Category: B reviews (Page 4 of 74)

Project Hero by Briar Prescott, narrated by Kirt Graves and Joel Leslie

January 4, 2023 / Kaetrin

Project Hero by Briar Prescott, narrated by Kirt Graves and Joel Leslie. Enjoyable story but it made me feel a little old!

Project Hero is my first Briar Prescott book. I’m starting to wonder if I may have aged out of college-set romance because this book felt a little young to me. Perhaps that was more down to one of the characters himself though – I lack additional data points.

Andy Carter is apparently a neurodivergent college student studying graduate physics. He believes himself to be in love with his best friend, Falcon, ( now that’s a name!) but is firmly in the friendzone. Andy is shy and has very little sexual experience. Andy has few friends and suffers from extreme social anxiety. The idea of “performing” in front of a crowd (this may be anything more than talking to 2 people at once, so “crowd” is doing a bit of work here) terrifies him.

Lawrence “Law” Anderson is also a student at the same college but his passion is hockey. He is the assistant coach for the college hockey team after a medical diagnosis meant he could no longer play. Law wants to coach hockey professionally – something which has put him at odds with his high-achieving and very business-oriented parents.

A number of rookies on the team are flunking physics and are in desperate need of tutoring in order to maintain the necessary GPA so they can continue to play. Law identifies that the best option to keep his guys playing is to convince Andy to tutor them. Andy’s social anxiety is such that this seems unlikely however.

Still, Law is persistent and comes up with a potential solution. In the meantime, Law has cottoned on to Andy’s infatuation with Falcon (a basketball player and “enemy” of Law’s for reasons).

Andy and Falcon and a couple of other guys on the basketball team share an apartment. Andy is staying at the college for the summer as he’s doing some work for his physics professor and Falcon is going home to work in the family business. Andy decides he needs to stop being the “sidekick” and become the “hero” while Falcon is away. Law volunteers to assist Andy with his project in return for Andy tutoring the rookies in physics. In that way, there is something that put me in mind of the set up Elle Kennedy’s The Deal. Project Hero is a very different book however, not least because it is MLM.

Over the course of the summer, Andy finds himself growing closer to Law and vice versa. When Andy learns that Falcon won’t become involved with a virgin and, realising that he’s come to trust Law, he asks Law for “sex lessons”. Law is already in deep with Andy at that point even though he thinks it’s useless given Andy’s feelings for Falcon.

But does Andy really love Falcon romantically or is it something else? Is what is developing between Law and Andy the relationship he’s been looking for after all? (It’s a romance so I probably don’t need to say where this is going.)

Andy often felt very young to me. I don’ believe it was his neurodivergence per se which gave me that impression; I’ve read plenty of autistic characters before and haven’t had that reaction. Perhaps it was something about his sense of humour. Which I liked – it was amusing – but which also tended to the hyperbolic and exaggerated.

Law, on the surface, was the more mature of the pair. He was more experienced in almost every metric but there were times when even he felt a little immature too.

Maybe it was just the set up. Maybe the entire concept of “Project Hero” was a little too young for me. This is where I wonder if it’s just me and I’m too old for college-set books now. I don’t know!

There were however plenty of things to like nonetheless. While I found my attention wandering from time to time, for the most part, I enjoyed the story. (Even though I rolled my eyes here and there.) The narration was very good and that certainly helped my listening experience.

Of the two performer I generally preferred Kirt Graves’ narration to that of Joel Leslie but that was more personal taste than anything skill related. I’m used to hearing Joel Leslie speaking with a British accent in audiobooks – even though his natural accent is American – so hearing him voice a US character feels a little weird to me. That’s unfair I know but there you go.

I have only a little experience with Kirt Graves’ narrations but each time I listen I know I want more. In this book I particularly liked the way that Mr. Graves delivered Andy’s catastrophising humour.

I enjoyed watching Andy “blossom” under Law’s attentions in all the various ways and the epilogue which takes place 10 years later showed just how successful “Project Hero” actually was – albeit not quite the way Andy had originally planned.

Grade: B/B-

So This is Christmas by Jenny Holiday, narrated by Cynthia Farrell

November 15, 2022 / Kaetrin

So This is Christmas by Jenny Holiday, narrated by Cynthia Farrell. I found the narration a little cold. (Pardon the pun)

So This Is Christmas is the third book in Jenny Holiday’s A Princess For Christmas series. This time, the starchy Mr. Benz, equerry to the King of Eldovia, gets his HEA. He’s played a pivotal cupid-like role in the earlier books, A Princess For Christmas and Duke, Actually but apart from that, until now, readers knew little about him. I’m here to tell you he’s a complete cinnamon roll. Not grumpy, but stiff and a little awkward on the outside and all marshmallow on the inside.

Cara Delaney is a change management executive from New York. She’s been supervising a subordinate, Brad, leading the project to modernise Mornot, the company wherein the Eldovian Crown holds a major stake and which is the main driver of the Eldovian economy. Mornot makes luxury watches but business hasn’t been good and the country’s economy is in danger. Brad broke his hip after falling from a roof and Cara had to take over the project at the last minute. She will spend the next month in Eldovia, flying home only on Christmas Eve. She will meet with the Mornot board, unions and employees and deliver her report of recommendations before she leaves. She’s sad to miss Thanksgiving with her parents, with whom she’s very close.

“Modernise” of course, usually means downsizing and layoffs so Matteo Benz is not happy to meet Cara. It’s not personal – he didn’t want to meet Brad either. When Matteo picks Cara up at the airport, he’s not only starchy, he’s outright prickly. He’s very open about not being happy to meet her.

Cara is pretty starchy herself, just in a different way. She’s very business oriented and doesn’t let a lot of feelings out. She avoids romantic entanglement.

Of course, romance listeners know that the sparks which fly when Matteo and Cara are in each other’s orbit means they’re destined to be together. I think I’d have been unconvinced in real life though.

Over the course of the month, Cara and Matteo are thrown together in various ways, going from a cold low-key hostile relationship to a truce, to a friendship to more. Even though they do get thrown together, there seemed to be a lot of time when they were doing things separately. I would have liked more of them together. They go from FWB to HEA at lightning speed. Their declarations of love felt hasty. There was an epilogue a year later which helped to embed the relationship but I felt like I missed the bit where they really fell in love. I did see their move to friendship and their blossoming attraction. It’s just that they jumped straight to the end from there and I had a kind of whiplash about it.

Possibly that was affected somewhat by the narration. Cynthia Farrell is a new-to-me narrator. She has a pleasing voice but it’s also a little on the strident side. The softer emotions were less impactful as a result. I didn’t warm as much to Cara as I think I may have in print.

Technically, Ms. Farrell performed well. There were no audible breath sounds or annoying tics. Her pacing was good.

There were however, multiple times where Cara’s voice and Matteo’s voice kind of blended and when one character began to talk it was not always clear to me who it was. Their voices were different but it felt like Ms. Farrell was a bit confused at times about which voice she was supposed to be using, so at the beginning of a piece of dialogue it would be equivocal and then settle into the right character. It was a little jarring.

Mostly though, I felt a certain lack of warmth in the story coming through the narration.

Having listened to all three books in the series now, my fondest wish is for all of them to have had the same narrator (preferably, the first one – Charlotte North). We now have three books where the character voices and their accents are all different. There is no narration consistency within the series – here, for example, Princess Marie had a thick German accent unlike in A Princess for Christmas and Imogen, the owner of the local pub did not have the Irish accent I expected to hear.

Ms. Farrell’s narration wasn’t bad. But I wonder if she might have been a bit mismatched to this project.

I enjoyed finding more out about the mysterious and stiff Mr. Benz and I’m glad he got his HEA. But So This Is Christmas didn’t have quite the warmth and charm of A Princess For Christmas had. That first book remains my favourite of the series and not inconsequently, it also has my favourite narration.

Grade: B

October Round Up

November 2, 2022 / Kaetrin

Monthly Mini Review

A Thief in the Night by KJ Charles – B+ At just under 3 hours of listening time, this little delight was easy to squeeze into my listening schedule. Those of us who’ve read or listened to The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting may remember that siblings Marianne and Robin were missing a brother – Toby. He’d left home suddenly some years before after a falling out with their father and, while they understood why he’d left, they missed him and wondered what happened to him. We listeners need wonder no more as here he is.

Toby isn’t so much a thief as someone who steals things when “needs must”. He’s happy to work for a living but it’s not always easy to find work and there have been times where he’s stolen or sold himself to survive. While his preference would be not to do either of those things I got the sense that he doesn’t let what he has to do sometimes get him down too much. As the novella begins, Toby meets a handsome aristocratic man in a tavern. They have an enjoyable encounter in the dark and Toby has real regret when he later steals Miles’ watch and pocketbook – but, needs must.

Miles has just returned from the war and is on his way home. He had been estranged from his own father and had hoped they could reconcile but he’s found out he’s a week too late – his father suddenly passed away. When Miles, now the Earl of Arvon, does make it home, he finds a house in terrible disarray. The land has been sold off, there’s only one horse and the house is full of junk – his father was a hoarder of sorts. Continue reading

In His Protection by Sandra Owens, narrated by Patrick Zeller

September 28, 2022 / Kaetrin

In His Protection by Sandra Owens, narrated by Patrick Zeller. Enjoyable romantic suspense (mostly romance) and great narration but would have liked more of the dog!

I’ve enjoyed romantic suspense by Sandra Owens before and I love dogs so In His Protection caught my eye when it popped up at Audible. Unfortunately, there’s not quite enough of the dog – Fuzz – as I’d have liked. He does have a couple of pivotal scenes but the story is not very much about him.

Tristan Church is the chief of police in Marsville, North Carolina. The county sheriff is Skylar Morgan. (I admit I don’t understand why such a small area has two separate police forces but I’ve seen it in other books so I guess it’s a thing in the US, or at least some parts of it.) When Sky came to town to interview for the job, she met Tristan in a bar and they had a hot and steamy night together – first names only (her rule). Tristan was deeply smitten from the jump but when Sky returned to Marsville and realised who they were in relation to one another professionally, she pretended they’d never met and gave him the cold shoulder. Tristan has been trying to get her attention for a year.

Sky left Florida where she held a Chief Deputy position after a bad break up with a fellow cop. That man bad-mouthed her to her colleagues and started rumours she was dirty. She faced an investigation (she was cleared of any wrongdoing – she was actually innocent) and her reputation was severely damaged. She wanted a clean start but vowed not to date another cop. And what is Tristan? Argh.

However, the attraction between them won’t go away and when they are teamed up to plan the reopening of the Marsville UFO Museum (yes, that’s why it’s called Marsville), they’re forced into one another’s company even more and Sky’s fragile shield against his charm fails.

At around the same time, her ex turns up in town and someone burns down her apartment. Plus, there’s a deputy in the county sheriff’s department who has it in for her as well and after she fires him he makes threats against her. So there is a plethora of potential suspects available. It’s soon clear that someone is after something from Sky and won’t stop until they get it. This is where my biggest bone to pick with the story arises. Sky is an experienced and accomplished law enforcement officer. When Tristan asks her not to go anywhere alone it’s only because she’s a woman. There’s just no way he’d have made the same request had Sky been a dude. And, Sky went along with it rather than calling it out as the gendered BS it was! *frowny face*

The author does turn some things around though and Sky does get to do some heroics – just not without some Special Forces officers to help. Male of course. (Tristan’s brother Kade is a Ranger. He has another brother, Parker, who is the fire chief and a talented artist.)

The problem with the plot is that for Tristan to be protective of Sky and do any rescuing (and really, rescuing is one of my very favourite things in romance!) because she’s as talented and experienced as she is, it only serves to diminish her. Not entirely and not always a lot – but enough that I noticed and it grated a little.

The push/pull of the relationship is Sky’s reluctance to get in a relationship where, if it all went wrong, she’d have to leave town and start all over again AGAIN. This a real risk for her. Tristan does not think the town would turn on Sky if they broke up but he’s 100% all in anyway and wants her to be his forever. I do like a man in pursuit romantically (and respectfully) speaking. There again, sometimes Tristan made choices to withhold information from Sky that may have spooked her relationship-wise but which she had a right to know professionally so that was a minus in his column. It wasn’t egregious though and, lucky for him, it wasn’t anything that put her at risk.

That said, Tristan also overtly recognised that she needed to stand on her own with her deputies and not interfere with her work and he did treat her with due professional respect most of the time.

The narration was really good. It’s been ages since I’ve listened to Patrick Zeller and I had to ask myself why that was. He has a great range of character voices – from Parker’s 5-year-old daughter, Everly, to the old town matriarch, Ms. Mabel Mackle, to different tones for each Church brother and beyond. His pacing and tone are great and I really liked the emotion he brought to the performance as well. Not overdone; just right.

I’m sure I enjoyed In His Protection more on audio than I would have in print because of the narration. Some of the things which bothered me about the story were easier to manage with Mr. Zeller in my ears. In fact, I liked his performance so much, I immediately went and bought another Owens/Zeller audio collaboration.

Some of the suspense plot stretched my credulity to the breaking level but I enjoyed the romance and I liked Sky and Tristan (most of the time) and I liked them together.

Grade: B-

The Best Man Problem by Mariah Ankenman, narrated by Charlotte North

September 15, 2022 / Kaetrin

The Best Man Problem by Mariah Ankenman, narrated by Charlotte North. Didn’t love the conflict at the end but otherwise a fun listen with great narration.

I’m a big fan of Charlotte North’s narrations and this led me to try a new-to-me author so I can get more of her in my ears. The Best Man Problem is book two in the Mile High Happiness series but can be read as a stand alone with no problems at all.

Lilly Walsh and her two BFFs run Mile High Happiness, a wedding planning business in Denver. (I admit I don’t know much about the wedding planning business but the setup of Mile High Happiness seemed a little unusual to me in that it seems that Lilly does the actual wedding planning and the other two women run other aspects of the business.) The book starts with what I assume is the wedding of the couple who were the protagonists in book one. Lilly is a bridesmaid for her best friend and has a hot one-night-stand with a handsome man she meets in the hotel bar after the event. It’s unusual for her (not that it matters if it wasn’t) but Lilly had an amazing time and can’t stop thinking about the man she only knows as Lincoln. From their conversation in the bar, she believes he’s in town for business and isn’t staying so she doesn’t think there is any chance a relationship could come of it.

Then Lilly’s next clients come in and introduce their best man – and you guessed it: it’s Lincoln! Not only is he the best man but he’s moved to Denver after a messy divorce (two years ago) and in fact there is no barrier to a long term relationship for he and Lilly except for two things: Lilly has a strict “no dating a member of the wedding party” rule and Lincoln is soured on relationships and happy-ever-afters following the implosion of his marriage. Still, the attraction between Lilly and Lincoln is intense and they keep being thrown into one another’s orbit. Add to that a matchmaking bride and BFFs who don’t mind meddling and, as the wedding draws near, the couple are rethinking their attitudes.

I enjoyed the banter and the chemistry between the love interests and I liked the humour of the story and the general feel-good vibe of it. What I didn’t love is the conflict near the end. Lilly’s rule about not dating a member of the wedding party is as a result of a lesson hard learned and when she tells Lincoln about it, after the wedding and they’re free to explore things with each other, his reaction is pretty terrible. Lincoln’s ex-wife was a cheating cheater who cheated and he clearly has some work to do to put it behind him and be able to move on. As we all know, just because one relationship ends doesn’t mean they all do. The way he took his ex-wife’s behaviours out on Lilly was not okay with me. And, I didn’t really see him doing the work of processing his feelings so that I had confidence he wouldn’t massively overreact again. Lilly was altogether too forgiving in my view.

Still, overall, I did like both Lilly and Lincoln and I wasn’t unhappy they ended up together. It’s just that I’d have liked Lincoln to have either not freaked out the way he did or, having done so, made better reparations than a grand gesture. The man needed therapy!

Charlotte North’s narration was, of course, a delight and that made the story all the more enjoyable. Ms. North has a lovely tone and cadence to her voice generally which makes it pleasing to hear but she also delivers on character voices, emotion and humour. Her comedic timing is very good. I especially liked here that she had a distinct voice for all three of the ladies of Mile High Happiness.

The only thing I don’t love about Ms. North’s narration is a personal pet peeve when it comes to audiobooks. When there’s reference to a chuckle or a cough or similar, I want to either hear it in the dialogue or hear it described in words – but not both. She will do the “he coughed” and then make a coughing noise. Do not like. Like I said, this is a personal pet peeve and probably plenty of other listeners could not care less about it.

Most of The Best Man Problem was a lot of fun, though not without touching on some heavier topics (the bride Lilly is working with is a cancer survivor, cheating ex-partners on both sides and a problematic parental relationship) and the narration was very good. Lincoln showed his feet of clay near the end though and didn’t quite manage to convince me – though the epilogue some months later did help a little.

Grade: B-

August Round Up

September 2, 2022 / Kaetrin

Monthly Mini Review

My Killer Vacation by Tessa Bailey – B+ Taylor Bassey is on vacation in Cape Cod with her beloved younger brother Jude. She’s been saving up for years for a special vacation and has decided now’s the time because her brother is struggling and she wants to cheer him up. Only, their fancy vacation rental contains suspicious peep holes looking into the main bedroom (ew). Oh, and also a corpse. As it happens, the dead guy was the landlord. His sister’s boyfriend has an ex-cop current-bounty hunter friend and asks him to investigate the murder in addition to the police. Myles Sumner, big, tattooed and badass therefore comes to town. He’s not staying though. He’s been running for the past three years from what he considers to be a mess-up in his job. It led him to quit the force, ghost his family and live a nomadic life.

Myles: meet Taylor.

Taylor, an elementary school teacher, has always considered she’s not very brave but after not totally freaking out when finding a dead body, she’s decided maybe that’s not true. And she takes an interest in the investigation too. Taylor, you see, is a big fan of true crime podcasts. Continue reading