S. Tucker

I suppose that people who haven't listened to scores of books by more talented writers and who are seeking low-impact YA fiction might give this book a higher score.

I would never listen to a Young Adult title by Carol Wolf again.

The narration is much finer than the story deserves. No particular demerits for Elizabeth Evans.

Witch coven, so off-putting, so tiresome. Magic women all clustered together, dancing withershins. Good grief.

Author benefitted from good cover art and blurb writing. What a rip off, because better authors get poor covers and weak blurbs. This story, for the first time in years of audiobook purchases, was a DNF for me. Trashed it midway through Part 2. I would NOT, however, automatically shun a book read by Elizabeth Evans. I hope her career is not poisoned by contracting to read such dreck.

This series just keeps getting better and better as our beautiful, sexy vampires find their true loves and the family grows. This installment contained some delightful laugh-out-loud passages: 314 messages from women (and a couple of men!) who think Ian is HAWT after his profile goes up on an internet dating site, so funny. And, Ian gets an unexpected side effect from the stay-awake medicine, yum.

The writing gets better and better too, with just the perfect balance of madcap comedy, blooming romance, and violent peril. One of my favorite things about this series is the careful attention of the secondary characters. Even the children are endearing instead of annoying, a tricky feat to pull off. Dr. Fang? OHHH Yeah. This book introduces a new sidekick who is also completely charming...and the shapeshifters are finding a role too.

To make this listening experience perfect was the narration by Coleen Marlo. Not only does she have a lovely voice, but she reads prose and dialect with flawless rhythm, and delivers credible accents to the Scots, the Italian, the Russians, the Texan, and more. I wish she had been hired to narrate the entire series, it could have vastly improved a couple of the earlier installments. Thank you and great luck Coleen, you were born to read audiobooks.