Lay It Down

De: Mary Calmes

Narrado por: Alexander Collins

Paradise can be hell.

Most people would say being stranded in the villa of Spanish shipping magnate Miguel García Arquero on the beautiful isle of Ibiza wasn't such a bad deal. But Hudson Barber isn't one of them. To him, being stuck without a passport in a foreign country far from home is a nightmare, made worse by the fact that the person who did the stranding was his flighty twin brother.

Unwilling to turn Dalvon in for identity theft, Hudson is forced to wait, but meanwhile he discovers the chance to rehabilitate Miguel's failing local businesses - enterprises left to Dalvon's inexperienced care. The flagging ventures are a badly wrapped gift from heaven, and if Hudson can turn them around, he might be able to leverage the experience to finish his MBA.

Then Miguel returns to Ibiza, and instead of finding a boy toy, he discovers Hudson has turned his cold villa into a warm, welcoming home. Miguel's path is clear: convince Hudson to lay down his defenses and let love in.

©2016 Mary Calmes (P)2016 Dreamspinner Press

I enjoy this narrator and the author is awesome

Where does Lay It Down rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

It's up there because I adore Mary Calmes

Have you listened to any of Alexander Collins’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Yes, I like his accents and his vocal styling. I noticed others complaining about his speed but I enjoyed it. No need to speed it up.

Any additional comments?

Overall I think narration is probably taste. I enjoyed this light fare from Mary and all her books are excellent!

Great book, bad narrator

I always love any Mary Calmes book, but the voice narration... the. voice. narration. 😮‍💨😞 I got through chapter 6 and I couldn't listen to anymore. I love the deep timber of his voice but the way he read it... it was just bad, there's just no life to it.

Typical Mary Calmes

Just like usual Mary's storytelling blue me away. The narration, however, not so much. The reader's voice had like an oily, almost creepy quality to it (like he was reading a ghost story or crime thriller) that didn't match the sweetness of the characters. Overall though, still not a bad listen

Accents need work.

Any additional comments?

Look, I love Alexander Collins. Whether he’s narrating as Collins or under his Mark Westfield pseudonym, I love his work. I’m a fan.

Maybe it’s because half my family is Spanish and the other half is Australian. So I’m bound to be a tough sell when it comes to accents, but this narration did not work for me.

While Alexander Collins has many talents: conveying emotion, clever use of props, great delivery…I wouldn’t classify accents as his strong suit and this story has a strong requirement of Spanish/Ibizan accent work. He didn’t rock the accents. In fact, for the main bad guy I heard two different UK-ish accents.

The rest of his performance is solid, but the accent work almost killed my enjoyment of this story.

I would recommend to proceed with caution.

sorry narrator

Is there anything you would change about this book?

really, just the narrator. I liked his voice but his delivery was more appropriate to reading of the news and not narrating a book. I gritted my teeth the whole time

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

the narration

How could the performance have been better?

the narrator ended every sentence on an up-pitch which made it very hard for me to enjoy. Sorry Alexander but what works for other readings doesn't work for audible books.

Was Lay It Down worth the listening time?

I had read the story before this audio released. Liking the story was why I purchased it on audio, and I'd not been disappointed by the other narrators of Mary Calmes work.

Any additional comments?

I think Alexander has the potential to be good at this with some practice. He has a very pleasant voice and he changes for the various characters. I just couldn't enjoy this reading. I would purchase more by this author and would consider the narrator again but I would definitely listen to a sample before deciding. Please don't take this too harshly as it may not bother another listener.