Predatory

By: Alexandra Ivy, Nina Bangs, Dianne Duvall, Hannah Jayne

Narrated by: Arika Rapson

Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

Paranormal romance authors Alexandra Ivy, Nina Bangs, Dianne Duvall, and Hannah Jayne present four original novellas in this exciting anthology. In "Out Of Control", by Alexandra Ivy, PhD student Angela Locke has a crush on her sexy professor, Dr. Nikolo Bartrev. When she learns he's actually a Sentinel with extraordinary powers, she joins forces with him to catch a psychopath. But soon, their hottest pursuit is of each other.

In "Ties That Bind", by Nina Bangs, Cassie Tyler agrees to sub for her friend at the funeral home where she works. But she gets more than she bargained for when a group of men attack her and a vampire comes to her rescue.

In "Still Darkness", by Dianne Duvall, immortal Richart d'Alençon can't forget the woman who rewarded him with a sensuous kiss after he saved her from a trio of vampires. While Richart knows that loving a human can only bring trouble, the taste of forbidden lust is too great to resist.

And in Hannah Jayne's "High Stakes", when vampire fashionista Nina LaShay's design contest rival is found dead, she's the prime suspect. Sexy photographer Pike is number two. He's the kind of man who makes Nina salivate. But will she have to reveal herself to have him - and to save them both? Or does Pike have a secret of his own?

©2013 Kensington Publishing Corporation (P)2013 Tantor

3 out of 4

Three of the 4 stories were great the last story was horrible and didn't end well.

Worst Narration

I picked up this book only for "In Still Darkness" by Dianne Duvall. I did not listen to any of the other stories in here because I can't stand the narrator. I'm not very picky about my narrator's but her take on a French accent is horrible. I also really struggled with the mispronunciation of some characters names.

It was okay. Remove one or two long winded books

Most of the stories were wonderful but one or two just didn't hold my attention.

Hmm

Well I couldn’t get into this one. I get past 5 min in and completely bored. Maybe it’s just me but I can’t help how I feel. Maybe listen to a sample and see if it is what you like. I wouldn’t recommend to anyone I know.

Fun listen-

Enjoyed each story & the narration is excellent. If you're a fan of the paranormal fantasy you'll love it,too.

VERY NICE SELECTION BY SOME WELL-KNOWN AUTHORS

If you're into short stories (as I am sometimes) then you can't go wrong with this selection of novellas which included A. Ivy's Sentinels 0.5 prequel and D.Duvall's Immortal Guardians 3.5.

They are each entertaining and enjoyable to any paranormal listener and it gives you a taste of authors you may not have listened to before. Some are more thrilling and some are more romantic and I liked them all but the last one - it was snappy and quick unfortunately there was no real romance until the end. They are filled with characters that will whisk you away to the supernatural world and show you their realms.

Worth a credit? Yes - but only if you like short stories that fly bye.

1/2 and 1/2?

So this is 4 books in one. Novella's. I picked it up for one specific one, but listened to all of them, well almost.

Book 1: "Out Of Control", by Alexandra Ivy - never read her books, and that is probably why I was slightly confused at the start, but as it picked up I became intrigued by her world and the supernaturals in it. Well worth the listen and I will be looking into more of her books

Book 2: "Ties That Bind", by Nina Bangs, Not Horrible. The Vampires of this world are unique to their blood line. A weird and unusable way of looking at Vamprism with a "2nd one". I did not dis like but I was not hooked on it.

Book 3: "Still Darkness", by Dianne Duvall the reason I picked this up. I love her immortal guardians, I have read/listened too (yes both) all of them, except this one. it comes into play kind of during the second book, almost a parallel to it, some over lap from a different view point. I thoroughly enjoyed it and recommend it and all her other books as well.

Book 4: Hannah Jayne's "High Stakes: Ummm... yeah... NO. Sorry not even an hour into it. Done. Not going there, not even going to try. Maybe. MAYBE. if the setting was high school I could buy into it. But what self respecting 124 year old vampire, portraying and adult, not a teenager in New York City in High Fashion uses the phase "Totes Adorbs" even in their mind speech. Add to that the writing is atrocious. I really felt like I should be reading something from Jr High. Could not stomach it.

Narration: Decent. Good inflection and character separation, for the most part. I was annoyed by the fact that Reichart kept getting switched to Richard In Still Darkness. I think there is a better reader for this genre but she wasn't horrible by any stretch of the imagination, especially reading 4 separate books.

Duvall's story is the best!

Out of Control by Alexandra Ivy:
Rating: ❤❤❤.5
Heat Rating: 🔥🔥🔥
Narrator Performance: 🎧🎧🎧

This was my first Alexandra Ivy read and unfortunately I have to say that I was disappointed in it. That could be because of it's length though. Sometimes novelists have trouble putting together a well rounded story within the limited amount of words that novellas have. Maybe it was the narrator. I didn't really appreciate her style so that could have effected the way I felt. Whatever it was it's not enough to deter me from trying to read Ivy again. She's written lots of books and a number of my book friends enjoy her writing. The story wasn't bad, it just didn't live up to my expectations.

More about the narrator...
Like I said I wasn't super thrilled with the narrator's performance of this. Her pace was kind of stilted IMO. She also made like no effort to differentiate the characters by changing her speech pattern or the timber of her voice.

Ties That Bind by Nina Bangs:
Rating: ❤❤❤❤.5
Heat Rating: 🔥🔥🔥
Narrator Performance: 🎧🎧🎧🎧

This story was great! Nina Bangs is also a new author for me. I of course knew her name even though she's not as prolific as Alexandra Ivy. I remember strolling through the book stores and seeing her name on the spines of the paperbacks. Anyways, I truly enjoyed her story. The world building was surprisingly detailed considering the length of it. I could easily feel the connection between the characters and her take on vampires is unique and interesting. I'll definitely be looking into reading/listening to more books by her.

In Still Darkness by Dianne Duvall:
Rating: ❤❤❤❤❤
Heat Rating: 🔥🔥🔥
Narrator Performance: 🎧🎧🎧

OMG what a fantastic read! I've seriously fallen for Richart! Maybe it's because he's a sweetheart. Or maybe it's that sexy accent!

I really enjoy Duvall's Immortal Guardians series and as expected Richart's story did not disappoint. Richart was sweet and sexy and Jenna was a very strong woman in her own way. A young widowed mom has to be in order to raise her child to be a well adjusted, responsible adult. They were wonderful together and the length of the story couldn't detract from that fact. If course I wanted more but that's just me being greedy.

Though In Still Darkness is #3.5 in the Immortal Guardians series it actually takes place during both books 2 and 3 and ends a bit after book 3 in the series timeline. Fans of the series will recognize key scenes from those books but via Richart's viewpoint. That was fun! I think I've only read like two other series where that has happened and I find it to be an awesome series plot device (not sure if I used the correct phrase there). Bravo to Duvall for pulling it off!

About the narrator...
I enjoyed parts of the narrator's performance. Richart's accent was wonderful! She easily pulled me into the story and kept a steady pace with no annoying pauses in wrong places. Unfortunately she mispronounced "Richart" more than a few times. She also mispronounced Bastien's name. Another thing that surprised me was that she chose not to use a British accent for the few lines that Marcus spoke. It said he was British in the text and she was already pulling off a French accent. Considering all this I can only give her three out of five headphones. I hope to listen to another of performances though. It think I'd love her if I wasn't familiar with the series.

High Stakes by Hannah Jayne:
Rating: ❤❤.5
Narrator Performance: 🎧🎧🎧🎧

Until reading Predatory I had never heard of Hannah Jayne like I had the other authors in the book. This is nothing new though. Oftentimes publishers will include a lesser known author in an anthology to help boost the number of their readers. Unfortunately I don't think it worked in this case. At least for me it didn't since I don't plan on reading anything by her again. However that's partially the publisher's fault. Jayne's story was an Urban Fantasy so why the hell was it included in a set of Paranormal Romances? I spent the first half of the shortie wondering where the romance was and was really disappointed when I realized that there wasn't going to be any. It kinda felt like "false advertising" for lack of a better phrase.

Another reason why I won't be reading Jayne again is that I figured out who the the bad guy was rather early in the story. What's the point of reading a "Who done it?" when you know who did it? I had to force myself to keep listening to the story and after I read a few reviews I found that I wasn't the only person with this problem. The writing just wasn't that great and the story itself was kind of weak. Plus the world building was incomplete. Her vampire mythology was nonexistent.

Yet more about the narrator...
As far as I know this is the first book that I've listened to narrated by Arika Rapson. At first she didn't impress me much. Her pace was off during Ivy's story. There were spaces between words and her performance was stilted. It got better as the book went on though. I think that she must have been having an off day the day that she recorded the story because her performances of the other ones were great. For Duvall's novella she had to include French and French accents and she did with those parts. I'll be listening to her again. She narrates a few other books in my Audible library. I look forward to seeing how she does with those.

My final verdict...
Rating: ❤❤❤❤
Heat Rating: 🔥🔥🔥
Narrator Performance: 🎧🎧🎧.5

In Still Darkness

What made the experience of listening to Predatory the most enjoyable?

I really enjoyed the Immortal Guardians series and got this for Dianne Duvall's story "In Still Darkness". The overall plot was very good and right along the lines with her others :-)

Would you listen to another book narrated by Arika Rapson?

I felt the narration was good but missing a little something. Now that In Still Darkness has been released individually I would really like to get it narrated by Kirsten Potter who did the rest of the Immortal Guardian series.

3 out of 4 is not bad

I very much enjoyed the first 3 stories, but was a little disappointed in the 4th one. I would like to see more on each of the first 3 stories. Ms. Ivy and Ms. Bangs are both new authors to me, but I have enjoyed all of Ms. Duvall's books very much and am eagerly awaiting her next one in the Immortal Guardians series.

Ms. Ivy and Ms. Bangs both have the beginnings of very good series and I hope they do write more about them. They both had some very interesting characters that I would like to know more about. With Ms. Duvall's story, I was glad to get Richart's story. I found him to be an interesting character from his first appearance in "Darkness Dawns." If you have listened to the first 3 books in this series, you will pick up on some of the references in this story.

Now for the down side, in Ms. Jayne's story, I found it to be more of a murder mystery and not a very good one. Nina's constant reminder that she was a vampire was over done, but Pike seems to be an interesting character. That is the reason I took 1 star away from this for story. Its a good thing this was the last story and the other 3 well make up for it and are what make this a book worth listening to.