TigerMom

Stopped at Chapter 2

Revisado: 07-31-23

I tried this book out of curiosity but was turned off by the foul language and boring repetition. You're introduced to the main characters at a drunken wedding reception - and that's the high point. The female lead is whiney and indecisive, and the male lead is pretty and preachy. Maybe my opinion would have changed if I'd listened longer, but the final blow was the female narrator. She sounded breathy and bored, as in "you can't pay me enough to enjoy this job!"

I did like the male narrator's voice, smooth and mellow, but not enough to keep listening.

Note: I tried to give the Story category just 1 star but the app wouldn't let me.

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Please, no more sound effects!

Revisado: 03-27-23

I have listened to hundreds of books (thousands if you count all the repeated listens) and read countless more in my life, and I have developed my own criteria for judging them. How much I like them depends on several factors, including quality of story plot, story telling, narration (like tone, timbre, accents, male/female impersonation, pronunciation, etc.), and how quickly I leave this world and enter the author's world. Some books are very easy for me to enter, some take a little more effort, some are like giving birth (painful at times but I get there in the end), and a few are just never going to happen. This collection of Rachel Prince stories fits the third category.

I've read the first two collections (books 1-6) and thought they were pretty good. I'd never read this author or heard this narrator, so I wasn't sure how or if the series would appeal to me. I like my mysteries to have some meat to them, but not be filled with fluff (I'm an avid Agatha Christie fan so the bar is set rather high). Rachel Prince mysteries are enjoyable and I can relax with them. In the first six books, I became acquainted with all the characters and their backgrounds, got used to the narrator's delivery, and generally liked the books. But that changed with this collection.

In the first six books, one of the main characters had a habit of coughing/throat clearing when they were stressed, and the character was stressed all the time! The narrator would actually fake-cough whenever the character did so in the story, in addition to reading the descriptive words. This was a jarring interruption. The first time I heard it, I thought it was an accident, that the narrator actually cleared her throat and it was a bad editing job. But no, the fake throat clearing/coughing was repeated throughout the two collections. Irritating but I got used to it.

However, in this collection, the narrator upped her game and included shrill fake "laughs" whenever any character chortled, chuckled, giggled, laughed quietly, laughed heartily, etc. And there was A LOT of laughing! I don't know who told the narrator to do that, but I struggled mightily to finish these last three stories. In fact, I listened to other books in between listening to the three in this collection, just to give my ears a rest. I asked other reader friends if they had ever heard this being done in audio books, and not one of them had, or would want to!

Overall, I enjoyed this collection just as I did the earlier six books, but if I want to continue this series, I will read, not listen to, the future books. I hope the addition of sound effects does not become a growing trend, as it would put me off audio books altogether!

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