent work in Knockout – with a large cast from various classes, counties and countries. I particularly enjoyed how well and how consistently Ms. Wells differentiated between the Belles – Sesily, Adelaide, Duchess and Imogen. They each have a distinct sound and can easily be identified by ear alone.

Imogen has a pert and razor sharp wit and Ms. Wells’ comedic timing assisted the text to deliver it to my ears. Tommy is a delightful mix of pushover (so gone is he for Imogen) and tough guy and Ms. Wells added to that characterisation with her performance.

I hadn’t expected Knockout to be so funny. I’m not sure exactly why. But, apart from the swoony romance between Imogen and Tommy, the humour was my favourite part.

There is also a wonderful teaser at the end of the next book (Duchess’s book) which also promises to be a cracker.

Knockout is great. Recommend.

Grade: A

The Honeymoon Crashers by Christina Lauren with full cast narration

September 14, 2023 / Kaetrin

The Honeymoon Crashers by Christina Lauren, narrated by Adriana Sananes, Cynthia Farrell, Deacon Lee, Harry Shum Jr., Inés del Castillo, Jennifer Aquino, Jessica Marie Garcia, Kimberly Woods, Lee Osorio, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Stephanie Németh-Parker & Tim Paige. The full cast recording was not what I expected (not in a good way) but I loved Harry Shum Jr’s performance.

I read the The Unhoneymooners recently and queued The Honeymoon Crashers up very soon after. In The Unhoneymooners, Olive and Ethan, the maid of honour and best man, respectively for their siblings Ami and Dane, end up on the honeymoon in Maui instead as the rest of the wedding party and all the other guests get horrible food poisoning. (Spoilers for The Unhoneymooners follow by the way.) Unfortunately, Dane ended up being a cheating dirtbag so the marriage went into the toilet too.

The Honeymoon Crashers takes place four years after the events of the first book and now, Olive and Ethan are getting married. Worried about the “Torres wedding curse” they decide to elope to Maui. But that’s not really what the couple wants and it’s certainly not how the Torres family works. Ami, ever the organiser, springs into action to get the family to Hawaii and organise a wedding in less than two weeks. In Maui, she meets Brody Keeton who is a friend of Ethan’s and who will be Ethan’s best man (Dane not being welcome in the wedding party for obvious reasons). Olive and Ethan ask that Brody help plan the wedding as he knows loads of people on the island and will help smooth the way given the tight budget and short notice.

Ami is initially less-than-thrilled to share the organising but Brody wins her over pretty quickly with his laid-back attitude and his buoyant sense of fun. There’s more to Brody than that – something has had him hiding in Maui for the previous six months and licking his wounds. In Ami and the wedding planning, Brody finds a delightful distraction and feels more like himself than he has in months.

The audiobook is novella length – just under five hours – and there is not a lot of time to fully develop a relationship. This is especially the case because it’s clear Brody is dealing with some heavy things. Those things are really only canvassed right near the end. To be completely honest, at about 38 minutes to go I was seriously wondering if this audiobook was going to be a kind of prequel. It wasn’t – there’s a solid HFN – but things were wrapped up very quickly. Brody and Ami could have used a little more time.

I usually enjoy a full cast narration and I expected to here. But I ended up being really confused by it. Usually in an audiobook, there is one narrator who does all the character voices or, two narrators who swap by POV – whoever’s POV the story is in, that narrator does all the narrative and dialogue for everyone and then when the POV shifts to the other protagonist, the other narrator takes over. Usually, with a full cast recording, the POV character’s narrator is responsible for the narrative/text and their own dialogue but all other dialogue is performed by a specific narrator cast for that particular role. And that’s what happened here – sometimes. I cannot for the life of me work out why this was so, but there were other times in the listen where Harry Shum Jr narrated entire sections including all dialogue (ie Ami’s too) or when Jessica Maria Garcia read another section and did all the dialogue (Brody’s, Diego’s). Then it would swap back to the full cast and vice versa. It wasn’t even chapter by chapter! It was just… sometimes it would be one way and sometimes it would be another and it was super weird.

I very much enjoyed Harry Shum Jr’s performance. He nailed Brody’s laid-back nature and sense of humour and, even though I was confused it was even present in the audiobook, I liked his female character voices. Mr. Shum Jr should definitely narrate more romance audiobooks is what I’m saying.

I didn’t feel the same way about Jessica Maria Garcia. (I believe she narrated Ami – except when it was Harry Shum Jr doing it that is. There’s a short video clip on the author’s website where Harry Shum Jr and Ms Garcia introduce themselves so it stands to reason they voice the main characters. I can’t be 100% sure though so apologies if I’ve got that wrong. I couldn’t find anywhere an actual cast list (Graphic Audio does this really well publishers please note). Anyway, Ms. Garcia’s volume was all over the place; sometimes she was too yell-y and other times her volume was less than a whisper, making it impossible to hear. Still other times, her voice trailed off so words were lost. Sometimes she spoke too quickly (seriously, one time she said “raw seafood” and it sounded like “rossi food” and it took me a minute to clue in).

The other narrators were all fine; there wasn’t a great deal from any one of them so I can’t really say more than that they did a good job.

I would like someone to explain to me the decision making involved in the way the narration style chopped and changed throughout the listen – I don’t even know what to call it. I mean, if you have a full cast – why not use it??

Grade: B-

Even if the Sky is Falling by Taj McCoy, Farah Heron, Lane Clarke, Charish Reid, Sarah Smith & Denise Williams

September 7, 2023 / Kaetrin

Even if the Sky is Falling by Taj McCoy, Farah Heron, Lane Clarke, Charish Reid, Sarah Smith & Denise Williams, narrated by Adenrele Ojo, Soneela Nankani, Karen Murray, Marissa Hampton, Donnabella Mortel, Joy Beharie & Teddy Hamilton. Loved the premise and there were some real gems in the anthology.

Even if the Sky is Falling is an anthology of stories by BIPOC authors which all have the same basic premise: an alarm blares alerting everyone that some space junk (or worse) is imminently going to crash into the earth and everyone should take shelter. Only the people in the first story know that it’s a false alarm and there’s no risk. Each story takes the forced proximity trope and the setup and takes it somewhere different. I love this idea; it’s illustrative of how romance itself is so diverse – just because the ending is the same doesn’t mean the stories are. Here the premise is the same but the stories are all very different.

Some of the stories are Black romance, others feature at least one character of colour, most are MF, one is FF. It’s difficult to talk about each story in detail here but I’ll at least mention each one briefly.

Taj McCoy’s All the Stars, narrated by Adenrele Ojo, kicks things off and sets up the world. NASA employees are putting the finishing touches on a nationwide emergency alert system for space debris, part of a wider worldwide effort. An accident happens and the alarm goes off. This story was the weakest of the anthology for me; the incompetence of the character who messes up (neither of the love interests fortunately) was astounding; I didn’t get how, in a team of four, the FMC and the MMC had so much downtime; especially as the FMC was the Team Leader. When the crap hit the fan why was she able to go for a nap rather than pitch in to help? This novella also featured a second chance trope and I found the reason for the break up unconvincing – I’m not sure the MMC deserved to be given that second chance. The narration was very good though.

Keep Calm and Curry On by Farah Heron, narrated by Soneela Nankani, was in my top two novellas from Even if the Sky is Falling. Set in a large undercover market, the protagonists, both of Pakistani heritage and the children of immigrants and former best friends each have a food truck. Their dads are no longer friends but can Tariq convince Maya that their generation doesn’t have to be at odds? Can Maya’s Masala Girls food truck coexist beside Tariq’s Curry Junction? Do they need to be in competition? There is also a hot guy in a Henley with the sleeves pushed up and a (the same) hot guy reading a romance novel! (I believe it’s a Tessa Dare book but it’s never named). There’s also a cat. I haven’t listened to Soneela Nankani before but her narration was excellent. She had great characterisation and bought into the somewhat meta nature of the story, adding a touch of humour to those beloved tropes so it never edged into too much.

My Lucky Stars by Lane Clark, narrated by Karen Murray is the only queer romance in the anthology. The only two Black girls in their law school class do not get along. Jones is prickly and aggressive, Diana is not. Enemies to lovers is something of a tricky trope for me at the best of times; I don’t like it when characters are mean to each other. Here, Jones was pretty mean to Diana and I didn’t really like her which made it difficult for me to root for them as a couple. I figure that people who don’t struggle with E2L will like this one a lot better than me. The narration was good though. Karen Murray is also a new-to-me narrator but I’d happily listen to her again.

Bunker Buddies by Charish Reid, narrated by Marissa Hampton was my other favourite of the anthology – my first story from this author. A bookshop owner with a bunker underneath (inherited from his prepper grandad) has been crushing on a customer for months. A university professor who keeps coming to the bookshop to order obscure books just to have an excuse to see said hot bookseller happens to be the only customer in the shop when the siren sounds. All alone together in the bunker while the world may or may not be ending. All that unresolved sexual tension has to go somewhere, right? The only thing that let this one down was the speed of the narration. Ms. Hampton’s pacing was too fast for me. Otherwise, her characterisation and voice differentiation were very good.

Interlude narrated by Sarah Smith, narrated by Donnabella Mortel – a composer and jingle writer spends the maybe-end of the world in her basement with her cat and the hot contractor who, when the alarm went off, was at her house to give her a quote on replacing her kitchen cabinets. I found this difficult to get into because precious word count was wasted on things which didn’t really matter. There was too much time spent on things which didn’t really impact the story and it made my eyes glaze over a bit. On the other hand, the narration was great. Ms. Mortel is another narrator I’ll be looking for again. The story didn’t work super well for me but she kept me entertained nonetheless.

Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better by Denise Williams, narrated by Joy Beharie & Teddy Hamilton was another that suffered (for me at least) as a result of the enemies to lovers start of the story. I’m not sure I really bought why she didn’t like him in school when he didn’t do anything beyond being related to the founder of the university. Trapped in an empty college together, the pair eventually work their way through the misunderstandings that plagued their school years (I’m also not a fan of the Big Mis) and find their way to a HFN – and likely HEA. The narration by both performers was very good, with solid tone, pacing and emotion. It’s difficult to say new things about Teddy Hamilton – AudioGals readers know he’s a favourite here!

Like many anthologies, Even if the Sky is Falling was a bit of a mixed bag but I loved the premise and I did find some new-to-me authors and narrators to follow which was an even bigger plus.

Grade: B/C

Spare Me by Tara Sivec, narrated by Tim Paige & Kelsey Navarro

August 16, 2023 / Kaetrin

Spare Me by Tara Sivec, narrated by Tim Paige & Kelsey Navarro. Enjoyable but the humour (always subjective) was at times a little overbroad for my taste.

I haven’t read or listened to a Tara Sivec book before. I know fellow AudioGal, Melinda, enjoys her books so I thought I’d give Spare Me a try when the blurb caught my eye.

Humour is very subjective of course. While I did laugh occasionally and overall, enjoyed the story, some of the humour was a little too much for me. I can (and do) enjoy a joke about balls from time to time but perhaps not as many as are crammed into Spare Me. It seems trite to say, but for those whose humour aligns more strongly with Ms Sivec’s writing, this book is going to be more successful. The reverse is also true. Me? I think I’m somewhere in the middle/middle-positive range.

Ryan Hutton is an amateur ten-pin-bowler and maths teacher on Summersweet Island. He is kind and nice and, frankly, a bit of a doormat. People walk on him all the time and in return he continues to be kind and generous. So, when a frenemy from college asks Ryan to let his little sister move into his (Ryan’s) house, sight-unseen, Ryan says yes. Because that’s a thing that happens.

Said sister, Danica Brewster, is an artist who has broken away from her rich, corporately-minded family. Her brother (Ryan’s frenemy) completely mischaracterises Dani to Ryan and so he thinks she’s in dire need of being talked into returning to the bosom of her family.

Dani is wild and free and spontaneous. She also isn’t afraid to call it how she sees it and over the course of the book, Ryan finds himself picking up some of her traits. The Ryan of page one would never say “choke on a dick, Chad” but he certainly does later on.

In Ryan, Dani finds a personal cheerleader and a sense of home, acceptance and belonging she has been unable to find within her own family.

Of course it doesn’t hurt that they are 100% hot for one another from the beginning.

Ryan is expected to take over his father’s mantle as the Mayor of Summersweet Island. Ryan doesn’t want to but hasn’t been able to tell his dad – he doesn’t want to disappoint. However, as time passes, it becomes an unavoidable conversation.

Ryan’s autocorrect woes are amusing even when they are also occasionally implausible and the wider cast, including an ex-football star who likes to craft add to the overall zaniness of the story.

Spare Me is a light-hearted romp and not meant to be taken all that seriously. There are some unlikely things within the story which don’t bear close examination. I admit, there were times I did examine a little too closely. (For example, I think a maths teacher who is arrested for indecent exposure would have some career issues as a result.)

The performance is good from both narrators but I preferred that of Tim Paige. Kelsey Navarro has a vocal fry (at least I think that’s what it is) which is not to my taste. I found it kind of wearing after a while. It was far less noticeable when she was speaking dialogue from a male character. That helped. Of course, this is very much a personal taste thing so other listeners will have less of an issue with it. Otherwise, Ms Navarro’s character differentiation and pacing were very good. I got a strong sense of who Dani was from her performance. So, even though I didn’t exactly like it, I can’t say it was, by any stretch, bad.

Tim Paige does “nice guy” really well and Ryan is, squarely, a nice guy. His earnestness and puppy-like qualities were obvious not just in the text but also in my ears. I could tell Mr Paige had a lot of fun leaning into these traits, but always keeping it just the right side of caricature. (The same can’t always be said of the text but that’s part of the schtick of the story.)

I can see that for some listeners Spare Me will be a complete giggle-fest. I wasn’t quite in that camp but I was nonetheless entertained and count the listen as a positive. That said, I think that Ms Sivec’s books are likely to become the kind of treat I’ll consume sparingly for maximum enjoyment.

Grade: B-

Drowning by TJ Newman, narrated by Steven Weber & Laura Benanti

August 7, 2023 / Kaetrin

A ripping thriller that kept my earbuds (metaphorically) glued to my head.

Six minutes after takeoff, Flight 1421 crashes into the Pacific Ocean. During the evacuation, an engine explodes and the plane is flooded. Those still alive are forced to close the doors—but it’s too late. The plane sinks to the bottom with twelve passengers trapped inside.

More than two hundred feet below the surface, engineer Will Kent and his eleven-year-old daughter Shannon are waist-deep in water and fighting for their lives.

Their only chance at survival is an elite rescue team on the surface led by professional diver Chris Kent – Shannon’s mother and Will’s soon-to-be ex-wife – who must work together with Will to find a way to save their daughter and rescue the passengers from the sealed airplane, which is now teetering on the edge of an undersea cliff.

There’s not much time.

There’s even less air.

With devastating emotional power and heart-stopping suspense, Drowning is an unforgettable thriller about a family’s desperate fight to save themselves and the people trapped with them – against impossible odds.

Review:

I really enjoyed TJ Newman’s debut novel, Falling, which I also listened to on audio and reviewed here and I’ve been looking forward to her sophomore book, Drowning. Both stories are set in and around commercial airliners and both are ripping thrillers but they’re nonetheless quite different.

Drowning is about the rescue of people trapped within a plane which has crashed into the ocean off the coast of Hawaii. The story mostly takes place over the course of just a few hours. The blurb (above) describes the story very well so I won’t add to it here. My earbuds were glued to my ears and I kept finding excuses to listen, I was that engrossed.

The narration by Steven Weber was superb. He had a great range of character voices and his pacing and tone were fantastic. Mr. Weber narrated most of the book, including POV from the lead character, Will Kent, and also from one of the rescuers and briefly from another male character too – I’d estimate approximately 60-70% of the listen.

Laura Benanti narrated the sections from Will’s not-quite-ex-wife, Chris Kent’s perspective, plus that of a female Navy officer involved in the rescue attempt. It was good but not quite to the standard of Mr. Weber’s. I thought her character voice for the Navy officer was too high-pitched and girlish for the way the officer was described in the text. There was also not quite the same character differentiation in Ms. Benanti’s range as compared to Mr. Weber. Rating her narration separately, I’d give her a B and him and A, so it averages to a B+.

I don’t want to give away what happens at the end but I will say that it does end well. I believe Falling is being made into a movie. Drowning would also be great on the big screen – the way the story unfolds is very cinematic.

The tension is pretty much constant and the story is action-packed. There is also time spent on characterisation; I cared about these people and what happened to them.

The recent loss of the Titan submersible made some of the subject matter in Drowning even more topical and, due to the YouTube rabbit hole I fell down learning about implosions, pressure and deep water diving, I probably understood it better overall. Not only that, I could also tell that much of the technical aspects were accurate, which made it easier for me to go along with other things in the story which either seemed a little unrealistic or where I had no clue whether it was realistic or not.

I don’t listen to many thrillers these days. I think I lucked out when Ms. Newman’s promo tweets about her book made it into my Twitter feed because both of her books have been crackers.

Narration: B+

Book Content: A-

Steam Level: 0

Genre: Thriller

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

The Witch King by Martha Wells, narrated by Erik Mok

July 12, 2023 / Kaetrin

The Witch King by Martha Wells, narrated by Erik Mok. Sadly, a DNF.

Publisher’s Blurb:

A story of power and friendship, of trust and betrayal, and of the families we choose.

“I didn’t know you were a… demon.”

“You idiot. I’m the demon.”

Kai’s having a long day in Martha Wells’ Witch King….

After being murdered, his consciousness dormant and unaware of the passing of time while confined in an elaborate water trap, Kai wakes to find a lesser mage attempting to harness Kai’s magic to his own advantage. That was never going to go well.

But why was Kai imprisoned in the first place? What has changed in the world since his assassination? And why does the Rising World Coalition appear to be growing in influence?

Kai will need to pull his allies close and draw on all his pain magic if he is to answer even the least of these questions.

He’s not going to like the answers.

Review:

I loved the Murderbot books and was excited to dive into Martha Wells’ latest release, Witch King. It’s fantasy rather than sci-fi but I like both genres so my hopes were high.

The first problem was that the book starts with a “dramatis personae” – ie a cast list. It is long. Many of the names are complicated “fantasy names”; some of them are very similar and, there was just no way I was going to remember almost any of them. The cast list describes who they are, their race and/or role and where they might fit into the story. Or, at least, I expect that’s what the intention was. It’s completely useless on audio.

In a print book, one can go back and forth from the story to the front matter to refresh one’s memory about who is who. In an ebook, it’s harder but possible. (I think it would be annoying though.) On audio it’s just not an option.

Consequently, I started the book with only the blurb to help me. There is no explaining – I was just plunged into an entirely different world with many characters, most of whom I could not place. And, apart from about five or six of them, when they came up again, I couldn’t remember exactly who they were. I made it about a third of the way into the book but really at that point I was so lost and I had no real hope of ever being found. It’s not enjoyable to spend hours listening to something where my prevailing thoughts were “who is that?” and “what is happening?”. Most of the time, I could not answer those questions.

Added to that, the narration was unevenly paced with some parts being at a good speed and others being way too fast. It meant I couldn’t slow the entire listen to fix the problem. Mr. Mok had little differentiation between characters of different genders and that made it even harder to work out who was who. After a third of the story I really didn’t know all that much more about the world or the story than I had from the blurb.

Possibly Witch King is a great book. But it’s best read in print I believe. Maybe once a listener is familiar with the story and the cast (ie having read the book already) the listening experience would be entertaining. But for me, it was not.

I’m sorry to say Witch King was a DNF for me.