Klaes Ashford

Serious spice, good narration, excellent text!

Revisado: 04-22-25

I rarely review audiobooks - it has to be extraordinarily good or bad for me to make the effort. What Was Meant To Be is very, very good. It knows what it wants to be (a seriously erotic romance for adults) and it goes about getting where it wants to go in a craftsmanlike manner. It succeeds in prolonging the suspense until nearly the end of the reading - no small feat - by artfully going back and forth in time, but you're never lost, and it's always to find out something that you wanted to know. I appreciate that the female main character is not a ditz, not stupid, capable of growth, and is every bit the equal of the formidable MMC. I also appreciate the the MMC is not a damned billionaire.

It's enjoyable, very hot, and I know I'll come back sometime and listen again. Worth the credit.

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Maddeningly uneven story, should have been better

Revisado: 06-12-23

I have listened to all the Nikki Sloane audiobooks from The Blindfold Club (great!) on down. Nashville Neighborhood series IMHO has been meh until The Architect, which has a sizzling and intriguing first half, full of credit-worthy BDSM material with an original premise. Then at the halfway point the author seems to have a crisis of confidence or something, and the story devolves into just another soap opera-ish hash of predictability, with lots of offhand references to BDSM activities that we listeners would very much like to have described to us. That's why we're listening, Ms. Sloane!!! Not to hear the formulaic angst of a cookie cutter can't-commit dom (how many times have we seen this?), another handsome veterinarian who would like to be a dom but during the entire course of the book never does a domly thing, and our heroine, who could be the subject of the world's most execrable song, "Torn Between Two Lovers." She's a great submissive and pain slut, but after the first half of the book, this theme is simply abandoned. WTF?

On the bright side, the narrators are just outstanding. Angelina Rocca is the best - I can't imagine anyone else. Brennan Landry performs sparingly, but perfectly. There are none of the mispronunciations, stumbling over words, any of the amateurish goofs that mar so many of these productions. This is a first rate, polished deal, and everyone connected with it should take a bow.

Summary judgment: it's worth a credit, but it coulda been a contender.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Wonderful story, excellent performance, hawt!

Revisado: 05-27-23

Kristen Ashley knows her craft. Most of the time we can count on a first rate story, with interesting character development, a certain depth in the plot structure, and an appropriate amount of adult heat. Moreover, her books, for the most part, feature adults who act rationally. This feature alone puts her books in the top tier of the genre.
I had been going through a dry spell of meh audiobooks lately and Soaring was like a drink of cool, fresh water in the desert. If features a lot of the characters from the first book in the Magdelene series, The Will, but you don't have to have read or listened to that in order to understand this standalone novel. No cliffhangers!
Finally, it's just a feel good listen. The narrator is extraordinary - such a good decision to have her do this whole book alone. The book is filled with heart and generosity. And heat. Did I mention heat?

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Returned this for gratuitous mm content

Revisado: 04-29-23

I really liked this series up to this title. It was sophisticated, took BDSM pretty seriously, and was hot. Of course it suffered from the near universal disease of having a billionaire protagonist, but in our society, this is just a convenient literary device to get around the fact that capitalism doesn't work and so being a billionaire is kind of a magic wand to get around all those mundane problems and go straight to the erotic. It's a cheap trick (pun intended) but lots of books do it, so we give it a pass, for the most part.
However, for no good reason that I could see, this title takes a deep dive into (for me) repellent squick-filled mm content where none of the previous four books has gone there, at least not to nearly this graphic an extent. You can't just skip past it, this content is pretty much built into the storyline and it looks like it will be there going forward in this series.
So here is where I get off.
For those who like this sort of thing (as my music teacher used to say), this is the sort of thing that they like. But not for me.

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Moments of excellence broken by periods of meh

Revisado: 02-12-23

There are some things to like here. Bold concept, and for most of this, pretty good execution. The author doesn't shy away from the hotness and complexity (for the most part) until we get about 90% through the story, and then characters who have been acting rationally - at least according to their own internal logic - begin throwing away that internal logic and acting stupidly and chaotically, and the listener gets that feeling, "Uh oh, the author wants to wrap this puppy up." Don't you hate it when that happens? Well, it happens here. So, yes, there is an HEA but it is contrived and unearned and this coulda been a contender. Sad to lose your nerve at the end on us, Sara Cate.

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Great erotica and great narrator performance

Revisado: 10-08-22

What a great performance from Caroline Wintour. There are some lines I go back to listen to over and over because her narration is so . . . hot. She really gets the submissive Angelica (hope I'm spelling her name correctly). Her accents are never over the top, always appropriate.
The story is as steamy as anything you're likely to find on Audible. For people like me that's a mark in its favor. Others will find it off-putting. Your mileage may definitely vary. The story is filled with the rich characters from the Sweet series, but it's less formulaic than some of the others. It's certainly darker and hotter.
Enjoy.

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First class erotica from Jade West

Revisado: 08-19-22

It's entertaining and not particularly deep. If you're looking for more profound erotica, you can find that (Story of O, Carrie's Story, Acts of Service). This is mid-level stuff, with some interesting characters and some truly hot moments. No mm material (thank you for that). The female narrator is much better than the male narrator and one wishes that she had done the whole thing. However, I wish that she had learned the pronunciation of "expletive." Drives me nuts when narrators mispronounce words.

Definitely worth a credit.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

mmf ending spoils entire experience

Revisado: 07-06-22

If you're going to hang your entire book on an mmf erotic bolt out of the blue that is completely unearned, with an mm twist that is profoundly distasteful, and then this constitutes your HEA . . . count me out.
The responsible thing to do would be to tell listeners that this is an important element of the story before they spend a credit on something they, to put it mildly, don't want to wallow in.

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esto le resultó útil a 5 personas

Enjoyable top notch listen

Revisado: 06-18-22

I listen to a LOT of audiobooks, and for the life of me I cannot understand the kvetching about the narrator, who, in my opinion, does a professional and straightforward reading of this thoroughly enjoyable text. There are lots of complications on the way to happily ever after, there are thrills and narrow misses and mob violence, there are some lamentable poor decisions by the guy and the girl before they come to their best selves, there are memorable secondary characters, and there is a satisfying amount of heat (4/5 on the heat scale). This is definitely worth a credit and I'm stingy with mine. My advice: Go for it.

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Well written romance with intelligent characters!

Revisado: 06-12-22

What a pleasure to listen to a story where the plot does not depend on the main characters being irrational, selfish, and stupid! These protagonists are refreshingly adult. Throughout the entire story they work out their differences by discussing them, negotiating, and respecting each others points of view. And it turns out that is very hot!

Until . . . OK, there is one plot point at the very end where the female main character does something uncharacteristically unwise and, well, moronically stupid. It's not infidelity but it's still way below her IQ level and it causes the expected crisis. One wishes the authors - who are excellent! - would have found a better way to wrap this story up.

But still, this is a really fun listen, way above the average romance, steamy and smart and fun. Full marks.

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