Narrated by Maxine Mitchell
Catching Heat is Book 3 in the Feeling the Heat series that started with Love in the Afternoon, featuring the actors in a soap opera, followed by The Winning Season, featuring a baseball player and the team’s media director. I enjoyed both the print and audio of the first two – with two different, both new-to-me narrators.
JT Sawyer is the backup pitcher for the San Francisco Blaze, and he’s determined to up his game to be able to keep playing after his contract ends. But when he learns that a one-night-stand with his crush Angie DeMarco resulted in pregnancy, suddenly life seems to have thrown him a curve ball. Angie’s father had been a ball player too – and Angie doesn’t want to end up like her mom, broken hearted and bitter because of a cheating husband. JT and Angie negotiate a business deal: a marriage of convenience so the baby is taken care of, with an expiration date to let them both off the hook. But we know how best laid plans sometimes go awry…
I didn’t read this one in eBook format first, and my experience was definitely tainted by the mediocre narration. I wondered as I listened to Mitchell what was wrong with the narration. She has a pleasant enough voice, and she changes her voice for each character, so I thought maybe if she had more experience… but no, she has several narrations under her belt, and this is one of the later ones. As I listened, totally distracted by the narration, I tried to analyze what I found so unappealing. She seems to use inflection – it’s not a totally flat reading – but it’s inexpertly applied. She emphasizes the wrong words in a sentence, upsetting the pacing of the story, and the pattern of her speech is almost predictable – certain syllables are emphasized, often in a sing-songy pitch (the same pitch). It’s not that it’s bad; I guess some people won’t notice, or won’t care – but I’m spoiled. I’ve heard better – lots better – many, many times. And I expect better, even of Harlequin. In the middle of listening to this book, I switched to another audiobook with a much better narrator, and that solidified my feeling that this narration was just not good enough.
As a result, I found myself criticizing the story too. The bad-to-the-bone “villain” mother, bitter and nasty – I like my villains to be more three dimensional. The heroine who honestly believes all ball players cheat on their wives because her father did. The deus-ex-machina ending that really made no sense but forced the couple to come to their senses, as they must do in Romance – the event itself was never resolved, and totally came out of left field. (hey! another baseball analogy!) I might have glossed over the plotting in print or with a better narrator, but I found myself rolling my eyes a lot. I’m not giving up on Packard but I might stick to print if Audible and Harlequin can’t find better narrators.
(Note: I did finish this audiobook – I just took a little break mid-book.)
Melinda
Narration: C-
Book Content: C+
Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in
Violence: Minimal
Genre: Contemporary Romance (sports theme)
Publisher: Carina Press (at the end of the book, she says “an Audible, Inc and Harlequin production”.)
