Gull Harbor

By: Kathryn Knight

Narrated by: Kristin James

Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's Summary

When Claire Linden's job sends her to the sleepy town of Gull Harbor, she never expects to encounter her ex-boyfriend. As a medium, the prospect of tackling a haunted house is less daunting than seeing Max Baron again. Throughout their passionate college relationship, he promised to love her forever. Then, without explanation, he abandoned her on graduation day.

Max never intended to break Claire's heart - a cruel ultimatum forced him to disappear from her life. While he's shocked to find her in Gull Harbor, he isn't surprised by the bitter resentment she feels for him...or the fiery attraction that remains between them.

Claire is determined to rid her temporary home of its aggressive ghost, but Max soon realizes she's facing a danger beyond the paranormal. When Claire risks everything to help a desperate spirit, Max must race to save her - before another tragedy tears them apart forever.

©2013 Kathryn Knight (P)2018 Kathryn Knight

Gull Harbor

This book is super fun! It is a easy listen that drew me in right from the beginning. Kristin James did an amazing job on the narration. The story begins when Claire runs into her ex but he actually does not find out its her until later. You get a bit of paranormal fun in the story along with suspense, some action and of course romance. I love the balance the story had between it all. I also love the owner of the diner he was a priceless part of the story.

This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

I WANTED TO STAY IN THIS BOOK.

GULL HARBOR is a stand-alone contemporary romance with suspense and paranormal elements.

I was actually kind of sad when I got to the end of this story. Not because it doesn’t have a HEA. It does. The story is more than wonderful. I just didn’t want to leave this world, this town, and these people.

So let me tell you about my friends. Besides what you learned in the blurb, you have to know that Claire and Max have never stopped loving each other. They both just kept moving on, thinking that’s what they had to do, for different reasons. I loved that they started communicating. Talking and listening. Both are needed to make a relationship truly work. I love Max’s patience and understanding. Instead of getting defensive about his past actions, he explained and then allowed Claire time and space to understand and either accept or…. Well, he wasn’t taking any other option, but he gave her time and space to get there!

Dan is another friend. He is always available with an ear, a cup of coffee, or a shoulder for both of them. Don’t we all need a friend like that?

Finally, there is Maria. She certainly doesn’t start as a friend. The first time she sees Claire, she throws a rock at her! She’s afraid and she just wants to be left alone… until she realizes that Claire can understand her and wants to help. Ghosts can be like that, you know!

Narration: I would give the narrator a B. I honestly love her delivery style for the most part, but she does have a tendency to swallow some words. For example, in the opening when describing Claire’s hair color as a rich auburn, I never could understand the word rich. I assume that’s what she was saying. What else could it be?

Other than a few swallowed words, she has the ability to present the story in what my boyfriend (who teaches voice acting) calls “theater of the mind.” This is a wonderful gift! I had to remind myself that I was driving as well as being immersed in this powerful experience.

After listening to this story, I would love to listen to more stories from this author. I truly enjoyed it!

Note: while I was given this book as a gifted audiobook copy, my opinions are my own and are given freely.


Title: GULL HARBOR
Series: N/A
Category /Genre: Suspense Romance, Paranormal
Recommended for: 18+ due to sexual content
Listenability: NSFW
Received from: Kathryn Knight (as an Audible gifted copy)

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Second chance romance and a ghost

This is one of those books that you’re sad that it’s over. Claire is a psychic, who has been hired to solve the haunting of a house in Gull Harbor. On her 1st day, she stops by a tavern and realizes that the owner is non other than the man who broke her heart 5yrs ago. At first, the ghost did not take kindly to Claire’s inhabiting the house and threw things around, emptied the refrigerator and broke a window. With her ex, Max, help, and encouragement from the owner of the diner, Claire digs in to solve the mystery surrounding the ghost. However, not everyone is happy that Claire is asking questions. This book is chocked full of mystery, as well as a couple who never got over each other and rekindling the flame. Some tense moments when someone gets seriously injured but all ended well. Fantastic ending! Just sorry that it’s over!
I accepted a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Great story and great narration!

This was my first Kathryn Knight's book. This story is suspenseful and fast pace. I love the main characters, Claire and Max. This story is a ghost story, but also a beautiful second chance love story ending with a HEA. The story line is well built and well written. The narrator, Kristin James, did a great job with the narration. This was an amazing listening, very easy to listen. This book was over my expectations. I received this free review copy audiobook at my request and I have voluntarily left this review.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Spellbound

Kathryn Knight's Gull Harbor kept me spellbound. I'm not sure what I liked best, the heroine, Claire Linden, with her trunk of unyielding baggage despite the repressed love for her hunky hot hero, Max...Who, by the way, had s suitcase or two of his own, and yet maintained the kind of unrelenting love for Claire that women yearn to find. The passionate love scenes between them were hot, despite their lingering conflict...
Maria, the endearing young ghost desperately searching for a way to escape the house imprisoning her, kept the story turning somersaults and combined with an intriguing plot, I couldn't peg the ending, which was awesome.
Kathryn Knight's fluid writing held my interest...and the narrator, Kristin James, performed beautifully, with a passionate tone in all the right places.
All together, the mix made a long drive fade into the background, while an enchanting ghost tale mezmerized my imagination. I won't give up a single spoiler, except to say Gull Harbor is an enchanting story I highly recommend.

Suspense, Mystery, Ghosts, Second Chance Love, Romance

Claire is in her mid twenties, has the ability to connect with those who remain tied to earth after death because something has been left undone. Her mother had the same ability. She denied this ability until in college she met Max, fell in love and he supported her abilities...then he without a word deserted her once he graduated college.
Claire is in Gull Harbor at the request of a family who has a ghost in their home...Max lives in the same small town unknown to Claire.
The story involves the questions why Max left her, why is this ghost angry and aggressive, family questions and a lingering love between Max and Claire.
There is sweetness, secrets, life threatening occurrences and romance..something for everyone.
I didn’t want to skip any of the book which is a positive for me. I felt a little angry at Max for some of his decisions but this where I have to remember they are both in their twenties,
The narrator was absolutely fantastic! She brought a great deal to the story!

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review."

Yes, Yes, Yes!

Ok, have you checked that cover? It is the best choice for a story involving ghosts! I love it and I loved Gull Harbor. First impression, after the first few chapters: “Yes, I like it.” Next impression, after a bit more of the action: “What just happened??? I must finish this!!!” So I started liking it even better!

“Gull Harbor” is full of action and twists, with great characters that have a good background story. I loved how the author combined an angry spirit with lost love and how the couple’s story mixed with the mystery of the house. Max’s love for Claire never faded. He had to give her up years ago but his heart always remained with her. Now that life brought them together, he is not willing to give her up, even if that means getting mixed up with her spiritual strangeness. As for Claire, her dedication to her job, the desire to bring peace to a very disturbed soul and most importantly her courage, are just some of the things that make her an inspiring character.

Now, in regards to the overall story, Kathryn Knight added the exact amount of mystery, the perfect dose of thrill and emotions. Having the romance side also well created, I can say this is a complete book for me. It has a little of everything I like. To top that, we have a beautiful narration that only accentuates the emotions and increases the suspense of some scenes.

So yes, a great book that has given me good hours of relaxing (though I did have a hard time listening to it at night… I’m silly sometimes, I know!). I loved it and I loved the characters. Seeing Claire in action can even be motivating and seeing Max doing his best to mend their relationship made my heart skip a beat! 5 stars – great!

I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by Kathryn Knight. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.

I would have loved this book IF...

I would have loved this book if Claire had been less of a clueless wimp and if the paranormal aspects had taken less of a backseat to her tired ‘romance’ with Max. There was SO much potential for Ms. Knight to have hit it out of the park with this one, but she just seemed to get caught up in overused tropes, slow pacing, and a lackluster second-chance romance. This was one I struggled to finish.

I found myself wanting to scream at Claire more than once. YOU ARE A MEDIUM, HIRED TO DEAL WITH A RESTLESS GHOST WHO IS MORE THAN HAPPY TO MAKE HER PRESENCE KNOWN. DO YOUR DAMN JOB! Her constant distress/distractions (Max, her mother, the past) made it take waaaay too long for her to solve the mystery surrounding Maria. Following her struggle to bridge the communication barrier between them grew tedious pretty quickly, and it slowed down a story that was already lagging. Max played his part well enough, though I wish he’d been given a more unique personality/character arc. Overall, I found him to be depressingly predictable, Hollywood hunk, and vanilla. The bad guy was…gah, I kinda wish he’d just been left out entirely. His little snippets of story were distracting and didn’t really seem to add any value beyond reminding the reader he existed and was bad.

The pacing in “Gull Harbor” was terrible and I half-wonder if the issues stemmed from Ms. Knight trying to make it too many things. “Jack of all trade, master of none” and all that. As the reader, I figured out what happened chapters before Claire did and it made me a little crazy to watch her clueless stumbling, pushing Maria aside for no other reason than to extend the story length, the pointless misunderstandings with Max, etc. The climax was too short, ended too easily, and because I was already ambivalent about the characters, it didn’t really carry the expected punch. This book was definitely more about the romance than the spook-factor and I almost wish it hadn’t been marketed as paranormal anything, as that categorization led me to expect a lot more than I got.

As far as narrators go, Kristin James was okay. She has a nice voice and she made it easy to differentiate characters without overdramatization, but I felt her emotional range was limited to ‘normal’ and ‘angry/constipated’. At times, characters WERE angry, so the latter was appropriate in those instances. However, her attempt at conveying concern, tension, suspicion, etc. sounded exactly like anger, leading to something of a misconstrue of their emotions. The audio quality was professional, without any distracting hums, buzzes, background or narrator movement-type noises.

Random side note: I do think the cover is awesome and spooky, sooo, kudos to the artist!

Bottom line: A predictable, slow-moving story that was only redeemed by a halfway-decent narrator. If you’re looking for suspense or a riveting haunting, I’d skip this one.

**I received a complimentary copy, in exchange for my honest review, as part of an Audiobookworm Promotions tour**

Gull Harbor

I would describe this as a romance first and a ghost story second. I would prefer it to be the other way around, but I still thought this was a good entertaining read.
Also the ghost parts were a little too normalized for my tastes. It made it seem like a haunted house was an every day occurrence, no big deal, so we have a ghost happens all the time. It wasn't very suspenseful or spooky. But if you like romance/love stories with a touch of paranormal then this is a great book for you to read. It is very easy reading easy flowing with good strong character development. It definitely was enough to keep my interest all the way to the end.

Audio- I thought the narrator did a fine job. She had a good voice, and I thought it was read very well. I would listen to more stories by this same narrator.

A good solid romance with a touch of paranormal - good for a quick summer read ... or listen!


I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by Kathryn Knight. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.

Spooky Romance Mystery

Claire has taken on the biggest case of her career, the haunting of a house in the small town of Gull Harbor. The residents moved out because they were being terrorized, and now Claire has the summer to get to the bottom of the ghost situation. On top of the challenging case, Claire runs into Max, the man she loved who broke her heart five years before. Claire has no idea how, but she is determined to solve the mystery and avoid Max.

I had been wanting to read this book for years because I am such a sucker for a paranormal mystery- through in some romance and it is just about perfect for me. When I had to opportunity to listen to an audio version of the book I was ecstatic and did not want to pass it up. I am happy to report that the book lived up to my long standing expectations mixing the mystery, paranormal and romance drama nicely to create the whole package.

Ok, so the reason my review went from 5 stars I felt for most of the book to the 4 stars I overall rated it was pretty much 100% due to the ending. The conflict in the book had been building the entire story and then was resolved within a tense chapter and then a few sentences wrap up later. I felt left out, like I missed seeing the end of a movie and a friend gave me a quick sentence filler! I wanted to see everything go down, not just casually hear how it resolved in passing. And the resolution was way too easy! Sure, we already knew who the killer was as well as the victim within the first 25% of the book, but I wanted more drama, more action, more suspense when it came to conflict. But that is just me, I like to see the action instead of hearing about it. I am sure others will love how the author wrapped up the mystery. (Keep in mind I loved the actual ending of the book, just not the mystery ending).

At first I was not sure if the narrator and I were going to mesh, I had my doubts. I am such a super picky listener and I have a short attention span so if I don't like the narrator I can't get into the book. It seemed as if the narrator was whispering when the book first started but as the story progressed it became less of an issue, more just a tone in her voice than an actual whisper and I was not bothered by it at all. As a side note, I now listen to all my audiobooks at 1.5x speed, anything slower is too slow for my attention span.

This was a standalone story with a happily ever after, a perfect rainy day mystery to lose yourself into and potentially get a startle from at times. I would easily read more books from this author as well as listen to more stories read by the narrator. Overall I felt like the audiobook was the complete package.

I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by Kathryn Knight. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.