Starlight and Shadows

A Sapphic Cozy Fantasy Romance

By: Vera Winters

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

A scholar’s dream. A pirate’s curse. Only one can be saved.

Illyria’s dream shop is becoming a nightmare. Abandoning her safe but stifling career teaching magic to the elite, the enterprising half-elf sets sail to open her own alchemy store. Illyria yearns to make her shop a bastion of magic for all, but she invokes the wrath of the local crime syndicate and awakens an ancient curse.

Briar knows all about curses. The pirate half-giant’s family has suffered under one for generations. She’s on the hunt for a Celestial Prism, a rare artifact powerful enough to lift her affliction. Yet the infuriating–and alluring–Illyria is after the same Prism, just as Briar’s time is running out.

Briar and Illyria form an uneasy alliance as sinister forces surround them both. But as Illlyria’s grand opening looms, will she save the store of her dreams, or the woman after her own heart?

Starlight and Shadows is the enchanting first standalone book in the Starlight Sanctum cozy fantasy LGBTQ romance series. If you like heartfelt adventures, new beginnings, and an engrossing F/F romance with a touch of heat, then you’ll love Vera Winters’s captivating adventure. Buy Starlight and Shadows to be enchanted today!

Virtual Voice is killing me!

I am trying so hard to get into this book but I'm going to have to change to reading with my eyes, because this Virtual Voice crap is killing it for me. I need a real person to redo this please! The story is worth investing is a good narrator!

At least it was discounted

This book was so boring it’s probably top 3 meh for me. It’s one of the slowest stories to develop into predictable nothing. I kept listening hoping for something but even at 2x the speed I couldn’t wait for it to finish.

Lack of intonation

did not like AI voice. Does not have character and tamber of a real voice

Great characters

Love the story line! Overall great only downside was the narration!! Hope to see more from this author

Loved the book, HATED the narration

It is a CRIME to have virtual voice narrate ANYTHING, much less a delightful little gem like this one. It was spicy without being total smut. There was some good writing in both story line and description. It is as described. Sapphic cozy fantasy romance, and I am HERE for it. But Audible/Audiobook companies, I BEG OF YOU: GET AN ACTUAL HUMAN WITH EMOTIONS to narrate your books!! This book deserves better!

The story line was pretty good in general

You know, I am all for AI and stuff, but man, the narration was way too bad. It took me more than half the story to finally learn who was who, since the voice was the same for everyone. Also, as it’s not a surprise, there was no emotion in the narration which made listening to the story a little boring. Overall though, the storyline was pretty ok, it could have been better, but well…

Good story, bad voice

The story was a fun sapphic fantasy, but the AI voice was hard to listen to. There was no emotion in it, the intonation often did not match the scene, some words were pronounced incorrectly or broken into parts, and sometimes words seemed to just be missing in the middle of a sentence. If I had known it was narrated by AI before I got it then I would not have bothered with it.

wish they paid an actual narrator

such a great book, but the ai, virtual narrator is terrible. ruins a great book!

A++ for this storyline!!

I loved everything about this book!! My only complaint was the text-to-speech, it was hard to listen to at times. However the story was so good, I binge listened despite that!! I want more!

The AI voice

The AI voice killed the book for me. I was excited at first but my ADHD brain kept on zoning it out.