Lisa

I so wanted to enjoy this. But the narrator was so slow...
it.

was.

like.

listening.

to.

some...one.

read.

something.

like.

this.

So...the time I spent trying to listen to this just made me feel a little crazy.

I like tortured heroes. This story has a great one. I like Courtney Milan and I like this series and this book...just had to read it with my eyes instead of my ears.

Distractingly odd, grating, and just flat-out unpleasant voices that would have been awesome for narrating the Munchkinland bit from "Oz" or something to do with Hobbits, but not so much for a romance novel.

Terribly long pauses between words, an odd pronunciation of the word "gaol," (a British spelling of "jail") which came up rather often. It's supposed to be a homophone of "jail," but the narrator kept saying something like "gowel" and it became conspicuous and quite irritating after a while.

ALL THAT BEING SAID: She had a very nice voice for the hero. But I won't buy anything with this narrator again.

It inspired me to regret purchasing this audiobook.

The top. Seriously. This was that good.

The only thing that even remotely compares is "The Alienist," by Caleb Carr, which similarly places a "modern" kind of criminal investigation in a vividly detailed past.

Edoardo Ballerini is a gosh-danged genius of audiobook narration.

YES. The WHOLE THING. This book was so exciting, so fast-paced, thrilling, scary, frustrating, baffling, disgusting, horrifying, tragic, hilarious, clever, and flat-out fun, I hated to stop listening. This is my favorite of this series and I was pretty much ready to start it over as soon as I finished it.

I didn't think anything could top "Speaks the Nightbird." I was pleased to be so wrong.

HUDSON GREATHOUSE. If you finished McCammon's first book in the series and lamented all the companions that Matthew lost along the way, HAVE NO FEAR. He picks up some great new friends (and enemies) here.

Edoardo Ballerini is a magnificent audiobook narrator. He could breathe life into a shopping list. He brings even more living, breathing believability to these well-written characters.

Yes. I love Edoardo Ballerini, he goes above and beyond as a narrator. Plus, this book has just the right balance of tragedy and comedy - you feel like you're enjoying a diverting beach read, but by the end it turns out to be Literature. How did that happen?

There is, at one point, a car accident. I will say no more.

He's one of my favorite readers. He manages to convey the individuality of each character so believably, you forget he (Edoardo) is there! It's like somehow all these people are actually acting out all this drama through your earphones. He's fantastic. I hope he never retires from audiobook narration.

The era, the 20s slang, the ominous threat of supernatural doom, the realistic and palpable frustrations of the young heroine, the variety and diversity of the characters! Great stuff.

The main character Evie is great, not too Mary Sue-ish but a bit naive and a little insensitive. I loved the complex and troubled Theta, and her roommate Henry seemed like a sweetheart, too. Uncle Will? Mabel? Jericho? Sam? All wonderful. But my favorite? Naughty John! Otherwise they wouldn't have had anything to do...

The opening scene! A ouija board! A carefree flapper party! And a terrible evil unleashed upon an unsuspecting world!

I wished I could have read it when I was 17.

George Guidall, in his element. I really like Guidall's voice, and I especially like it when he reads dark, edgy Western thrillers (stuff like this, or the Gunslinger, etc). This is a solid story, and although the mystery is basically straight-ahead, there's enough character development and splendid dialog that you won't mind.

Everything.

Toss up between Henry Standing Bear and Walt Longmire.

Yes, but I can't reveal it without spoilers.

Just read this. It's wonderful.

No Summary Sufficient?

Too many things are happening! There is romance, complicated friendships, tragedy, family problems, sinister secret societies, a magical parallel universe that is threatened by internal strife as well as threats from blundering outsiders, a secret sisterhood sworn to protect the magical realm (or are they?), and a tenuous friendship among three girls who must contend with the strictures of late Victorian society at a time when some liberation for women is just glimmering on the horizon. How does one sum all that up in three words?

I was a fan of the Gorgon, who (poor thing) kept trying to steer Gemma in the right direction, but Gemma was too swayed by her stupid friends and behaved shortsightedly throughout. Oh well. Still: Gorgon. Awesome.

Josephine Bailey was perfect as all the characters. A flawless performance.

I'm terrible at this kind of thing. I've no idea. But it would be a great movie.

I would have the main character reflect, at least ONCE, on the wisdom of bringing her selfish friends into a magical kingdom where they (of course) behave selfishly and never, ever abide by the promises they make. This pattern repeats so many times and Gemma never questions it. To avoid spoilers, I'll describe it this way: you have the only key to this magical wonderful place. You have a REALLY IMPORTANT TASK to accomplish. Your friends beg you to take them to the place. You agree, as long as they help you to accomplish your task. When you get there, they hinder you and treat you horribly if you even mention your task. Would you take them back next time? Are these really your friends? Other than this repeated pattern of silliness, which - okay, I admit - is pretty realistic considering the main characters are all teen girls - this book is great. Just great. I'm WAY past my teenaged years and I still loved it.

Yes, absolutely. It was fun and insightful and compelling.

She did a great job with all the characters. She has the marvelous gift of making you feel like the whole story is unfurling in your mind - she gets the voices and accents exactly right, and she's brilliant, but because of that you forget that these characters aren't acting the whole thing out somehow in your iPod.

YEAH, obviously. There is a 3rd book and nothing is resolved at the end of this book.

Libba Bray writes beautifully and clearly gets teenaged girls. I liked the characters, and I appreciated the fact that she didn't go the predictable route and make the girls' school into a den of horrors - in fact, it's a remarkably kindly place. What I liked least: the lack of insight on the part of the main character. I hope for long-term character development as the story continues in Books 2 and 3.

Well, there's a whole secret magical world, and many characters of uncertain allegiance that I'm sure will become more significant as the plot develops.

Everything. She was terrific.

Yup.

Terser plot, less attention to pointless details, less hackneyed characters, a more compelling main character, more thought given to dialog and character development, fewer lengthy scenes in which some everyday activity is described in excruciating detail for no apparent reason. Also a top-notch reader can make me like just about anything.

Oh, so many things.I like "everyman" detectives better than the super-geniuses, but I had the majority of the plot figured out 1/4 of the way through this book, and the characters were dull and unlikable. Joe Pickett is naive, incompetent, and gullible. He is surrounded by straight-up moustache-twirling villains but can't recognize them for what they are. His wife is pretty and rather pointless as a character, her mother is predictably irritating. The children are basically plot devices.I had only the vaguest sense of the appearance of the characters and of the setting, but I got a disproportionate amount of detail at odd moments - for example, an excruciatingly detailed account of every Cheerio fed to a small animal by one of the children. BORING.I also got a bit annoyed right off the bat for what I'll admit is a somewhat superficial reason. As a minor bit of background detail, we learn that the main character's family had a kitten and later a puppy that were both eaten by coyotes. This is described as a family of animal-lovers, and I get that bad stuff happens, but how did both of these animals end up outside, unattended, long enough to get eaten by coyotes? The children were unaware of the fate of their pets so presumably they weren't playing with the critters outside. It was, like I said, a VERY MINOR POINT, but it still colored the way I thought of these people. These are people who were either dumb enough to leave two baby animals outside, alone, where they could be killed by the local wildlife (and the main character is a GAME WARDEN, it isn't like they're ignorant), or they are just so careless that both animals escaped the house and were left to fend for themselves. Obviously, it bothered me, and I found I didn't care for the Picketts.The author does not present information in a way that is interesting or insightful. It was plodding and quotidian. The author also tends to summarize what a character has said instead of revealing the actual dialog, which left me feeling cheated out of meaningful insights into the characters. I mean, the difference between "Joe told her he had a stressful day, and she seemed to understand," and an actual back-and-forth interaction between the couple is huge. I sometimes felt like I was reading case notes instead of a novel. Not fun.Where conversations occur, Pickett doesn't say much, but the other characters go off on improbably long diatribes about their own opinions with a fair amount of regularity. It doesn't ring true, and that's always especially noticeable in audiobooks.

I didn't hate him, and his voice wasn't annoying or anything, he just lacked panache. I've been spoiled by George Guidall, Barbara Rosenblat, Rosalyn Landor, Simon Prebble, etc. Also, a lot of the Southern and Western vernacular just didn't work. Imagine a straightlaced newscaster trying to sell lines like "They was out-of-staters," and you get the idea. The dialog (such as it was) all sounded a bit stilted.

None that I can think of.

I have obviously been spoiled by Craig Johnson's "Longmire" series. I'd recommend "The Cold Dish" to anyone (and I have! To lots of people!), but I'll never mention this one to anybody. However: this book seems to have huge rave reviews from lots of readers and a handful of mystified readers for whom the book just fell flat: maybe download a sample and see which kind of reader you are? I'm definitely in the latter camp.

The hero - Rafe, is one of the best romance heroes of all time. Honestly. I think the description is very misleading - he isn't "wild and untamed" in the usual sense. Instead he is unkempt, depressed, drunk and going to seed, but in spite of all this, he is a genuine sweetheart, and if you dig flawed heroes, you should do yourself a favor and read this book (it helps if you read the two preceding ones, "Much Ado About You" and "Kiss Me Annabel," too, since this book starts in the middle of an ongoing story).

The most interesting: Rafe and his problems. The least interesting: everything else about this book. The story was weak - I believe the author likes to include a lot of literary references, but in this case, I felt it really weakened the story. The heroine was okay, but the fundamental love story is weak here and I didn't buy any of it. Many of the secondary characters are interesting but the story was pretty lame, so they didn't really have a chance to shine.

Yeah, sure.

I can see this as a movie or TV show. I don't have any opinion about the stars.