Encounter

Encounters, Book 1

By: Perie Wolford

Narrated by: William Turbett

Length: 3 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

It's time to face the unknown.

In an attempt to prove to the world that crop circles are man-made and aliens don't really exist, Ricky and his team of young enthusiasts (including one particular enthusiast, Josh, who is hopelessly in love with Ricky) start falsifying the phenomenon by creating their own crop circles. Their endeavors prove pretty much successful, but only until the day when Ricky sees his unique circle design replicated throughout the country by forces unknown.

©2015 Perie Wolford (P)2015 Perie Wolford

Not bad.

The first thing I noticed with this audiobook was the narrator’s nasally voice. I wasn’t sure how that was going to work, if I’d be able to get through the story or not. I found out that if I turned the volume down lower than normal, his voice sounded almost normal. Otherwise, the narrator did a good job with the character voices, so it was easy to tell them apart. There was an outtake that he didn’t “take out.” When they’re at Home Depot looking a ruler, he says something like “…picking out… picking out a ruler at Home Depot.” There was also when he said “The awkward silent pause ‘hong’ in the air (instead of ‘hung’).

I don’t know who would be to blame for this issue regarding the transitions, or lack thereof. Was the narrator disregarding the scene breaks and simply continuing on instead of pausing? Did the author not include scene breaks so it was all “one scene” per chapter? Without a copy of the book itself, it could be either. On that note, I wasn’t a fan. At times it was confusing as to what was going on. For example, Josh was filming Emily sitting on the couch talking to Ann. Suddenly, Josh was watching her brush her teeth in the bathroom. There was no pause/transition whatsoever. Or when Emily was in the bathroom getting ready to shower and saw Josh’s camera. She covered it with a towel and suddenly Josh was turning the camera back on himself.

While I found the writing to be… not necessarily amateurish, but it wasn’t up to par with my usual reading (both genre and style), the story itself was pretty good. It held my attention (I listened to it in one go) and found it entertaining. I’d be interested in listening/reading the next book. Looking at the reviews on Goodreads, I read several under 3-star reviews. Some of their points made sense to me, to a degree, while others had me feeling like I had read a completely different book (like they talked about actions that never happened). Very strange.

Questions/Comments:

There was a mess-up when Emily was in the bathroom watching Josh in the mirror. Maybe the narrator misread the name (not sure how he would have done that though given there weren’t that many characters) but instead of “Josh,” he said “John.” There was also the mess-up regarding Sullivan’s age. When the gang was first talking about going back to his farm, he was identified as being sixty. Then afterward, they were talking about him again and he was suddenly seventy-nine.

How old were the characters? I know Emily was supposed to be at least older than Ricky and Josh. There was also the mention of how one of the boys was surprised that Ann and her boyfriend weren’t married after three years.

I found it questionable that one of the reasons Josh liked hanging out with Ricky was because he didn’t have to worry about what anyone thought of him. Yet, whenever they were all hanging out, Josh was a weirdo, goof, annoying and he didn’t seem to care what they thought of them, hence he continued his behaviors.

“He doesn’t have a chance doesn’t he?” This should have been “He doesn’t have a chance, does he?”

What kind of camera was Josh using when he’d set it up in the bathroom? I don’t remember there being any mention of him having one of those teeny tiny cameras that are easier to hide.

The romantic dinner between Josh and Emily was very questionable in my opinion. There was no build-up or anything. Like Josh never asked her to dinner; they never talked about having dinner. Yet they’re suddenly eating together and there was no mention of how that transpired or where everyone else was.

How does a gay guy repeatedly get turned on enough to have sex with multiple girls? Seriously. I’ve read/heard stories of gay men dating a woman for a long time before coming out as gay or marrying and having kids with their wives, but in both those situations, it was a single woman. After so long he would get used to what she liked in both the give and take categories. But with multiple women, it’s hard to understand how that would be… I don’t want to say possible, but it just seems unlikely. Of course, I don’t really know much about gay men.

After heading back to the hotel (and rescuing Emily), where exactly had Emily been when they were kissing, when Josh saw the light outside?

I found it funny that their CA rental car was a green Toyota Corolla. Why? Because that’s the care I have.

I wish there would have been more as to what was going on in the field that Emily and the govt guys took the boys to. How had the vehicle flipped?

Lastly, there were, I think, two scenes in which one of the characters was messing with the camera and a really old video played instead of the most recent. Now I’m not a camera expert, but how would that have been possible given a memory card only holds so much and it seemed like Josh was attached to his camera.