OYENTE

C. J. Rock

  • 31
  • opiniones
  • 3
  • votos útiles
  • 74
  • calificaciones

Skipped over the major plot points

Total
2 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
2 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 01-16-25

The story is good, but has an overload of angst for such little resolution time. The female main character hates herself through much of the story. Where they should be resolving issues they just jump forward to the wrap them up or skip the drama and dive into the epilogue.

As for the audio version, the narrators are fine when voicing their own character’s lines, but terrible with the other main characters. It’s almost beyond imaginable how bad the male narrator does female Australian. Neither of them can truly do a Savanah Georgia accent convincingly.

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Seriously unlikeable people

Total
1 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
1 out of 5 stars
Historia
1 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 10-28-23

Clueless heroes are common in romance novels, but this guy is worse than clueless he’s cardboard. He repeatedly hurts her and while she’s supposed to be sassy she’s mostly just pathetic and obtuse. He’s made out to be the victim of her over the top pursuit of her teenage crush, and he never reconciles that he had any role back then. And now that she’s grown up he just wham bam thank you ma’ams her multiple times and tells her repeatedly he doesn’t want her in his space. Of course, there’s a supposed HEA, but it’s rushed and really doesn’t deal with any of the issues they’ve had previously. It could have been stripped out of any other romance and just plugged in at the end.

I usually like Kylie Scott so it was especially disappointing how bad this one was.

Special mention should go to the one decent character in the story, In a bit of a twist, it’s her brand new stepmother. She can’t redeem this mess though.

Andi Arndt is a great narrator usually, but she doesn’t even attempt to add an accent to this story and given the setting is Down Under, it’s jarring to hear mentions of places reminding you that this isn’t taking place in some suburban American town. It makes the setting feel completely removed.

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Gets worse and worse … zero about this story is romantic

Total
1 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
2 out of 5 stars
Historia
1 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 09-24-23

Don’t let the category fool you. This is not a romance at any point. There is no redemption story, just an awful hero an even worse than stupid heroine and the ugliness that persists between them. It starts out intriguing, but then the story just makes no sense.

Yes, Teddy Hamilton is a great narrator, but his voice is too good guy to portray this guy who is essentially soulless - no conscience, no heart, just a dick and perhaps a couple of useless brain cells. The heroine’s brain cells are even more useless. I almost DNFed it (which I rarely do) but instead I put it on 2.5 speed to just see if anything improved. It didn’t. Truly it got worse.

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Character growth galore for him, none for her

Total
3 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
3 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 08-23-23

I heard about this story back when it first came out nearly 30 years ago. It was one of the most popular books that year. I would have still been a teenager back then. I’m glad I didn’t tackle it then. I’d have despised it. It is too thin on romance, and that was all I read back then. It’s still mostly what I read now, but I’ve hopefully matured in my tastes enough to take in more complex stories. This book has depth and complexity as it is a beautiful in its depiction of Christian and his struggles. His character development/growth is amazing. In the beginning, he’s a man in need of a lot of change to become worthy of more than the superficial respect his title affords him. I also start out liking the pious, sanctimonious Maddy Timms. The problem is, her character seems to grow not at all, maybe even seeming to get weaker right up to the end. She starts out believing she has a calling from God to help him. She stubbornly sticks to her plan to do so. This is when she’s at her most likable. But then, when she should be falling in love with him, she claims to love him, but doesn’t seem to at all. Mostly, she never seems to revise her attitude about his lifestyle. She should respect and admire his returning strength, instead she seems to like him less as the story goes on because as he recovers she sees him returning to the man she once thought a reprobate. She’s constantly angry with herself and him for the worldly weaknesses she sees due to the way her faith view colors her perceptions of the world. She stagnates as a character, no growth whatsoever while he seems utterly transformed by his illness, recovery and his love for her. For a romance, it is one of the most uneven portrayals of character growth I’ve ever seen.

For the uncommon portrayal of a romance hero struggling with disabilities, the writer scores major storytelling accolades, especially for the era in which it was written, when pressures were for conformity rather than representation.

For the beautiful narration of Christian’s verbal and mental struggles, I applaud this narrator and his lovely voice.

But for Maddy, and her sanctimoniousness that was truly unrelenting, I have to say she ruined the romance of this story. It’s still a good story, but it’s not a good romance and much of that is due to her lack of any perceivable evolution. I’ve seen religious heroines, written in the same era (Julie Garwood’s Catholic heroines come to mind) who are similarly troubled by balancing piety with their wifely duties to a man much different in his beliefs, her self-righteousness is much more extreme, perhaps it is because she is a Quaker, Maddy’s beliefs keep her locked into a very one dimensional view of the world around her and it never changes. Even at the end when they are together, she still sees him as a sinner and she sees herself as having fallen to his level. It is a sad HEA from that perspective because she seems more resigned than happy with the path her heart has taken her.

I see why people love this story. But I also see why some people hate it. It depends on what you want. Though some say it is a 5 star romance, I can't give it that. I vacillate between 3/4 stars because the writing is just so good when it comes to the hero, but I can't love this story no matter how much I respect the quality of the writing, because in the end, I think he deserves her to love him for the man he has become.

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Too much of the other guy

Total
2 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
3 out of 5 stars
Historia
1 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 06-26-23

This appears to be labeled as women's fiction, which is good because it was marketed as romance when I bought it and frankly as a romance it misses the mark badly. It is definitely angsty enough to be women's fiction instead. However, it really lacks the depts of character a good women's fiction story usually provides. At times, it seems to be trying to fill both roles and it is awful as a romance. She has been pining horribly over her first love for all of her adult life and she has constant flashbacks to the joyful feeling of falling in love with him. But we are supposed to buy that in the end she can be happy ever after with the man the story makes a two-dimensional nice guy she has been banging but not dating for the last few years. Her unethical choices, her constant flashbacks to her first love, her lack of commitment to the nice guy all make her frustrating to listen to for hours on end, even though the narrator does a good job trying to tell her story. In the end I put it on the highest speed I could just to chug along to the end.

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Secret Baby, but why?

Total
2 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 06-08-23

What she did in keeping this secret and asking his grandmother to keep it as well seems pretty unforgivable considering how flimsy her reasons are. Yet, after just one good angsty scene he easily moves on to being in love and wanting to settle down with her. I get that it’s a short book, but the central conflict is resolved with no work on the part of either main character or apparently the writer.

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Meh … just not good

Total
1 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
1 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 06-02-23

The primary conflict through much of the story is she’s still in an open relationship with her ex fiancé who basically asked for her permission to allow him to cheat for a year and she has so little self-respect, she goes along with it. Then she meets the hero and she has so little respect for him that because it’s a summer fling she doesn’t break it off with her ex then either. His reasons for wanting just a summer fling are kept hidden for much of of the story though his backstory is revealed by flashbacks to his courtship of his own ex. With so much energy spent on their respective exes, it makes their own relationship look less committed and less likely to succeed. In the end I had to double speed and just slog to the end, as I really barely cared about these characters or their ultimate weak HEA.

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Disappointing

Total
1 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
1 out of 5 stars
Historia
1 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 05-04-23

The first two in this series were boring, feeling like word counting to fill the page. This one added an unforgivable plot device to stretch the conflict to the limits. I never grew to like any of the characters.

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So much better than the first in the series

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 04-06-23

This book is so much better than the first in this series it’s hard to believe they were penned by the same author. It has a few troublesome aspects, including falling on some ugly stereotypes, but the love story feels sweet and genuine. The true affection between the characters and their genuine conflicts feel credible. I liked both main characters and enjoyed watching them fall for each other.

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Far better than the first in the series

Total
3 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
3 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 04-05-23

This one is mostly silly misunderstandings, but at times it was sweet. The twin brother makes a much better hero than the atrocious monster we met in the first book in this series. I found this slow moving at times, but cute enough.

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