Diva

I am a huge Jill Sorenson fan and have read all her other books so was very excited when I found this one as an Audible offering. It wasn't her best, however. The action takes place almost entirely inside a concrete structure created after an earthquake. Maybe due to the lack of external stimulus the story is quite slow and revolves entirely around the survivors trying to find a way to escape, at the same time dealing with the threat posed by some escaped convicts. It reminded me in part of one of the earlier (albeit better) episodes of Lost.

The narrator reads very deliberately and doesn't really ratchet up the tension much, adding to the so-so element of this book.

Not a bad listen but a bit disappointing.

It's not often I laugh out loud at a book but I did at this one. Leslie's second encounter with a fire extinguisher is really quite funny, especially when she declares "It's the only thing he understands". Otherwise, this is a typical Robyn Carr delight. The narrator is wonderful and you can just lose yourself in the escapism of this wonderful town and its characters. I only gave the story a 3 because, to my mind, it dragged a bit at the end but perhaps I was just waiting for another appearance of the fire extinguisher !

I am abandoning this half way through - I just can't get past the narrator. She sounds like an elderly lady and this book calls for a younger sounding voice. The story sounds like it could be good but I can't concentrate on it because of the narration.

I bought this book because it was narrated by Patrick Lawlor - and because I liked most of Suzanne Brockmann's Troubleshooters (hey - they are mostly narrated by PL - what's not to love!) - even though I knew going in that the story/genre of this book is not my thing. Sadly, even Patrick Lawlor couldn't save the book for me. If you are into the fantasy genre of super-powers doing mind control and taking over other people's bodies, then it's probably a really great book. I'll have to get my Patrick Lawlor fix somewhere else.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. There's lots of action, good romance, interesting characters. If I had the slightest criticism it would be that in parts it reminded me of an episide of the old Miami Vice TV shows but that didn't really detract from the overall enjoyment.

I really like the narrator too. She had good voice differentiation and a non-intrusive style that kept up with pace of the action.

If you are looking for a sweet, cozy romance this one probably isn't for you. It's fairly gritty and somewhat violent (for a romance, anyway), but if you like military-flavoured romance and a kick-butt female protagonist who can more than hold her own, then you'll enjoy this book as much as I did.

I would definitely buy another book by this author and this narrator.

I enjoyed this story - the protagonist is blind and this gives the standard romantic suspense story an interesting and different angle. The story has a bit of everything - excitement, mystery, romance and the pacing is just right. Natalie survives a few attempts on her life, an intruder in her house and an attempted kidnapping, all of which would be terrifying enough for a sighted person but she seems to just shrug them of in a bit of a cavalier fashion, being more concerned about inherited insanity. Other than that, though, the characters were engaging and just flawed enough to be likeable.

The narrator though, not so much. The mark of a good narrator is one that you can't "hear", whose own voice doesn't intrude on the story. This narrator has a melodramatic downturn inflexion in her voice at the end of EVERY sentence, which I found very intrusive. Although she managed to differentiate the womens' voices a little bit, the men, especially Mac, she read in the same bored, monotone as she did the narrative parts. Mac sounded like an automaton - no passion, no interest, no personality. If this book had been narrated by, say, Johanna Parker or Gabra Zachman it would have been a much better read.

I'd definitely look for another book by Virna DePaul but I'd be looking for a different narrator.

I bought this book because I loved the first three in the series but this is quite different. It is VERY slow, in fact 95% of the book is about Arizona's catharsis. It's really only about Spencer trying to help Arizona come to terms with her past and move on. All very admirable but there is no real story beyond that and nothing really happens. Not really helped by the narrator who reads very slowly.

Even the characters are not as engaging as those in the first three books. I found Arizona to be intensely annoying and couldn't understand why Spencer fell in love with her or why the other characters were so desperate to make her part of their family. She is ungrateful, constantly pushes people away, puts herself purposely in danger..... not a character I ever really cared about.

I persevered with the book, hoping it would pick up but......... it never did. It's a very poor relation to the other books in the series. If you loved Jackson, Trace and Dare don't look for the same kind of book here. If you are looking for some action and adventure with your romance you you might want to look elsewhere.

Now, I’m not a fan of abridged editions of any book, (having had a bad experience with one of my favourite books in the past) but, honestly, this could be a candidate for my first ever recommendation for abridgement! There are pages and pages of deliberation (internal and external dialog) before anybody does anything in this book. The author constantly has the characters asking each other “why?”. The reasoning behind this is presumably to explore their motivations but the author needs to trust that her readers are not morons and her writing is of a good enough standard that we KNOW “why” and we don’t have to have it spelled out in excruciating detail for the next 20 pages. Either that or practice the first rule of fiction writing – show don’t tell. By the time I’d got to yet another “why?” about two-thirds of the way through I had frankly given up caring. I’m not looking for literary excellence in romance novels - if I wanted that I’d be reading the Brontes - but as a reader I should be able to figure out character motivations from the writing that has gone before an action.

On the plus side, however, I did finish the book. I liked the characters. The strong, honourable but flawed hero who rescues an equally strong but damaged heroin and ends up getting “saved” by her himself is nothing new but it remains the satisfying basis for any good romance. The story has a couple of interesting twists in the plot, especially Desi’s past which is teased out intriguingly and there are lots of interesting peripheral characters.

I probably won’t buy the rest in the series because I’m looking for something in a more succinct style but, that said, it was enjoyable enough.