Anónimo

Where is the real Hannah?

Revisado: 06-27-24

Spoilers. I've read almost all of the previous books on paper through the years. This is the first that I remember listening to. It will be the last I listen to.

The story is predictable and I had it figured close to the start. But these stories are usually about the journey. This journey, however, was disappointing.

Seems like Hannah is developing a second personality in conflict with her first. Her strong, independent will has been completely stomped into submission to Norman, who is more than willing to take over. He's acting like her father, rather than as a potential paramour.

There is so little activity in this book. There are references to Lisa telling stories in the store, but no interaction with that. Characters move from one locale to another to cook, re-heat, and eat and talk. Cops easily agree to everybody and his brother investigating, even suspects!? What happened to Bill? What about ramifications of a mayor's death to the community, not just the suspect's family?

And if the story was not flimsy enough, it was interrupted by recipe after recipe, after recipe. I noticed that (at least) one chapter was MORE THAN HALF recipes!!! I don't bake and I don't care! With a story as unmemorable as this one, it was hard to remember where we'd left off prior to the recipe recitation.

Sometimes narrators can save a story or make it bearable, but not this one. Lisa sounds like a stereotypical bubble-headed bimbo, Andrea sounds like a breathy beauty queen, Hannah's mom sounds like a doddering old woman of over 100 (a friend of mine just turned 96 and sounds better than that!), and the men sound...odd. I'm not sure whether it's the story or the narration or the combination that has Norman giving me the heebie-jeebies! I can't even think of how to describe it, but the characterizations by this narrator don't make me want to know ANY of these characters. Inflection at the end of lots sentences is odd and doesn't follow the story. There are just too many to point out. Not everything a character says has to sound like a surprised utterance. There is very little normal conversation performed in this story.

I was excited to re-visit Hannah and company when I saw the sale on this month, but now I'm sorry I paid even a pittance for this audiobook. I might grab a paperback in the future in case the stories are better, but no more audiobooks, especially with this narrator.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

It's a cozy mystery.

Revisado: 06-14-24

My first foray into this author's work was Sticks and Scones on Books on Tape back around 2000. The characters seemed more comfortable with each other and the narrator was different...less pretentious sounding. Since then I have read all of the books and have enjoyed them very much. With the current big sale, I thought I'd add a few Goldy Bear mysteries to my library for company.

A first book in a series often makes the characters seem very stiff and uncomfortable with each other. Hearing them through the filter of years of experience has softened that for me, I think, but they didn't feel like the comfortable characters I remember. Part of the discomfort is in this narrator's presentation. While I like the sound of her voice (important for that "cozy" mystery thing), the heavy sighs and the deep breaths were distracting, but were nothing compared to what often sounded like a kid chewing gum with her mouth open. That sound was so distinct at times, I nearly gagged.

As for the story, it's a cozy mystery. I don't expect perfect story lines and superbly crafted plots with no holes. I'm looking for characters I can like and a comfortable voice to listen to for a few hours at a time without concentrating too much. I think this story achieves that. Not all cozy mysteries do. (I have read some recently that were so preposterous and grossly inaccurate that I took copious notes about inaccuracies and just poor story telling for revieelws. This book is miles above those stories!)

Overall, I don't mind the small price I paid for this during the big sale. I know that Goldy and Marla and Arch have more adventures and become more like friends to each other and to me. I do hope that my memories are well-served by this newer narrator and that she has become more relaxed with the characters as she has gotten to know them over time in the latet stories.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Know anything about dog shows?

Revisado: 05-07-24

I only got through this book because I picked it up out of the Plus catalog and it was about to be removed in a few hours. I wasn't getting another free chance. I'm glad I didn't pay for it.


Madison Vaughn made this a pleasant book to listen to. I normally don't like women narrators, but Vaughn's pace and various characterizations for men and women were nice.

The story. Oh, so many issues!

First, I cannot believe thr author has ever been to a dog show or learned what happens there. 1. Dog show people have always been pretty good at cleaning their own dog's messes...since long before it was law. 2. Dog shows usually have designated, gated areas for toileting dogs. That's where the cleanup crew gets most of their work done, not running around like crazy. 3. poop does not pile up in the aisles and most dogs do not poop in the ring itself. Yes, the cleanup crew catches these accidents when they do happen. 4. People do not become judges just a few weeks after they stop showing their dogs. There are applications and testing and provisional judging assignments. 5. Judges that stand in the aisles and pontificate about the quality of a dog they will judge that day is an unethical judge and won't probably be a judge for long because everyone will hear about it and no one will enter under them, so no one will hire them.

Lily. Oh, self-centered, short-sighted Lily. See something, jump to conclusions, report as gospel to TBI bf and then have a tantrum because there's no evidence and bf has to ask questions. Treat bf like dog poop. But Lily won't listen to the questions because if she does, she'll have to show some self awareness.

Lily is a careless and inattentive dog owner. The author could use these traits to show growth in Lily, but no. Let the dog run loose in an open, public area, but don't scare Lily or the reader with the real dangers of the situation. Leave the dog unattended for a long time for Lily's convenience while the dog damages hotel property. A contrite and embarrassed Lily would be interesting, but she never appears.

Will Lily ever stop spreading innuendo and misinformation? Is handing out assignments at her Housewarming Murder Club going to solve the case or tip off a murderer. Is it a party game or is it an author's way of entering information into evidence and clearing up those silly conclusions jumped to hours ago without working up to them logically and methodically?

I don't expect perfection, just light entertainment. But not doing your research and not following interesting paths through clues, and not creating thoughtful or smart characters makes me sorry I spent my time with this book.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

IT FINALLY ENDED!!

Revisado: 01-24-24

I'm not sure which was worse, the story or the narration. Carrie is tedious, immature, and repetitive. I'd love to see her act like a grown woman with a man friend instead of like a 12 year old with her first boyfriend...will he call? Why did he call? He thinks she's prettier. Should we hold hands tonight or will that make my brother uncomfortable? I don't need the bakeries layout and business plan described multiple times per story. Having a character ramble on to themselves ad nauseum to tell the reader what the protagonist is thinking instead of moving the story along with dialog and action is boring and irritating. We've already figured out what your questions are, Carrie. GO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, PLEASE! I was offended by Carrie withholding information from SOME of her staff (after the letter on the back door) because they didn't know each other as well as others. Every staff member in the stores could have been in danger AND could have been in a position to help if Carrie had needed it if only they were respected enough by their flighty boss and been included. (Spoiler: it was another extraneous Carrie thought.) There are too many Carrie v Cop conversations that say nothing but "I know I'm a civilian and you don't want me involved, but I'm butting in with little to no information that you probably already have, so why haven't you arrested somebody yet even though I, a part-time vet tech, have no idea what's going on either." Maybe the next book could have the Chief trump up some traffic violation against Carrie as soon as the next murder happens and have her jailed for a couple of days for obstructing the investigation, maybe the cops would be able to interview subjects and apprehend the perpetrator without that busybody interfering amd slowing things down in an uninteresting way. I could go on, but won't. It's making me sadder that I spent the credit and time. As for the Narrator, what can I say? The material is lacking, but the stilted and stiff speech pattern used by the narrator for all characters doesn't do this story (or any of the earlier ones) any favors. There is whining and there is bored, flat droning on. It sounds like someone trying to teach clear diction and enunciation to 3rd graders. The penultimate scene where the only real action takes place, should have leaned toward nail biting or edge of the seat waiting for resolution while listening, but I laughed out loud until it was over. If only it had been meant to be funny...keystone cop-ish or Stephanie Plum-like, maybe. But no. It was trying to be serious. If the narrator could loosen up and read like a normal person would hear dialog in their head while reading from the paper book, the story might be more entertaining, but with the lack of dialog and action and the glut of Carrie's self-musings and whining at cops coupled with uninteresting narration, this book is a bust.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

FINALLY. I made it through the bundle.

Revisado: 12-23-23

Let's start with the positive. There was very little swearing of any sort and no graphic violence. The narrator's voice was pleasant.

The stories were preposterous. Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum who admits to being a poor bounty hunter makes fewer mistakes (but learns from them) and gets into less trouble than CJ and Stella. Evanovich also gives Stephanie's foibles a comic twist so she nor we take things too seriously. Over 30 books she also gets into trouble in a variety of ways, unlike CJ and Stella who keep wandering in front of known bad guys with guns. And it seems Mr. Paddock wants us to take his detective seriously. Not happening here.

How many times does your hero have to be kidnapped or have a gun put to his head or be tased or drugged before he starts shutting hotel doors behind himself or locking doors as soon as he gets into a car? Or maybe even start being just a little paranoid about where the bad guys are? How many innocents that have nothing else to do with a story have to be dragged in to make the story move? And much of this senselessness is coming from a former police officer! I can guess why he left the force!! And while Stella is more sensible in many ways, her bulb is barely brighter than CJ's when it comes to self preservation and good sense.

Long stretches of a character talking to him/herself just to explain the story and where the characters are going to go at that moment are boring. Sometimes it's two characters talking, but they're not having a logical discourse about their situation that lead us into the next steps of the plot. The dialogue between characters should move the story along without these ramblings of one or two characters explaining that they're still lost and don't know how they'll ever get out of this mess. If only they could hear the readers screaming about the obvious clues they've missed that should get them killed because they are so clueless.

I don't know how this narrator got hooked up with this series of books, but it's a sad connection. Besides the themes of CJ and Stella keep getting kidnapped for lack of vigilance, we have the theme of international associations for our crimes!But woe is us, the only good thing about the accents in these books is that they sometimes caused me to go into fits of laughter.

Irish accents that sound like bad Swedish accents are a bad start, but I don't think our reader has ever heard a real New Zealand accent. I think when most Americans hear a NZ accent, they think they are hearing a bad Aussie accent because it sounds almost Aussie, but not quite right. There are differences!! I give the narrator credit for trying. I certainly couldn't do better and probably not as well, but I'm not being paid as a narrator of an audiobook. This is why it's sometimes better to just read words from a printed page instead of buying audiobooks.

The only reason I made it through these books is that the narrator's voice is pleasant and these stories, except for the inanity, were pretty inoffensive and filled lots of quiet time at my house. I would like to hear this narrator do something that just requires him to create characters without having to try to force lots of international accents in (that should probably go for strong American regional accents, too. I don'tvthink that's this narrator's strength). I think it might be more fun to listen to him bring a story to life, rather than to just fill air space.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Delightful!

Revisado: 10-19-23

As soon as I got notification that my pre-order was available, I dove into Up on the Woof Top! I'm so glad I didn't wait.

Spencer Quinn has delivered another delightful story of our favorite canine and his PI partner. I love that we touch base with all of our favorite characters (the Parsons, Iggy, Charlie, Weatherly, Mr Singh and others) even though they aren't involved in the case. With this new book I am pleased to feel like I am reading a new story and not re-hashing an old one. We get the good guys, the bad guys, some animals for Chet to cross paths with and help out along with our regulars. There is a little danger for our PI team, but what's a good mystery without just a little danger. There's some new scenery in this story...SNOW for Christmas...so we had to leave The Valley for a bit, but even Jessica Fletcher left Maine every once in a while!

Jim Frangione is perfect again. It's not just Spencer Quinn's words that spotlight Chet as the narrator and Bernie as his best friend. It's Jim Frangione that gives each character their individuality and lets us all hear that these two love and trust each other, but don't completely understand each other because of that human inability to speak Dog.

I don't have all of the Chet and Bernie stories in audio form yet, but I do have most of them on paper (where my adoration of this pair of PI's started). Now when I pick up one of those books to read, I still hear Jim Frangione's voice and I love it!

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Disappointing

Revisado: 10-09-23

I started reading the Prey novels decades ago. The first was from the Books on Tape collection, but I loved the stories so much, I started scrounging discount bookstores and libraries for the paperbacks. When I caught up, I picked up some hardbacks because I couldn't wait for the paperback. Unfortunately, time to read has gotten slim.

Fortunately, time for audiobooks has increased! To that end, I picked up Rules of Prey to start over and get back into the series. Richard Ferrone (RIP) did a great job and the Prey novels were back on my radar. I then decided to pick up the current audiobook, Judgment Prey, narrated by Robert Petkoff. I'm not sure I can finish this version.

Robert Petkoff's stiff narration reminds me of Gary Owen as the Laugh-In announcer. I can almost picture Petkoff with his hand to his ear creating this version of the book in his best radio announcer voice. Conversations with colleagues and family are done in the same over-excited voice as the murder and the chase sequence where Lucas received his injuries. Not everything is as tense as that and the reading being done like that is irritating and then boring.

I don't mind a long series of books having different narrators as much as some people do. A series of 22 books that I love has 5 different narrators. Only one narrator was disappointing and he only did one (he does other books very well, though). The others all bring something good to the stories and the timeline. It feels like those four narrators read the other books or listened to the narrations before they embarked on their entries.

I feel like Petkoff had never read a Prey novel before and had absolutely no feel for Davenport or Flowers. It sounds like he knows he's reading about a tough detective named Davenport and his almost tough, but younger colleague Flowers, so he has to keep up the hard-boiled attitude regardless of the situation. Family time is as hard-boiled as evaluating the crime scene time.

Bottom line, I think I will buy this book in paperback sometime and give it a fair shot. I hope Petkoff either bows out before the next entry in the audiobook series or that he tempers his portrayals by listening to earlier entries by Ferrone. or maybe he just needs to read more Prey (and Flowers) novels and gets to know Davenport and Flowers better.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 5 personas

Didn't live up to the reviews

Revisado: 09-23-23

It was many months before I was convinced to use my resources to purchase Project Hail Mary. I kind of wonder if any of those giving this story 5 star reviews know what "hail mary" means. It was either not covered in the book, was glossed over quickly, or was covered in hours 14.5 through 15.45 of the reading. (I finally had all I could take of the story and at about 14.5 hours jumped to just before 16. I understood what had happened in that missing time by listening to the last 15 minutes. I was satisfied that I hadn't missed much in 1.5 hours of prose.)

Frankly, I think the most interesting part of the story is Strat's story leading up to the launch of the Hail Mary. The demands and choices she was faced with were much more interesting than most of what Grace faced and dealt with over and over and over.... Which one was really brave and who was pivotal to the project of saving earth? This could have been 2 books...Strat's story and then Grace's, instead of just having past and present slammed into one another like a highway accident throws 2 cars together in the snow. Are there no editors left in the world?? Have we gone back to the days of Dickens when authors are paid by the word??! Stretch that one book you've contracted for into enough money for a lifetime?

The story isn't without merit. The themes of loneliness and loss, friendship and differences, and potential annihilation and salvation are there. The story is at times poignant, funny, exciting, sad, dramatic, and adventurous.

Unfortunately, too much of the time the story is tedious. I get it. Grace has a spreadsheet. Grace can keep track of new wworda that way. Grace is going to crunch some numbers, but doesn't want to bother with a calculator.

And sometimes it is just outrageous. Grace is short-sighted at the worst moments...and not because he is under intense pressure in the moment. I'm not a scientist, but when I am screaming "don't do that" because it's obvious what will happen, well...that's sad.

I do think Ray Porter's narration gave some life to the story. He emoted humor, dejection, wonder and more in good proportion. I don't think he's the only narrator who could have done this story, but he did as well as could be expected with the glut of words. After a while I couldn't be sure who was more tired--Grace from having been in space so long or Porter from trying to finish the recording.

If I knew then what I know now about this book, I would have passed instead of buying.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Back to the main cast of characters

Revisado: 09-22-23

I was glad to see the story back to being a police procedural instead of about nepotism and shady, naive, self-serving reporters and investigators pushing a story along. I much prefer the stories that swirl out from an event and are wrangled by smart, honest cops with occasional forays into their private lives. Of course, my favorite transformation of the series is of Willie Kunkel from cold, damaged, hard case to devoted father and man with a conscience.

i had wondered if I would continue with the series after the last couple of books, but I am very glad I took this one on. I will be sad if it is the last, but if it is the last, I am glad to know that Rachel and Sally didn't get the last hurrah.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

I wanted to like this book

Revisado: 03-04-23

i'm going to have to READ the book to see if I might enjoy it. I was so distracted by the unappealing narration that I had trouble following the story. While I sometimes go back and listen to a book again to fill in plot points, I don't want to listen to this again.

The narration of this book was so distracting that I couldn't stay connected to the story. The most irritating part of the narration was the introduction of Sam "A-key-oh." Did the narrator ask about pronunciation? Had she ever read any of the previous Southampton stories? Was there a producer with any background on the story? The author has written into the series that Sam's last name is pronounced Ac-quill-oh. I learned it from a review on google before I read the books.

The narration starts stilted and uncomfortable. Too many sentences outside of dialog end on an upward inflection even though they are not questions. It sounds like there is a continuation of a thought coming, but no.

The Jackie voice is ok, but the narrator's other characters, especially the men, are unpleasant. They do not flow naturally and are hard to follow. The voices sound forced and clipped. Some are even cartoonish.

The accents are awful. Dr. Markham rolls from almost-Jamaican sounding to straight up Dracula from Transylvania. I actually broke down laughing at one point. I will say the narrator does have a nice tone of voice for Markham...definitely better than Richard Ferrone's Markham in his two Southampton entries.

As for Sam's voice...many readers are probably familiar with Sam...who spent much of his life in Southampton NY. So why does this narrator's version have him sounding as if he is from below the Mason-Dixon line along with a few other of the men along the way? I found nothing in the story to support that.

I think I will see if I can get the second Swaitkowski book from the library to read instead of trying to listen to another by the same narrator.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona