Own the Night by Debbi Rawlins

Narrated by Montana Chase

The Cranky Listener reared her irascible head during this book. First, “own the night”? I just hate it when the title is in no way related to the story. This wasn’t a book about The Night or things that happen at night or anything to do with The Night.

Alana Richardson is the prototype young urban professional – back in the day, we called them Yuppies – a Manhattan ad agency rising star who lives to work. When her company’s office shuts down for a week to move location, she’s faced with a choice to accompany her uptight mother on a vacation, or avoid it by going somewhere else on her own. She opts for a Montana dude ranch – solo – rather than the swanky, opulent 5-star foreign beach vacation her criticizing mother prefers. This dude ranch comes with a set of hot brothers (who must have their own books, given the story’s treatment of them) and a hot local sheriff hero Noah Calder, all of whom have prominent photos on the dude ranch’s website, luring the dude ranch bunny set to the small town nearby.

This is a Harlequin Blaze – short, hot, and sometimes good reading at the same time, but not as much this time. Rawlins makes the controversy be the small town vs. the dude ranch, even though the dude ranchers are locals and are bringing much-needed tourism dollars to the area. She throws in a little mystery – was Alana the con artist they were looking for? She can’t prove her identity because someone stole her luggage and purse while she was struggling to figure out how to get to the dude ranch. There were so many holes in this plot that all the Ford trucks in Montana could do wheelies in them – starting with a successful dude ranch that doesn’t have transportation for guests, an up and coming professional from New York City that doesn’t have anyone to call to help her, and the lame plot of the sheriff insisting she stay at his house just in case she was the con artist. Right. [rolls eyes]

Enter the narrator. Coincidentally, I was trawling the Audible Just Released list, and found 2 interesting candidates with 2 different narrator names: Gayle Hendrix and Montana Chase. The samples sounded so much alike that I googled around and listened around, and if this is not the same person, then one of them has a serious vocal doppelganger. Between them, there is a large repertory of work. Unfortunately, she’s only mediocre in this and in Better Than Chocolate, as her voice double Hendrix. The same criticisms I had in that book apply – her pacing and delivery are just off enough to be annoying. She has a really bad habit of sitting on one of the first words of a sentence, both in narration and in dialogue. Her voices are good – she does a credible job of differentiating among characters, using pitch and accent. Between her annoying narration and the not-great story, this was one listen that Was Not Worth The Credit.

I guess the Cranky Listener just needs to stay away from unknown Harlequin Blaze, which can be hit or miss.

Melinda

Narration: C-

Book Content: C-

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence: None

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.