Heart of Ice

By: T. B. Markinson, Miranda MacLeod

Narrated by: Stephanie Murphy

Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's Summary

What happens when the one person who makes your heart sing is also the one person who could destroy everything you’ve worked for?

Laurie “The Hatchet” Emerson is a ruthless leader in Boston finance who’s rumored to have a block of ice where her heart should be. If only. Recently widowed, Laurie fears she’s broken beyond repair, until a once-in-a-lifetime business deal reignites her passion for work and gives her a shot at proving to the world she still has some life left in her.

Jack Kennedy is a young portfolio manager who aspires to greatness. Unfortunately, she’s so many rungs down the corporate ladder she can’t even scrape up enough money to move out of her mother’s apartment. Her luck changes when her work ethic is finally rewarded with the job opportunity of her dreams.

A blizzard forces their worlds to collide, but what was meant to be a no-strings night of passion becomes more complicated when they both arrive at the office the next morning to discover they each spent the night with the one person in the city who could crush their futures.

Together, they just might hold the keys to everything they’ve ever wanted, but the difference in their ages and positions could spell the end of their careers. Will the ice queen and the protégé find happiness together or lose everything?

Best-selling lesbian fiction authors TB Markinson and Miranda MacLeod have written a scorching ice queen romance about love striking twice. Listen to it today!

©2020 T. B. Markinson (P)2020 T. B. Markinson and Miranda MacLeod

Narrator makes or breaks

I received this audiobook in a free giveaway through the publisher’s newsletter. I’m a big fan of TB Markinson. I love her books, many are among some of my faves. I’ve read this one & liked it so I was looking forward to the audible version when I saw I won a free copy.

Narrators can make or break it for me every time.

In this case, it was broken, sorry. I am not fond of Stephanie Murphy’s narration style. Like at all. Actually, I was incredibly disappointed by her being the narrator for Markinson’s entire Woman Lost series; it’s my fave by her & I would’ve loved to have a reliable audio series in my library to replay numerous times over the years. But Murphy just doesn’t do it for me. She ruined Sarah & Maddie for me completely in that series.

Her cadence makes it incredibly hard to listen. She has a pleasant enough voice but she reads sooooooooooooo slow & literally never changes the pitch or tone throughout the entirety of a story. That remained true with this book unfortunately. I really really tried to give it a chance but as always didn’t get past the first 2-3 chapters.

It moves along so slow I can’t seem to get into the book & stay interested more than 5 mins at a time, my brain starts to wander too quickly. There are so many unnecessary long pauses between words & sentences; sometimes I even thought my Audible app had crashed & needed to be restarted but no it was just Murphy taking a 15 second pause between sentences for whatever reason.

Also, I can never tell one character from another when she speaks bc they all sound the same. And I do mean literally all—male, female, young, old, various accents. This is especially awful with Markinson’s books bc she weaves a ton of dialog into her stories & offers such a variety of interesting characters. It’s impossible to follow along when one character is speaking to another. If I have to concentrate that hard it kinda defeats the purpose of an audiobook for me bc it’s supposed to be a relaxing & distracting escape :(

Sorry to rant but I much prefer the styles Lori Prince or Abby Crayden—both are very talented at bringing multiple characters to life & making you feel like your watching a story unfold instead of just listening. Sigh.

Sorry, it really bugged me this time. If the publisher wants their free copy back to give to someone else who does like Stephanie Murphy I would gladly return. Would’ve given this book 5 stars across the board if it were any narrator but her or maybe Keira Grace (who’s the same exact way sigh).

Excellent!

This was a hot ice-queen, workplace, age-gap romance. Some of my favorite tropes. Great story with a great narrator.

Horrible narrator! Ugh!! Everything Boring!

I had to struggle to listen to the audiobook! Absolutely awful narrator!! I can't believe that I paid for this! Her boring, sing-song voice killed by mood! And the narrator used the same tone for all characters! I couldn't tell which character was talking!! I really tried to finish the audiobook but gave up after 2 hours! Similar tone for all characters and couldn't separate the f..... characters! So boring!! Also, the book is dull! The ratings are deceitful! Overall 0.5 rating out of 5!!

Age is Just a Number

All around great book. Wonderful characters. Love the way main 2 women fall in love.

The world of finance meets a Prada wearing shark

This combined effort had laughs, loves, and lots of sexual chemistry. From their initial meeting in the bar the reader is given an entertaining romp narrated wonderfully by Stephanie Murphy.

A great book

The combination of TB Markinson and Miranda MacLeod has brought out a great story, yes it is a age gap book, it is an accidental meeting between two women, yet the way it was written gave me few hours of pleasure.
Stephanie Murphy was a great choice for narration.

Great story good narration

Loved the story but was not thrilled with the narration. TB and Miranda make a great writing duo. I loved the humor, drama, and story telling in this one. Stephanie Murphy is a good narrator but her Boston accent was not very good and was very inconsistent. Overall I loved the story!

Great story and narration

Both authors are superb on their own, so it’s no surprise this was such a delightful book.


And Stephanie Murphy’s narration is just wonderful.

Great!

McLeod and Markinson make a dynamic duo in WLW romance fiction! This books has everything you want in a story, humor, romance, sentimentality, scandal and a little bit of hanky panky to boot! Well done!

Stephanie Murphy was a perfect fit to narrate this one!

Recommend!

A Slow Burn Romance

I was excited to give this a listen since I knew how much I really enjoyed this novel when it was first released. *I was fortunate enough to have received a copy of this audiobook by the author... This is a book about second chances that’s filled with a lot of Feels!
You have your two MC’s Kari & Kacey who go from Love & Forever to Confusion & Heartbreak while together in college. Fast forward years later to only end up being neighbors. This brings in Rediscovery, Fear, Friendship, Family and Unconditional Love. With that said, There’s is still a good mix of angst with plenty of confusion and miss understanding threw out. The secondary characters in this book (Kari best friend and sister) give this story plenty of sassiness and wit while Kacey’s young daughter just brings a lot of cuteness to the story...
The Narrator, Kenna Faelynn was wonderful and a pleasure to listen too. She had a great book to work with. Note: I will admit I’ve never listened to anything done by her and I did tweak the speed just up one notch for me to get comfortable with the speed and sound of her voice, after that she was spot on! It was definitely as good as the book and it was nice putting a voice to all these wonderful characters. Well done 👍

Tit for tat in the office

The story certainly sparked off in the beginning with some heartache, office drama and a heated and verbally teasing meeting in a bar. That set up a fun age gap, office romance (that did play up some of the same powerplays that that dynamic is known for) with a few fun twists and turns along the way.
A lovely listen.

A cracking read

I have a handful of favourite books which I like to re-read from time to time, Heart Of Ice will be added to the list. Written with just the right amount of humour it had me gripped from start to finish. If you only ever read one lesfic book make it this one, its one of TB's best

ok listen for me

I liked Jack but I just couldn't take to Laurie at all. I thought she wasn't too bad at the beginning but as the story progressed, I disliked her more and more. The storyline was ok, and the secondary characters were okay.

Stephanie done a great job narrating the story but, it just wasn't for me.