Death at Wildbough

By: Starr Diethorn

Narrated by: Starr Diethorn

Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

Rose Hudson is a mathematician, puzzle-solver, and former cryptographer for the British government. After becoming a widow, she moves to the beautiful Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts to start a new life. When a famous violinist mysteriously dies, her friendship with the town’s chief of police, Richard Prince, leads her to become involved with solving the case.

While Richard investigates, Rose uses her code breaker skills to assist him and, despite her hesitations, their romance develops. When Rose discovers an unsavory event in the violinist’s past and the reason for his murder, both her newfound happiness and her life are placed in grave danger.

©2023 Starr Diethorn (P)2023 Starr Diethorn

This was ok

This was ok,
Easy read not overly interesting but it did manage to hold my interest. I’m not 100% on the narration for this one fitting the novel.
3 star listen.

Spicy Romance, Crime Thriller, and Cozy Mystery

First with the positive—I enjoyed the story. It is a well thought out mystery with a good plot and fun twist. It's a great setting, an original premise, and has interesting characters. It is an entertaining cross between crime thriller, cozy mystery, and romance novel.

However, I felt deceived, which is why I only gave it three stars. The blurb claims it to be a mystery with a developing romance, which also matched the cover. Not so at all! Much to my surprise, it is actually a mystery with a steamy, erotic romance, complete with explicit scenes. The cover and blurb should always reflect the content of the book so that the reader knows what they are getting. I fear unwary readers will be taken by surprise.

There were also a few plot holes that I probably would have overlooked had I not been a little annoyed with the genre bait and switch. The blurb claims the amateur sleuth uses her codebreaking skills learned during WWII to solve the crime. I wish the author would have included some sort of actual code into the mystery to give her background some relevance. Otherwise, codebreaking and homicide investigations are very different skill sets. Her career description was also a bit muddled. Was she a codebreaker, a spy trainer, or an agent handler? Those are three very different jobs.

I also felt the ending was way too long. After the big climax and the mystery was solved, there were still multiple chapters. The professional sleuth (local police chief) still worked on the case after being put on admin leave, which would have caused evidence issues in court. Admin leave means you stop what you are doing immediately. SPOILER: He also made the decision not to charge a known conspirator in the murder. That's not at all realistic. Cops don't get to decide if someone has already "suffered enough" and shouldn't be charged in a homicide case.

The book was narrated by the author, which I normally like. I usually listen to books at 2.0x speed. For this one, I found myself listening at 2.75x. In order to provide this review, I switched to 1.0x speed in order to better judge the narration, and I soon understood why my speed settings were so high. The narration was soooooo slow, almost condescendingly so. While narration should be slow enough for people to understand, it should feel natural. This one did not. No one talks that slow. But, to end on a positive, she does have a nice voice.

All in all, if you want a spicy romance crime mystery, this is for you—as long as you can speed up the narration so that you don't fall asleep before the big reveal!

Death Comes for Everyone

Rose Hudson has lived a full life serving as a mathematician and former cryptographer for the British government with a solid talent for puzzle solving. Moving to a small town in the US, she finds herself embroiled in the mysterious murder of a famous violinist.

The author, Starr Diethorn, crafts an intriguing mystery involving interesting characters. The interactions between the characters reflect genuine interactions, emotions, and frustrations as they work together to solve the mystery. The characters are not fully developed as this is book one in the series, but we are given a good solid foundation for them. The only piece I could not get past was Rose rescuing the violin and then forgetting about it. That seemed a bit out of character but again, I suspect each character will continue to grow giving a deeper insight into them.

As the narrator, Starr Diethorn provided a decent narration with few issues. She spoke clearly and her delivery was consistent. I think different voices might have been interesting but not required.

This is an interesting mystery with strong characters and the potential to be a strong series.

There were no issues with the quality or production of this audiobook.

So much potential

I wanted to love this book SO badly! WWII code breaker moves to the US and solves mysteries?!? Sign me up, it’s like this was made for me. Unfortunately I did not love this story.
The writing itself - it felt distant, names were used too often (like Richard being used 4 or 5 times in a paragraph) and the writing in general was just stilted. The story had potential but the interpersonal relationships were not well written. The intimacy specifically was cringy if I’m being honest. “moist warm mound” is not a phrase that needs to be used ever again, please & thank you. 3 stars for the text because it did have potential but implementation fell short. This would have been much better as a closed door romance, not because I don’t appreciate a good spicy read but because the author is not good at writing these scenes. If you take out the romance, this book would get an extra star from me in overall and story.
The narrator’s voice would probably be better suited for guided meditation than this - it was VERY slow and I listened to it on 1.5 speed. Even then, it was painfully slow. Narration gets 2 stars

Interesting Storyline

This was my first Starr Diethorn's book. This is a police mystery steamy romance. The characters are intriguing, and the storyline is interesting. Unfortunately the audio production needs some improvements. #StoryOrigin

Slow-paced, lots of telling. Poor sound quality.

Kept having to restart this, as I kept realizing that I was accidentally tuning it out as a defense mechanism, in response to the awful sound quality. The monotonous computer-like voice really didn’t help on this front.

I wanted to like this and I tried to but between the contradictions and then the poor writing (author opted for telling instead of showing—makes for a very dull experience), it just didn’t work.

Prefer to leave it with no star-rating, can and will do this on GR. Obviously can’t on other platforms and will rate accordingly.

Overall though:

Story: no star-rating, as it needs re-writes.
Audio: 0 stars, awful.

Audio:
Very poor sound quality—the narrator sounded odd, like, she was in a tin can or … something. And she read without any emotion, sounding more like AI than an actual person. I see that the author is credited with narrating, plus the overall sound quality wouldn’t be so awful, otherwise I’d assume that to be untrue.

It’s hard to figure out what’s worse: the sound quality of the robotic, dictation-style that is being passed off as ‘narration’.
0 stars on this front.

A spicy romance mystery.

This is a spicy romance mystery. Puzzling with many suspects. Good plot. Interesting characters.
I was gifted an Audible version of this book from the author through Story Origin. The author did the narration. She did it all ok. Who knows the book better than her? I did have to up the reading speed, as she was way too slow.