Sheila

I tried this and some other books after browsing some Amazon lists for new authors. Based on the cover art and the publisher's description I expected an OK book, but I was happy to find a book that exceeded my expectations. I really enjoyed this book the entire way through.

I adore the narrator based on listening to her read the Rachel Morgan series so that helped, but the story also deserves credit for getting my interest early and keeping it the whole way through. Ms. Gavin reads with a rhythm that's engaging and that feels like someone actually talking versus the fake, repetitive, sing-song rhythm some narrators use. She does a fabulous job of defining each character with her voice, which I don't think is an easy thing to do well.

I agree with another reviewer about some characters being somewhat derivative, but I didn't find it so blatent that it bothered me. That said, I'd like to see a unique, quirky, interesting character or two added as the series progresses.

There was enough going on in the plot to keep things moving and the main character was realistic and likeable. I was happy that the author stayed away from some of the trite characteristics for the main character that I've seen in some books of this genre.

I'd stretch things and give the book a 4 rating instead of a 3.5, mostly for managing to catch my interest so well with the first book in a series, but I decided to give this a 5 overall because of the narration. I've already downloaded the next book in the series and can't wait to listen!

To begin this review I’ll admit to being on the frivolous side when it comes to entertainment. Even in a serious book/movie I prefer large portions of humor without too much dark violence. Pollak’s initial movie career consisted of serious films that while amazing, aren’t generally my thing (A Few Good Men, for example).

To make matters worse, I really don’t care for impressionists. I appreciate the skill and talent that goes into that genre of humor, but impressionists just don’t make me laugh. Later in his career Pollak did some lighter movies with more of the “clever banter” type humor I enjoy, such as “The Whole Nine Yards”. Bottom line is that though I have nothing against him, I’ve never considered myself a Pollak fan….until this book.

I honestly don’t even remember why I bought this audiobook, but when I ran out of other books and found this on my iPod I figured I might as well give it a try. I am SO glad I did! Not only did I love this book, but after listening to Pollak telling the story of his life, I have become a huge fan. The stories about Bruce Willis, De Niro, Nicholson, Jerry Lewis, Tom Cruise, Naomi Campbell, Rip Torn and others were entrancing, which is saying a lot since I’m also not much for keeping up on the latest celebrity gossip. I just got home from the grocery store and caught myself literally laughing out loud as I listened to this book while shopping. It was honestly that funny.

Pollak makes no apologies for his fairly large ego, but he’s also surprisingly likeable and almost humble at times. Don’t ask me how he can be an egotistically humble man, but he manages to do so in a way that makes you wish you had the chance to get to know him in person. And, once you realize all the cool things he’s done in life you see the ego is justified!

His stories about other legendary performers are mostly positive, but in a funny and interesting way. He makes them seem like real people. When he gushes about some legend he’s had the opportunity to work with you feel the sincerity in his praise of them. He does discuss some famous people that he obviously didn’t think much of and though his commentary about them is biting at times, it just doesn’t have that whiney, “mean girl” feeling that so many people try to call “funny”. His negative comments are funny and seem to me like they came from an honest place.

I also like the way he sprinkles in some bits of wisdom around how he made some things in his career happen. He seemed to really appreciate the chances he's been given and those he made happen (remember...there's no shortage of ego). Since I didn’t start out as a big Pollak fan the book started a little slow for me, but once I got into it I enjoyed it to the very end. My only complaint is that my book purchase didn’t come with a voucher to meet Pollak in person.

This book was a great break from some of the more serious reading I’ve been doing. The pace is relaxing, but not too slow and as soon as you settle into the seemingly mundane life of two older ladies, things change and you are swept into a crazy mystery with two wild women at the helm. There’s one crazy situation after another in this first book, but I won’t go into that detail here for fear of ruining the ride for you. Just trust me that things get crazy! I don’t know about you, but I absolutely enjoy reading about wild women (or wild men) with good hearts!!

At first glance the two sisters are entirely different and annoying in their own ways. One is a pedantic, persnickety, somewhat judgmental, former English teacher who insists on correcting everyone’s grammar. The other is a man-chasing, glutton who clearly sees everyone else’s faults and has no qualms about telling everyone exactly what they are doing wrong.

There are enough husbands, boyfriends, children, grandchildren, friends and neighbors to bring depth to the story. As you get to know these “annoying” ladies, you can’t help but fall in love with them. It turns out that they are funny, loving and though different, they both have equally good hearts and souls so it’s easy to overlook and actually smile at what initially seemed like annoying traits (especially for those of us who are perfect and never annoying…lol).

I am now listening to the last audio book in this series (seems there’s at least one more not in audio) and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed these books. The narrator does an awesome job of bringing the 60-something pair and the rest of the cast to life. She also does a fabulous job of conveying the wry humor that’s scattered throughout and in this way she helps the author evolve our view of the women from annoying to heartwarmingly fun.

I typically only review the first book in a series unless there's something really specific that needs to be said. In this case I'm reviewing this book because the only other rating (with no review to explain why) was one person who gave the book 1 star.

I rated all the other books in this series with 4-5 stars overall, though I admit this story didn't grab me like most of the others so it only got 3. I don't really enjoy "mean girl" themes though, which is why this wasn't one of my favorites.

Still, there was a complex enough plot to be interesting with a bit of a surprise ending so it's worth listening to if you enjoy other books in the series as I do. As always, I enjoy getting to know Savannah and the others better and I think the narrator did an outstanding job of bringing the characters to life without overdoing the GA accent.

I certainly wouldn't recommend listening to this if you don't already know the characters via the previous books. This late in the series you need to have some background on people, personalities, etc.

Also, as I mentioned in my review of the first book, the titles are a bit confusing. Though they tie into the plot of each book, they initially led me to expect more of a cozy series like Joanne Fluke's Hannah Swensen mysteries (which I also enjoy). This is much more like a less dark Sue Grafton mystery. I was also shocked to realize a few books in, that at least some of these books are Harlequin, which I typically associate with sappy romance books. Though there is a reasonable amount of romance in the series, it's much more real and often touching and funny. It's not the sappy, teenage-angst ridden stuff that usually prompts me to avoid Harlequin books.

I've now listened to all the books in this series and without giving anything away, I'll just say that though I really hated to see it end, the last book was the very best and there was an extremely satisfying end to the story. While this particular book wasn't my favorite, this series has become a favorite of mine, which is why I felt it was important to balance the other reader's 1 star rating with a full review. This series has interesting characters, humor, strong story lines and it progresses nicely from book to book. It's interesting without getting too dark or serious overall and I highly recommend it for some fairly light mystery reading.

The title led me to expect a series similar to Joanne Fluke's Hannah Swensen series (which I enjoy), but this was really closer to a Southern version of Sue Grafton’s Millhone series (but not as dark).

I loved this book and have already downloaded the next three in the series. I’m especially excited to have found a new series with a good number of books as it’s always a bummer to find books I love only to find there are only a few in the series.

What was so great? The plot was complex enough to be interesting without being convoluted. The characters were also very likable and interesting. Best of all for me was the humor. I didn’t laugh out loud most of the time like I do reading an Evanovich Stephanie Plum book, but there was enough clever, real humor to keep the story from being too dark.

The relationships had a real feel to them too, versus the overdramatized version of relationships you often see in books so it felt like I was getting to know real people.

Also, having lived in GA for some years I was pleased that the narrator didn’t over do the Savannah accent. She did a really decent job of it and overall she did an excellent job bringing out the main character’s personality. For me the sign of a good narrator is when I forget someone is reading to me and I just recognize characters, which happened right away in this book. Savannah is someone I’d love to know so it was great fun being part of her life for a few hours. Hopefully you’ll feel the same if you try the book!

If you love books about dragons, elves and quests you will probably love this book. I liked it, but found it to be pretty much the "same old story" with no real surprises until you get to the (slightly cliff-hanger) ending. I am still undecided about whether I'll give the next book in the series a try or not, simply because this didn't leave me dying to hear what happens next like the books in "The Hollows" series do.

To be fair, I'm often luke warm about the first book in a series since it can take a while to really get into the characters and their world. The author has to introduce everyone so you may not get into the really interesting details and side characters initially. That said, I also just listened to the beginning of a series that I felt was much more interesting and stronger than this (Switched by Amanda Hocking) so I can't totally let this book off the hook.

Don't get me wrong, the book was good, just not as great as the other reviewers made it out to be. The narration was fabulous, but the story was just good in my opinion. I just found the plot to be "typical"....nothing really new or surprising. I've only read a few dragon books and even with that limited exposure I felt this plot was predictable and pretty much interchangeable with the others. There was no humor to speak of, which is something I really need in a book, though I know that's not important to everyone. I also really love quirky, interesting characters, which were in short supply here. To that end, I wish there had been more done with the fortune teller and the cat. To be honest, I think a series about them would be much more fun and interesting than this book.

On a positive note, if you are looking for a book that you could listen to with your kids, this might be a good choice.

Evanovich is one of my favorite authors and I've read all her books. This isn't up to the standard of her Stephanie Plum series, but it's not bad. As far as Evanovich goes, this is really more of the same so if you want an easy, silly book to lighten your mood without taxing your brain, give this a try. I mean, how can you go wrong with two hot guys with super hero-like powers, a crazy nemesis, a crazy/quirky/funny sidekick, a quest for items with mysterious powers, a monkey who is smarter than some people I know, and a reluctant heroine who prefers baking over saving the world?

As usual, Lorelei King does a great job of bringing the characters to life. If you haven't read her other books you should probably read the first in this new series before this one. If you are familiar with Evanovich you could probably jump straight into this one, though why miss the fun?

I adored Butcher’s Dresden series and I also really enjoyed the Vorkosigan series another reviewer compared this to so I really wanted to like this book. Sadly, though I slogged through the entire thing, I just couldn’t get into it. I did like the end, thankfully.

The narration was very good and technically it was a decent story, but it was at least 75% politics and all the political machinations just bored me to tears. To be fair, they were integral to the plot and Butcher did an excellent job of creating a well thought out and complete story. Every once in awhile you’d get a glimpse of interesting and likeable (or really evil) characters that helped me start warming to the story, but then we’d jump right back into the politics and I’d get bored again.

This book was also missing the clever humor that’s Dresden and Miles bring to their series. There was very, very little humor in this book. I love a good action adventure that has a good bit of humor. It helps me get involved in the character’s lives and I was really disappointed not to find that here, especially since I know Butcher is more than capable of delivering excellent humor. If you don’t need the humor, but you love political intrigue and battle scenes, you’ll probably like this book as it really was well written and the narration was very good. It just wasn’t for me.

I have fallen in love with this series, though I’m bummed that they switched narrators in the final book. I already own some of the anthologies that include stories from this book so I wasn’t sure it was worth buying this one. Even though it’s not the best book in the series, I’m glad I bought it. These stories aren’t as engaging as the main books, but they fill in some gaps so if you love the series and want to know everything you can about the characters this is worth buying. If you haven’t read the series I’d skip this until you do.

I’d listened to the first couple of stories in other books, before I started listening to this anthology. They were OK, but didn’t stand out to me at the time. I think that’s because I didn’t know the characters then and you miss too much in a really short story. I’d tried to watch the TV series before I listened to the books and I couldn’t figure out why it just didn’t click for me. Now I understand that the best part of this series is the nuance of the characters and the sardonic, clever humor of Dresden, Murphy and others. I laugh out loud in the main books of this series more than I have in a long while and I just love all the subtle (and some not so subtle) references to books, movies and music Dresden often throws out. I swear I even caught one to the movie Clueless in an earlier book, which seems funny coming from Dresden. You will miss many of those references if you don’t listen closely, but I get a kick out of them as they really show off Dresden’s (and Butcher’s) personality. In short stores or brief TV shows the nuance is lost and you just have one monster after another without the chance to get to know the characters.

I really enjoyed the brief author introductions to each story. That background made me like Butcher even more and really added to my understanding and enjoyment of the stories. Sadly, this is also your last chance to hear James Masters narrate. John Glover does a good job in the next book, which is saying a lot for me since a change in narrator usually ruins the series for me, but in my opinion, Masters IS Dresden. Glover does a good job, but he just doesn’t bring across the humor like Masters does and that’s one of my favorite things about this series. I’m thankful they didn’t switch narrators sooner.

As to filling in some gaps, you learn who Nick is (comes up in the last book), learn how Murphy and Dresden first met and you even get a story to fill in the gap between book 12 and 13. That cliffhanger ending in book 12 was a big one and though you can definitely jump into book 13 without hearing the short story between them, I thought it was worth hearing what happened between the books.

I felt a bit ambiguous after reading the first book in the series so I decided to give this second book a try. I won't be reading more.

The story was OK, but very predictable with nothing really interesting or fun enough to overcome that issue. The characters are OK, but not likeable enough to make me want to hear another book about them. There was also a strong incest related portion of the storyline that I found really creepy. It was related to animals somewhat so maybe it shouldn’t have bothered me, but it still just made me cringe every time it came up.

The narration was also a problem for me. The narrator did a decent job technically – she enunciated well (though almost too well in places so it sounded forced), did a reasonable job of differentiating the characters and varied her tone and cadence to keep from sounding boring. I just couldn’t stand listening to her voice.

To be fair, maybe it’s just my personal preference, but she has a quavering, almost “old lady” quality much of the time, which made the characters all sound whiney and angry. I read paritally to escape real life frustrations so I hate listening to a bunch of whiney, angry people for hours on end. I think the author meant for the main character to come across that way to some degree (she’d been through a lot of loss and change and wasn’t adapting well), but the narrator’s voice made all the characters sound that way and it annoyed me so much that I just couldn’t get into the book.

This certainly wasn’t the worst book or narration, but I didn’t enjoy it.

I love this narrator’s work on the Stephanie Plum series by one of my favorite authors, Janet Evanovich, so I decided to give this book a try. I was not disappointed. I hear so many books compared to the Evanovich series and I have yet to find one that really lives up to that…until this one. I usually roll my eyes when I hear that comparison in a review.

At first I thought Charley’s “Stephanie-like” wit, spunk, strength, intelligence and personality were just my perception since I associate this wonderful narrator’s voice so strongly with the Evanovich series, but I’m pleased to say that it’s a combination of the narrator and the author. In an interview at the end of the 2nd book, the author states that she tried to model Charley after Stephanie Plum, Lorelai Gilmore, and Buffy the Vampire slayer and I think that’s the perfect characterization of this series. She completely succeeded in that and she mixes just enough romance into the plot to be fun, without turning it into a sappy mess that hides the plot.

I also love that she came up with such an interesting “birthright/job” for Charley. I won’t give it away, but I will say that while the role isn’t something new, it is portrayed with some really unique and cool characteristics. I'd never imagined wanting to be friends with someone who does what she does, but Charley would be an awesome best friend and she's really likeable.

I read all types of books, but I’ve been hooked on the paranormal genre lately and frankly I get tired of the same old vampires, werewolves and other supernatural characters. After awhile they get so predictable with the same powers and flaws, which make the books less interesting to me. I’ll read them, but many don’t wow me or surprise me like this series did. There are enough familiar things to interest those not yet as jaded as I am, but thankfully there are also wonderful surprises!

This book is fun and interesting, but not too heavy. The first book is great and the next two just get better! I was so entertained that I got through all three in less than a week. As is typical with a great series, the story gets better and more interesting with each new book. I just couldn’t walk away. My only complaint is that there are only three books so far!