Category: DNF reviews

Fair Catch by Heidi McLaughlin, narrated by Stephanie Rose & Nelson Hobbs

February 22, 2024 / Kaetrin

Fair Catch by Heidi McLaughlin, narrated by Stephanie Rose & Nelson Hobbs. Spoiler Alert: I DNF’d it.

Fair Catch was my first book by Heidi McLaughlin and I fear it is very likely to be my last. I did not enjoy it. There are plenty of people who disagree with me: the book has a 4.37 rating on Goodreads. It was just not for me. Maybe I’m too old. Maybe I just like football too much.

Kelsey Sloane is a book editor in Portland. She receives a submission for a contemporary sports romance set in the world of NFL. Not knowing anything about football herself, she wants to make sure the author has her world building correct. So, she asks an assistant at the publisher to connect her with the city’s NFL team, the Portland Pioneers, so she can verify the sports stuff in the submission for herself. That was in the blurb. I really should have known better. Still, I have gone with stranger set-ups in the past and “romance reasons” covers a lot of ground.

(Aside: if Kelsey receives a submission featuring a surgeon does she have to observe a surgery to make sure the author knows what’s she’s talking about? Kelsey – Google/YouTube/Wikipedia is your friend.)

Anyway, because (and this, I could – mostly -believe) the assistant’s roommate works with the team, Kelsey is invited to a practice where, rather improbably, the coach assigns the centre, Alex Moore, to teach Kelsey all about football, instead of, you know, the assistant’s roommate who works with the team).

Alex is immediately deeply smitten (understatement) and wants to pursue a relationship. Kelsey is extremely naïve and my impression was that she didn’t really understand the level of Alex’s interest in her, nor his celebrity. She was very diligent and apparently skilled at her job but she seemed otherwise fairly clueless. (Perhaps that impression would have changed had I listened to more of the book.) For example: she asks Alex how to watch football (on her TV) as she doesn’t know how. Which… really? (Yes, I know some games are on cable but still.)

Alex invites her to a game. He messages her that he’s left a ticket for her. She doesn’t go because she thinks the game is next weekend instead of the weekend he tells her he’s left a ticket for her because that makes sense.

When she doesn’t show at the game, Alex’s teammates suggest he has to go bigger to really get her to understand how much he’s into her. They say he should get her sideline passes. SIDELINE PASSES.

I’m an Australian. Yes, I support the 49ers (go Niners!) and watch NFL so I know something about American football but even so it does not take much research (oh the irony) to know that sideline passes to games are not given out willy nilly. The NFL closely controls who is allowed on the sidelines. A book editor and would-be girlfriend of the team’s center is not ever going to be given a sideline pass. I seriously doubt it’s even possible for a center to obtain a sideline pass to an NFL game. There’s a reason Taylor Swift is in a box at the Chiefs games (except if they win the AFC Championship; then she’s on the field with Travis’s family on the field to watch the trophy presentation and to celebrate).

Then, at about chapter 6 or so, it is casually thrown into the story that the Portland Pioneers won the Super Bowl the year before. And I just couldn’t. Can you imagine the Chiefs allowing some random book editor onto their practice field and Andy Reid assigning an actual player to teach said editor about football? It’s beyond belief. My eyes were sore from the all the rolling.

World building means something to me and I could not believe the world this book was set in. It seemed to me like everything was just a flimsy excuse for two people to get together and have what I’m sure would be a lot of hot sex. And yes, to one degree, that’s what happens in romance – if you squint.

I love romance and I love a good hot sex scene. I even love a guy who is gone over his lady. But I do need a story around it that makes sense to me and Fair Catch did not. At least not up until that point and after then I was out.

Both Stephanie Rose and Nelson Hobbs are skilled and talented narrators. I’ve listened to both before. However, they were not enough to save the book for me. I didn’t listen to enough of the book to make much more comment on the narration other than that it was good in terms of character differentiation, pacing and tone, as I’d expect from this pair.

Probably if someone doesn’t know anything about NFL and/or doesn’t care, then Fair Catch would work better for them than it did for me. For me however: DNF.

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.

Say Uncle by CM Steele

December 31, 2015 / Kaetrin

Why I read it: I bought this one on the recommendation of Melissa K. It turns out our Venn diagram isn’t in total agreement.

What it’s about: (from Goodreads) What happens when:
• your brother rashly goes to Vegas and is going to marry a stranger?
• you meet a beautiful woman on your way to stop him and have thoughts of following in his footsteps?
• she happens to be the daughter of your brother’s bride?

What happens when:
• you meet the hottest man around and he’s your new uncle?
• you can’t resist him?
• he dares you to ‘Say Uncle, again?’

A taste:
“Angel, you’re so perfect,” I breathed. My eyes never left hers as she came up behind me, wrapping her arms around my waist and placed her cheek on my spine. The feelings of completion engulfed me.
“Thank you, Uncle Dean,” she said sweetly.
“Did you just say uncle?” I asked menacingly, and I felt her smile on my back. This woman was too much.

What worked for me (and what didn’t): According to my reader, the novelette is 49 pages. I made it to page 29. It wasn’t the uncle thing which bothered me – if it had, I wouldn’t have bought it. After all, it’s right there in the title. The way the technical familial relationship was structured didn’t bother me in the least. In fact, I thought it was kinda funny and it was one of the factors that had me one-clicking. Continue reading

A disappointing story of 2 DNF reads

November 12, 2012 / Kaetrin

I needed to share my pain. If Brie can do it, so can I.

Book fail
Unleashed by Cherrie Lynn

I wasn’t enjoying the structure of the book – the way important things were skipped over and discussed in retrospect rather than taking me through them. Given that the book was about a pair of friends heading to Hawaii for what would have been his honeymoon with the woman who had an affair with her (now ex) husband, why skip over the first 2 days of their week away?

Second, given that I have a (somewhat) legal background, I also had some problems with the heroine saying that she wanted to be involved in family law rather than criminal law because criminal law had “too much grit and violence and pain”. Um, hello? Do you know what families can do to each other? Sure, criminal can be brutal but so can family law. If you want away from grit and violence and pain, try corporate or tax law or patent law. Stay far away from family law.

The last straw was when the MC’s started talking about their intimate parts in the third person.

“She says just tell him to go slow this time, be good.” she whispered.

“He is hers to command.”

Ew.

It wasn’t awful but I just couldn’t be bothered reading anymore. Life’s too short. DNF.

For a friends to lovers going on a honeymoon together story, I recommend Christine Bell’s Down for the Count. Much better, IMO.

Audiobook fail

Promises by Marie Sexton, narrated by Mack L. Jones

I’m so sad about this one. I tried. Twice. But the narration is so bad that I just can’t. Sorry.There is NO differentiation in the character voices at all. I can’t tell the difference between Lizzy or Jared or Matt or Brian or Jared’s mum talking. Nada. There is also very little expression in the delivery.

There are almost no vocal pauses between sentences – which makes distinguishing the voices even harder because there is no cue in the timing/delivery. It is the audio equivalent of everything in the whole chapter being one giant paragraph. Not enjoyable.

I love this book. I refuse to ruin the experience by keeping on listening to such bad narration. I’m sad because I was so hoping to enjoy the whole series again except on audio – Strawberries for Dessert is my favourite in the series. If I’m this upset about Promises, I can’t imagine how I’d feel about that one. The narrator is the same for the whole series sadly.

Dreamspinner: you need better narrators.

Read the book – the book is excellent. Audiobook is a total fail for me though. 🙁