Narrated by Eric Rolon and Kylie Stewart
It has been a long time since I listened the Consequences series by Aleatha Romig (well, at least the first three volumes; she penned more that delve “behind the scenes,” but I consider the original story to be mostly contained in the first trilogy). I recalled this series as being one of the first to turn me on to the dark romance genre. So, when I saw a final volume was being added to the collection which tells the story of the series’ hero’s and heroine’s (Tony’s and Claire’s) youngest daughter, I knew I had to take one more venture through this dark world that is motivated by greed, revenge, and power/control.
Interestingly, Ripples is not officially part of the Consequences series and, for the most part, can be listened to as a stand-alone. That said, knowing the prior story will certainly help frame the mood and make the listener appreciate the current story. Having listened to the Consequences series also allowed me to provide a comparison. Ultimately, I found that though slightly different in feel (Consequences is more of a captor/captive dark romance, whereas Ripples certainly has that element but feels more like a FSOG styled Dom/Sub romance, without the BDSM elements), Ripples is nonetheless likely to be attractive to the same audience as the Consequences series.
Natalie Rawlings is failing out of Harvard. Devastated, and unsure how to break the news to her family, she is headed to a family retreat when she encounters a man on the flight who goes by the name of Dexter. Soon she starts finding herself feeling light-headed and Dexter taking control. It’s not long thereafter that she wakes up a captive in his home. He claims she now belongs to him, he’s even changed her name and she now has a passport that proves she is his wife.
Just what does Dexter want from Natalie? Moreover, with a strong domineering father and powerful family behind Natalie, will Dexter get away with it? And does Natalie even want to be rescued or could a HEA possibly grow out of such an unconventional beginning?
The narration is a bit of a mixed bag. On the plus side, it employs my favorite style of narration for a romance novel: a duet narration. This duet narration is mostly performed by Kylie Stewart as the story is told primarily from Natalie’s viewpoint (though towards the end we also get her mother’s, Claire’s viewpoint) with sound overlays of male character’s voices produced by Mr. Rolon. While this style of narration is not to every listener’s taste, I enjoy this style because it usually makes it easier to differentiate the point of view shared and person speaking in any particular dialogue. Moreover, it does away with the issue of authenticity as sometimes even the best narrators particularly excel in producing character voices of their own gender but have a harder time producing naturally sounding opposite sex characters.
What is usually a plus for me with this duet narration, however, turned out to be of limited utility in other respects, as the narrators seem to rely on the duet narration as the sole source of character differentiation. In that regard, the voices that Ms. Stewart used for Natalie and Claire sounded remarkably similar and Mr. Rolon’s voices for Dexter and Tony where likewise generally indistinguishable. While this didn’t detract too much, given that except for a small portion near the end, the current hero and heroine do not appear in the same scene with heroine’s parents, it still made it hard to visualize the story by just the narrators’ voices alone (instead you must resort to the typical reader’s cues of dialogue tags).
All in all, I enjoyed the tension and ominous and yet alluring feel of this story. It was easy to devour the entire story on one long day spent at the airport and it certainly helped whittle away the time. However, my main complaint with this audiobook (aside from the issues I had with the narration) is that it feels incomplete. The ending is abrupt and leaves you with almost a cliffhanger feel. That said, it doesn’t appear that Ms. Romig plans to write a sequel as I haven’t seen mention of one on either Goodreads or her website (at least not as of the writing of this review). It may be that this story was originally written for an anthology and therefore was at first produced in a much shorter version, but I for one would love for Ms. Romig to continue what she started in this story with at least a second volume that provides some closure for the overarching storyline, including why the hero kidnapped the heroine in the first place and how that intersects with Tony and Claire from the Consequences series.
BJ
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