Minutes to Kill

Minutes to Kill is an excellent detective novel with lots of suspense. Narration is disappointing.

Loved the storyline and the players: Brody and Hannah were a great twosome. It was wonderful seeing Grant and Ellie and Carson again. The bad guys, Mick and Sam were so bad and sooo disgusting and sooo very, very mean. You really couldn’t help but hate them with your whole being. BUT I did love Hannah! She could seriously kick some a$$. The book was constantly exciting, from Las Vegas to New York, something was always happening.

There’s never a whole lot of sexual tension in her books but there’s some and she writes very good bedroom scenes.

Because it makes me crazy that every single romance has one thing in common, from now on, I’m going to mention the heroine biting her lip. Worrying her lip. Chewing at her lip or nibbling at her lip, or doing whatever to her lip. No one bit their lip. Yay!

As to the narration: Let me start by saying, the narrator was truly awful, and I’m pretty sure within a couple of days I’ll get a “not helpful” vote from her. At the end of her sentences she comes to an abrupt halt and her male voices simply sucked. I mean, Sam and Royce and Chet and Frank, the coroner, the detective in Las Vegas, Herb, almost every male voice, sounded like cartoon characters, almost like she was holding her nose to try to give them all a nasally sound, even Mac, Hannah’s brother. If he EVER has his own story this narrator will destroy the book. You’d think, with this being 2015, a lot of these narrators would have listened to the readers’ complaints and tried to improve but I think some of them think they are so good they don’t need improvement. That’s some pretty wrong thinking. I have listened to Ms.Dukehart for the last time. Even the 3 reviews written on Audible one person, God know why, gave her 4 stars, and the others 2 gave her 2 stars and mine will be 1 star so that should tell you something about her narration.

I would like to say that the description tells us what the book is about or we can zip over to Amazon and look at reviews. This is AUDIBLE! What we need to review is the narrator. Does he or she suck? Why? Is he or she too nasal-y, too sweet for the kind of book he or she is reading, to gruff, too bland, too robotic, lacks emotion. Is he or she doing nothing but reading the book? Not changing his or her voice for the male and female voices? Is the narrator sounding the same whether she or he is reading a whisper spoken?
Most of us on AUDIBLE don't really care what the book is about. We want to know about the narrator!

Melinda Leigh takes the readers back to Scarlet Falls New York Several months after the last books Hour of Need where her Brother Lee and his wife are murdered leaving behind two small children.
Hannah Barrett is a hard working corporate attorney who kicks butt in the office but when a young terrified girl calls for help Hannah tries to save her but fails with great harm to her life. Returning home to Scarlet Falls she finds a welcome distraction seeing family but instead of enjoying the times she is haunted by the imagines in her head as well as a chilling email about the victim.
Detective Brody McNamara once again is pulled into a brutal murder investigation. What he finds is two seemingly unrelated cases are about to collide.
Thank you to the author Melinda Leigh for creating a female protagonists who isn’t afraid of her own shadow and isn’t stupid. The Author created a protagonist who is able to take care of herself but finds and enjoys having someone to lean on when times get tough. Which sets up for a realist romance between Hannah and Brody.

Melinda Leigh filled in some past history giving allowing the reader to understand Hannah better and her abilities to always protect those she loves. I felt like Hannah wasn’t super human but someone who wanted to be loved by her father so she did everything she could to find that love and respect.
Readers are going to love the action, romance and story that author created at the end of Killing Hour. Melinda exposes her readers to the dark underbelly of human trafficking, illegal drugs and the abuse of power including a twist at the end of the story. The sad truth is this happens every day all over the world not just in Las Vegas.
She doesn’t give readers throw away characters in fact everyone has a purpose including the very freaky antagonists who have no conscious and will put the readers on the edge of their seats.

Cris Dukehart was very good with the delivery of the story. I don't understand why some listeners did not narration of the story.

This sounded like an excellent book within the style I like. However I can get past the narrator. Horrible. Her ability to change pitch to notate characters makes it very hard to enjoy. In the first 15 minutes, I lost interest as I couldn't tell if she was a prostitute or lawyer. Between the blah narrator and bouncing from strip club, home and thoughts of murdered family members.....I gave up. Unless you are a fan of this author and can forgive a failed attempt at entertainment, don't spend your money on this one.

From the very first chapter, I was pulled in to these characters and couldn't stop shaking film the last word was uttered. First of all, this deals with one of the scariest things that is haunting our nation right now, sex trafficking. It's so freaking scary and makes me want to vomit.
The story seems so realistic, I just can't get it out of my head.
If you like action thrillers with romance to boot, this will grab your heart and take you for a ride.

It was a good story but did drag out some. Narrated was good would recommend

I listened to the first on this series and enjoyed it so I got this one. This one was even better. I loved the story, the characters, and the narration.

And I thought it was a completely predictable storyline with very little of the trills that had been promised. The romantic plot line was unexpected, unwanted, and uninteresting. Although I was surprised by the 'who done it' this didn't make up for the previous parts of the story. I am also getting super tired of the "not traditionally beautiful yet alluring" female heroine and so perhaps that has made this book less enjoyable for me.

Furthermore, something about the performance was lacking for me - the way Cris spoke for the male characters sounded as though she was making fun of them rather than telling the story and it took me out of it.

I enjoyed this book as a quick read but it was very predictable. I feel like this story was a bit rushed and perhaps if more time had been spent on both the story and character development, I would have enjoyed it more. I do like this author and have read all of the books Amazon carries by her, so even if this wasn't my favorite, I will certainly read any future books I run across by Melinda Leigh.

Well written, great narration, wonderful character s and a relevant story line. - can't wait for the third installment.