DNF reviews Archives - Kaetrin's Musings

Why I read it: I bought this one on the recommendation of Melissa K. It turns out our Venn diagram isn’t in total agreement.

What it’s about: (from Goodreads) What happens when:
• your brother rashly goes to Vegas and is going to marry a stranger?
• you meet a beautiful woman on your way to stop him and have thoughts of following in his footsteps?
• she happens to be the daughter of your brother’s bride?

What happens when:
• you meet the hottest man around and he’s your new uncle?
• you can’t resist him?
• he dares you to ‘Say Uncle, again?’

A taste:
“Angel, you’re so perfect,” I breathed. My eyes never left hers as she came up behind me, wrapping her arms around my waist and placed her cheek on my spine. The feelings of completion engulfed me.
“Thank you, Uncle Dean,” she said sweetly.
“Did you just say uncle?” I asked menacingly, and I felt her smile on my back. This woman was too much.

What worked for me (and what didn’t): According to my reader, the novelette is 49 pages. I made it to page 29. It wasn’t the uncle thing which bothered me – if it had, I wouldn’t have bought it. After all, it’s right there in the title. The way the technical familial relationship was structured didn’t bother me in the least. In fact, I thought it was kinda funny and it was one of the factors that had me one-clicking.

I needed to share my pain. If Brie can do it, so can I.

Book fail
Unleashed by Cherrie Lynn

I wasn’t enjoying the structure of the book – the way important things were skipped over and discussed in retrospect rather than taking me through them. Given that the book was about a pair of friends heading to Hawaii for what would have been his honeymoon with the woman who had an affair with her (now ex) husband, why skip over the first 2 days of their week away?

Second, given that I have a (somewhat) legal background, I also had some problems with the heroine saying that she wanted to be involved in family law rather than criminal law because criminal law had “too much grit and violence and pain”. Um, hello? Do you know what families can do to each other? Sure, criminal can be brutal but so can family law. If you want away from grit and violence and pain, try corporate or tax law or patent law. Stay far away from family law.

The last straw was when the MC’s started talking about their intimate parts in the third person.

“She says just tell him to go slow this time, be good.” she whispered.

“He is hers to command.”

Ew.

It wasn’t awful but I just couldn’t be bothered reading anymore. Life’s too short. DNF.

For a friends to lovers going on a honeymoon together story, I recommend Christine Bell’s Down for the Count. Much better, IMO.

Audiobook fail

Promises by Marie Sexton, narrated by Mack L. Jones

I’m so sad about this one. I tried. Twice. But the narration is so bad that I just can’t. Sorry.There is NO differentiation in the character voices at all. I can’t tell the difference between Lizzy or Jared or Matt or Brian or Jared’s mum talking. Nada. There is also very little expression in the delivery.

There are almost no vocal pauses between sentences – which makes distinguishing the voices even harder because there is no cue in the timing/delivery. It is the audio equivalent of everything in the whole chapter being one giant paragraph. Not enjoyable.

I love this book. I refuse to ruin the experience by keeping on listening to such bad narration. I’m sad because I was so hoping to enjoy the whole series again except on audio – Strawberries for Dessert is my favourite in the series. If I’m this upset about Promises, I can’t imagine how I’d feel about that one. The narrator is the same for the whole series sadly.

Dreamspinner: you need better narrators.

Read the book – the book is excellent. Audiobook is a total fail for me though. 🙁