I fully realize that I run the risk of receiving "Unhelpful" votes from those who loved this book/series, so here goes. I purchased this book when it ..Show More »was on sale. If I had paid more, or used a credit to buy it, I would be seriously disappointed right now. I finished the book only because something inside me made me do it. I bought it mainly because it seemed a little different from much current paranormal lit. I had just finished "Nice Girls Don't Live Forever" and admittedly I was going through a bit of withdrawal; however, it is grossly unfair of me to compare this book to anything written by Molly Harper and performed by Amanda Ronconi; a more talented author/narrator team you will not find!
After finishing the book, I'm still uncertain whether or not this might be a good book to actually _read_, but I think more than likely it would not. The storyline was, as I said, a bit different than other books I've read; however, included in it are tons of cliches and phrases that the English language is better off without like "all that and a bag of chips". MJ, the main character regularly refers to herself as a "ghostbuster". Puh-lease. And I quickly grew tired of Stephen's colorful use of English, frequently confusing similar-sounding words and being constantly corrected by MJ or Gilly. The author exaggerated that caricature to death.
I can describe Eileen Stevens' "performance" in one word: inconsistent. At times her reading sounded quite good, but at other times it became halting, as if she was momentarily distracted or perhaps hadn't read that particular passage prior to recording. She would pause in unusual places and put the emphasis on the wrong words in a sentence. And I cringed at her mispronunciation of words like mischievous, pronouncing it "mis-CHEEV-i-ous (ugh!). The story is told in the first person so I had no doubt that M.J., the main character, was speaking when she used the words "I said". But her portrayal of Gilley, M.J.'s business partner who is gay, was SO stereotypical. She made him sound like a very unpleasant drag queen, while not differentiating his voice at all in tone from that of M.J. And while I realize that M.J.'s love-interest, Dr. Steven Sable's way of speaking is _supposed_ to be an odd mix of Latino and European, I found the strange-sounding accent Ms. Stevens used for him, and her monotone delivery of his lines, to be down right unpleasant. I very nearly stopped listening because of this, but soldiered on hoping that I'd get used to it. I didn't. Also annoying was the parrot. There should have been a tad more post-production mixing because that "voice" always came through my earbuds far too loudly.
In conclusion, the sound of a narrator's voice, the way he/she delivers dialog, the tone and inflection that he/she gives to the characters, should all be considered when purchasing an audiobook. Always listen to the sample because a bad narrator can ruin a great story! The problem is, I have no idea if this even could have been a great story. But the fact that I constantly kept checking to see how much time was left should have been telling.
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