Resort at Castaway Bay: Truth or Dare

Resort at Castaway Bay, Book 1

By: Kathi Daley

Narrated by: Angel Clark

Length: 4 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

Sydney Whitmore, a forensic psychologist living in San Francisco, moves home to Shipwreck Island, and the resort owned and operated by her family, after tragedy strikes leaving her struggling for a way to make sense of things. After finding out about the assault of an old friend, which has left him comatose, she renews her relationship with Ezra Reinhold, a reclusive billionaire who enjoys poking around in cold cases and has the means to hire the best people to find the answers no one else has been able to.

In book one in the series, a group of 10 high school students go camping but only 8 return. The statements of those who've made their way back that have been told to Sheriff Sam Stone are so different as to be completely useless. Syd has experience getting the truth out of people, so she agrees to help Sam weed though the witness statements to find the truth that both are certain exists beneath the lies. Meanwhile, Syd's middle sister, Emily, has started a new lifestyle blog, her youngest sister, Rory, is fostering kittens, and Syd renews her relationship with Kelly Green, an FBI analyst she first met while working for the FBI on the East Coast.

©2021 Kathi Daley (P)2021 Kathi Daley

loved the story but...

I love Kathi Daley's writing and read all of her books. l really like this new series and am interested to see where it goes. The narrator for this book was pretty good for the most part, she made a couple of the people sound really childlike but that was okay. While she was reading the dialog she did a great job BUT she had a very annoying way of saying the descriptive phrases at the end of a sentence "he said, she said, etc" almost turning them into a question - "The look on her face was priceless, " I said." becomes "The look on her face was priceless," I said?" If that could be fixed I'd give 5 stars across for everything.

Not great

This book was very difficult to listen to . The narrator has annoying voice, and reads with poor phrasing and inflection, making the protagonist sound completely insincere in every sentence. The narration sounds like the narrator recorded the conversations of the book and then had a pre-recorded “He said”, “she said”, “I asked”, etc…that she sliced in and it did not flow. It really distracted from the story.
The beginning of the book had too many characters and too much information thrown at me all at one time. From the very beginning, I wasn’t able to keep track of who the witnesses were or what their evidence was. The rest of the book seemed OK, but I was so distracted by the poor narration, that it was very difficult to pay attention to the story at all.

Not sure about this one

I am not sure if my issue is with the reader, editor, or director. Possibly a combination of all of those things. The female characters all sound like young teens rather than the mature women they are written to be, and this pulls me out of the story. I can tell that the “she said” and “she asked” phrases were all prerecorded then inserted as they do not flow with the narration, and that is jarring to my ear.

I really like Kathi Daley and can tell that this book is well written, but perhaps I need to skip the Audible version and stick with the Kindle version since I am not enjoying this narration.

Couldn’t Finish

I’m not sure if my rating of the story is fair because I found the reader so annoying, I couldn’t finish. The reader has this high pitched, constantly perky (even when the story called for somber tones) tone of voice with a very strange speech pattern. Many words were pronounced with an odd emphasis. It was distracting to annoying throughout what I listened to. And this book was less than 5 hours! And I prefer someone who performs versus someone who reads the book.

Now for the writing. Dialog, who talks like that? Answering a call of nature? How many times did she use that phrase?

It was maybe a good idea for a story, but poorly executed. Very poor character development and the reactions of the main character to her recent trauma just didn’t seem realistic. But was that the writing or the perky reader?

Won’t be reading more of the books nor listening to this narrator.

Really regret the purchase.

The narration is terrible!

The narration sounds like a computer. Couldn’t get into the story because of the narration