For some reason, I’ve got the earworm song “My Favorite Things” going round and round in my head.
When the dog bites – when the bee stings – when I’m feeling sad,
I simply remember my favorite romance audiobook series…
and then I don’t feel so bad!
Here’s what the Gals have been listening to this week.
BJ
Narrated by Rob Shapiro
Caz
Narrated by Charlie David
Em
Narrated by Sienna Frances
Kaetrin
Narrated by Ray Porter
Melinda
Narrated by Je Nie Fleming
Shannon
Narrated by Joniece Abbott-Pratt
I’ve listened to the first 4 chapters of ‘Indirection’ and enjoyed them. I started it in the false hope of listening to the whole of it before ‘Misdirection’ was released, but ran out of time! I will return to it, but will have difficulty choosing between it and the other two Ashe’s that I have waiting…….
I did a joint read/listen of Alexis Hall’s ‘Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake’ and much preferred reading it. The narrator of the audibook is very well-regarded but I found her narration style exceedingly irritating.
Hah – the Ashe curse of there being too many books out at once!! Charlie David really has a handle on North and Shaw and is a terrific vocal actor; I’m enjoying his performance a lot.
I liked RPTtC a lot, but didn’t quite love it; add that to the fact that very few female narrators work for me , and it just didn’t add up to a “must listen”.
Needing something light this past week, I’ve been listening to Eden Finley’ Fake Boyfriend series. So far I’ve listened to Fake Out, Trick Play, and Deke. I love the dual narration from Iggy Toma and Alexander Cendese. These are in the solid B category,made more fun by the narrators. I’ve been fortunate that my library has the whole series.
Earlier this week I listened to Mean Steak by Sandra Brown. I’d read it before, but not listened on audio. It was enjoyable, but her romances are never fully developed, and the suspense plot wasn’t quite as engaging as some of her books. Jonathan Davis does a good job overall with the narration.
Earlier today I finished Cask Strength by Layla Reyne, narrated by Tristan James. It’s a great story and I extended my walk today to finish it. Tristan James does a good job overall, although he isn’t always consistent with his character voices. Sometimes Whiskey had a southern accent,and sometimes he doesn’t, things like that. I’m going to read the next book in print and I can’t wait!
For audio, I’m not sure whether to jump into one of the Annabeth Albert books I have, or check out the next Fake Boyfriend book.
I liked the Fake b/f series as well – I think the first one is still my favourite. The same narrators also recorded the first three books in May Archer’s Love in O’Leary series – I’ve reviewed some of them here. They’re pretty easy-listening, so you might enjoy some of those, too.
The inconsistencies with characterisations are things I’ve noticed a lot with Tristan James; he can pull out quite a wide variety of different character voices, but he runs into problems when he has to actually maintain them consistently. I said to a friend recently that he was probably one of the first m/m narrators I listened to and those issues were probably not as obvious to me back then. (And okay, so I’d already discovered Greg Tremblay by then, too, but he was in a class of his own!) Now though, having listened to people like Iggy Toma and J.F. Harding and others, the problems with James’ narrations are much more apparent.