Narrated by Joel Leslie
Alice Winters is a new-to-me author, but I’m a fan of paranormal romantic suspense stories and the synopsis of Within the Mind caught my eye. Seeing Joel Leslie listed as the narrator sealed the deal and I decided to give her work a try.
Chevy Wright and his partner Seneca Bates (Seneca? Really?) are both psychics within a special department of the Westlands PD. (Which is where? It’s never made clear.) Chevy has the ability to access people’s memories and Seneca is a mimic, able to replicate and use the gift of the last person he touched. Together, they work with victims of crime to retrieve memories of whatever happened to them in order to help the police to bring the perpetrators to justice.
So they’re surprised when they’re approached by a couple of homicide detectives and asked to enter the mind of a man – Mason Page, a well-known artist – believed to be responsible for several murders to see if they can find out where he’s holding his two most recent victims… assuming they’re still alive. This will be like nothing they’ve done before, and turns out to be a lot more dangerous than either of them had expected as they are thrown into a horribly deranged mind that leaves them scared, confused and struggling to tell the difference between reality, memory and fabrication.
I enjoyed this audiobook the most when it focused on the plot, which is well thought-out and, at times, creepy AF. The scenes in which Chevy is trapped in Page’s mind and then in his own memories are superbly written and have a truly nightmarish quality to them, and I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see how things would play out. The author does a terrific job creating a sense of unreality and not knowing quite what or who to trust, and the way that Page always seems one step ahead only adds to the tension and menacing atmosphere.
BUT. There’s one really big problem with the book, which is the overall lack of balance. It’s almost as though Ms. Winters has smushed two different books together, because the spooky thriller and the juvenile, undeveloped romance (and I use the term loosely) just don’t gel. At. All. Right from the very beginning Chevy and Seneca communicate almost entirely through snark; there are, I don’t know, a dozen sentences of ‘normal’ conversation in the entire book. Now, I love good, well-written banter, but this book proves that it really IS possible to have too much of a good thing, because there’s so much banter that it goes beyond saturation point. Said banter is ALL sexual – honestly, Seneca is a sexual harassment suit waiting to happen – and a lot of it just isn’t very funny. In the very first minutes of the book, we get this, as Chevy and Seneca are (in a memory) chasing down a suspect:
“I can’t wait to deflower you.”
“There’s no fucking flower in there for you.”
“You’re right, it’s not a flower, it’s been so long for you that you probably have a cactus in there. Or like, a Venus Fly Trap… wait… wait…”
“Don’t,” I warn, knowing him all too well.
“A penis fly trap! Is that why you never date? You just snap their penis off before they even get close?”
And later:
“Please don’t come to work tomorrow.”
“I’ll come just for you. I’d always come for you.”
Have we somehow gone back to the 1970s and I didn’t notice? Imagine if a remark like either of those had been made to a female character by a male one…
Seneca also goes into banter mode at the most inappropriate moments. During his and Chevy’s first foray into Page’s mind, after some seriously creepy shit has gone down, Seneca comes out with his usual stream of sexual innuendo, which completely ruined the atmosphere of menace the author had so skilfully built up. I get the use of humour to decompress or diffuse potentially difficult situations, but what the author did there was incredibly jarring – and not even funny.
As the story is told from Chevy’s PoV, we know that even though he finds Seneca exasperating, he is nonetheless attracted to him. Given Seneca behaves like a hormonally challenged twelve-year-old who doesn’t seem to have a single thought in his head beyond getting Chevy into bed and doesn’t appear able to hold an adult conversation, I had no idea what he saw in him beyond his good looks and oft-mentioned (but never really demonstrated) charm. But okay, taking the attraction at face value, they then go from ‘You want me/I really don’t’ to ILY in the blink of an eye. There’s no relationship development whatsoever – unless you count the fact that the pair has worked together for two years and Chevy has been subjected to two years of constant sexual innuendo – and because they hardly ever have a serious, adult conversation (they have ONE, I think, during which they talk about the guilt they’ve both carried for deaths of people close to them) it’s impossible to take their relationship seriously or believe in an emotional connection between them.
If Ms. Winters had written Within the Mind as a ‘serious’ romantic-paranormal thriller and achieved a good balance between plot, humour and romance in the way that Jordan Castillo Price has managed to do consistently throughout her long-running Psycop series, I’d be able to give it a strong recommendation in terms of both narration and story. But as it is, the poor characterisation – the best developed character was the villain! – and constant stream of sexual innuendo completely tanks the relationship, there’s no chemistry between Chevy and Seneca and no romantic development whatsoever. If I were grading the thriller, I’d be giving it at least a B+, but the rest of it would get a D, so my content grade is a compromise because I can’t, in good conscience, recommend the story as it is.
It’s a different story when it comes to the narration, however, as Joel Leslie delivers another flat-out A grade performance. I’ve listened to him quite a lot, but this audiobook was something of a first for me, because it’s the first one I’ve listened to where he’s narrating using an American accent throughout. (Apart from the English villain, that is.) Yes, amazing as it may seem given the number of audiobooks he’s recorded, I’ve only listened to him so far in ‘Brit mode’! And when I’m used to hearing someone speaking in a certain way, it always takes my brain a few minutes to catch up with my ears and it sounds a bit strange until I get used to it. Once I did however, I was able to enjoy the performance immensely; the pacing is spot on, the character interpretation and differentiation is excellent and his vocal acting is superb; the ghastly, throat-wrecking growl he gives the nightmarish ‘birdy’ character is utterly grotesque. As we’re in Chevy’s head, we get to experience all the fear, horror and uncertainty that he does, and Mr. Leslie absolutely nails all of it, conveying a wide range of emotions with consummate skill. When it comes to the relationship between the leads, he does the best he can with such weak material; the incessant back-and-forth is expertly timed and delivered with all of Seneca’s insufferable smugness and Chevy’s world-weary exasperation. I just wish it had been as sparkling and witty as the author clearly thought it was.
So there you go. Listen to Within the Mind for Joel Leslie’s terrific performance and the creepy plot, but don’t look for any depth of characterisation or romance.
Caz
Buy Within the Mind by Alice Winters on Amazon
