I’m over at Dear Author with Janine and a joint review of Remember Love by Mary Balogh. I liked it better than Janine did – very possibly because of its similarities with my favourite Balogh, Heartless.
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Sweep in Peace by Ilona Andrews, narrated by a full cast, Graphic Audio production. Another great installment in the Innkeeper Chronicles.
Sweep in Peace is the second book in the Innkeeper Chronicles which tell the story of the adventures of Dina Demille, an “innkeeper” in a universe where inns are kind-of magic B&Bs which host all manner of creatures and beings from across the universe. While I think it’s possible that someone could start the series here, I think the book works much better with the background of the previous book, Clean Sweep. There’s a lot of worldbuilding in book 1 which is only briefly recapped in Sweep in Peace.
In book 1 we got the beginnings of a romance between Dina and Sean Evans, a wolf shifter and former military man, who work together to stop an assassin. Sean, while present in critical ways in this story, is not strongly featured and for the most part, the romance doesn’t really advance here. The Innkeeper Chronicles are fantasy books though, not romance, so I didn’t expect that the relationship would be a major focus. (I gather that there is romantic progress in future books but it would be a stretch to think of the series as romance.)
Sweep in Peace introduces some new characters, most notably George Camarine, an arbitrator whose job is to settle intergalactic disputes. He asks Dina to host peace talks at Gertrude Hunt (her inn) to try and end a war which has raged for 10 years on the planet Nexus. The combatants are the Holy Cosmic Anocracy (vampires), the Merchants of Nexus (led by Nuan Cee (a bipedal fox-like creature) and the Otrakars (aka the Hope-Crushing Horde) – the “scourge of the galaxy” who are genetically engineered humans. It’s extremely dangerous for Dina to host the arbitration but it’s also very lucrative – both financially and magically. Gertrude Hunt renews itself and grows by utilising some of the magic of its guests. Too few guests and the inn dies. With the money a successful arbitration could bring, Dina will be able to survive for months and do some remodelling as well. In the end, she really has no choice; there are not enough (or any, really) guests banging on her door.
Most of the action is confined to the inn’s grounds as the arbitration progresses, with key insights offered by Caldenia (she’s so interesting!). The plot takes that sense of closeness and uses it to ramp up the tension.
There’s some light relief with the addition of Orro, a temperamental Quillonian chef with (Quillonian because of his porcupine-like quills) as well.
Even though Dina is not responsible for wrangling the parties to a peace agreement, she’s in the thick of things and her magic is pivotal to the eventual outcome.
There were some surprises I didn’t see coming but which made the story that much more enjoyable.
I admit I got just a teensy bit lost toward the end but generally I was engrossed and entertained all the way through.
The narration, again, is fantastic. Like with Clean Sweep, I occasionally found some of the music a bit intrusive but the cast performances were all extremely good. The full cast production by Graphic Audio is high quality and it’s clear that everyone involved paid attention – both to characterisation and pronunciation and to the story itself.
I like all kinds of audiobooks but there is something really special about this format – it’s like a radio play with sound effects and a different actor for each role.
Nora Achrati does most of the heavy lifting here given she’s the point-of-view character, but notable mentions must also go to Jon Vertullo as George and Scott McCormick as Orro. I don’t know exactly who voiced the Khanum (leader of the Otrakar delegation) but I was very impressed by her as well. There was not one performer who phoned it in though – all of them were excellent.
Having started the series by listening to the Graphic Audio versions, I can’t see myself choosing any other format for the rest of it.
Full Cast: Nora Achrati as Dina Demille, Jonathan Lee Taylor as Klaus Demille, Jon Vertullo as George Camarine, Christopher Walker as Nuan Cee, and Scott McCormick as Orro. With Karen Novack, Alex Hill-Knight, Jenna Sharpe, Stewart Crank, Lily Beacon, Kay Eluvian, James Lewis, Gabriel Michael, Shanta Parasuraman, John Kielty, Ken Jackson, Alejandro Ruiz, Ryan H. Reid, Lucy Symons, Torian Brackett, Shravan Amin, Wyn Delano, Elias Khalil, Steven Carpenter, Terence Aselford, Katie Leigh, Rose Elizabeth Supan, Mort Shelby, Carolyn Kashner, and Bradley Foster Smith
Grade: B+
Coming Soon
A review of this book will be up soon at AudioGals.
And a review of this book will be up soon at Dear Author.
Links
Here’s what you may have missed:
at AudioGals
Book Lovers by Emily Henry, narrated by Julia Whelan
The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle by Matt Cain, narrated by Simon Vance
at Dear Author
Big Wild Love Adventure by Julianna Keyes
The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle by Matt Cain, narrated by Simon Vance. Quiet and gentle second chance romance for gentlemen “of a certain age”.
The first thing you need to know about The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle is that it is a quiet book. Quiet and gentle. It’s the difference between a cosy mystery set in rural England and Law & Order: SVU. Don’t expect fast-paced revelations. This book is slower and mellower than many contemporary romances around the place. I had to deliberately switch gears to get into it.
Albert Entwistle is nearly 65. He’s a postman for the Royal Mail in the small town of Toddington in England’s north. He’s been a postie since he was 18 and left high school. He has a solitary life and very routine – he eats the same meals every week, he has a Crunchie bar (it’s a kind of candy/chocolate bar – honeycomb covered in chocolate = very nice) with his lunch every day. He keeps himself to himself. He has no friends, doesn’t engage with his co-workers and has only his elderly cat, Gracie for company. For many years he looked after his sick mother but she died 7 years earlier and he has been alone ever since. Even when it was him and his “mam” it’s not like they were close. She would berate and belittle him at every turn.
But Albert loves to dance and sing along to show tunes in the night time behind closed curtains where no-one can see. And he remembers his long lost love, George.
The book begins with Albert getting a letter from HQ which tells him his compulsory retirement is nearly upon him and then Gracie gets sick. Yes, there is pet death on page so beware (I cried). These events shake up Albert’s world and he vows to make some changes. He decides to find George.
It’s been nearly 50 years since their year together, hiding from public view and falling in love during their final year of high school. Back then being gay was only legal if you were over 21. At 17/18 it was a different story. And, even so, being gay in public was not okay and bars and clubs were regularly raided. In small town England the homophobia was even worse. (Be warned, there is quite a bit of homophobia in this book).
Interspersed among the story is a bit of the gay history of England since the 1970s – interesting, sad and enraging at turns. The main story is set in about 2019 I think, doing the maths.
In the course of Albert’s search he makes friends with a young Black single mother, Nicole, aged 19, who has a 3-year-old daughter Irene (“Reenie”). Nicole has a romance of her own (as well as POV sections) and I was very invested! In fact most of the romance within the book itself was for Nicole and Jamie.
Albert and George’s romance is told in flashbacks and what future they may have is still to be told when the book ends.
Albert also makes many other friends, including with a gay couple Daniel and Danny, who move into the neighborhood and many of his co-workers. He opens up, shows interests in others, releases the kindness he has been hiding and, he comes out. It’s a slow process but almost universally, the people he comes out to are very kind. It’s perhaps a picture of an ideal world but it felt a bit too “It’s a Wonderful Life” by the end.
The cast is large, with many of the other characters who go through their own life events during the course of the book. (Listeners should note that one of those life events is the death of a child – a relative of a secondary character – from cancer.) Albert is there to offer sage advice. He’s perhaps a little too perfect considering how very insular he’s been. It was just a little too saccharine.
Albert’s history of what is essentially abuse by his parents (of the emotional kind and a little bit of the physical from his dad, especially when his dad found out Albert was gay) is very sad and difficult to hear. What’s even sadder is that there are many teenagers who experience this kind of thing even now. There’s also some explicit depictions of casual homophobia, racism and gay bashing so for all the gentle tone of the story there are serious topics being covered.
I did find it a little hard to get a handle on Albert. There was very little by way of physical description. I didn’t have a clear view of him really. I know he’s got gray hair and he’s 64 and I gather he’s fairly fit because he walks a lot but as for physicality, he was a bit of a cipher. It seems he’s a young 64, initially hiding in an older 64-year-old’s body.
The narration is very good, with all the various regional accents being delivered skilfully by Simon Vance. Mr. Vance’s female character voices were very good too. Given the wide-ranging cast, Mr. Vance had plenty of opportunity to demonstrate the range of ages he can depict as well, from toddler Reenie, to Albert himself and many, many characters in between. There were also a range of characters of colour, including some from Pakistan and the accent there was well done and also respectful.
There were a few (perhaps more than a few) instances where there was a pause in a sentence where it didn’t belong, causing a bit of a stutter in the throughline. Sometimes I had to mentally replay the sentence to get the understanding. But there were no other issues of any significance and overall I enjoyed his performance quite a bit.
The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle was a change of pace to my usual listen – it was also sweet (if a little too much so at times) and gentle and kind and who doesn’t need a bit of that in their lives?
Grade: B
I’m over at Dear Author with a review of Big Wild Love Adventure by Julianna Keyes. Real love on reality TV.
Book Lovers by Emily Henry, narrated by Julia Whelan. Loved it.
It’s no secret that Julia Whelan is one of my favourite narrators. If she narrated more romance titles I’d be a very happy camper. In fact, the main reason I picked up last year’s Emily Henry release, People We Meet on Vacation was because Julia Whelan was narrating. This year’s offering, Book Lovers was on my radar because I enjoyed People We Meet On Vacation so much. (I’m saving Beach Read for when I need a pick-me-up.)
While People We Meet on Vacation and Book Lovers are very different books, they have the same vibe to them and the same glorious witty banter so I’m confident those who enjoyed last year’s book will enjoy this year’s too. And the narration is stellar so there’s also that.
Nora Stephens is a literary agent in New York. Her father walked out on her mother when she was still pregnant with Nora’s younger sister, Libby and it was just the three of them for a long time. When Nora was 20 and Libby was 16, their mother died suddenly and Nora was Libby’s guardian. Nora is fierce generally but when it comes to Libby she will do anything to make her sister happy and ensure her safety and well-being, including putting her own dreams on hold or passing on them completely.
Nora’s star client is a temperamental, high maintenance woman by the name of Dusty Fielding. When the story begins, Nora has just been dumped by her boyfriend who has decided to move to a small town where he’s met someone else (this is a thing that keeps happening to Nora) and she’s late for a lunch with editor Charlie Lastra. She’s trying to interest Wharton House books in Dusty’s latest novel but the pair do not get off to a good start.
Fast forward two years and the book Charlie passed on is a runaway bestseller and about to be a movie. Nora and Charlie have had nothing to do with one another since then but they bump into each other (repeatedly) when Nora and Libby go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for a month-long holiday. Sunshine Falls is where Dusty’s famous book is set and Libby is a mega-fan. In the past few months, Nora and Libby’s connection has stuttered and something is clearly wrong. Libby is five months pregnant with her third child and Nora is worried there might be trouble in paradise and/or something wrong with Libby’s health. Libby wants to get away before the baby is born and have a rest away from her two young daughters (aged four and two respectively) and begs Nora to go with her for the summer. Nora, desperate to reconnect with Libby and fix whatever is wrong, agrees.
As it happens, Charlie was born in Sunshine Falls and he’s there helping out his family after his dad became ill.
Dusty has written a new book and Nora is horrified to find that she, Nora that is, seems to be the inspiration for the main character – an acting agent with a reputation of being a shark who lacks emotion and heart. Stung, Nora decides to let loose a little and agrees to participate in Libby’s “list” of small town things to do when she is in Sunshine Falls. It’s a ridiculous list which includes things like “pet a horse” or “go skinny dipping” and “save a small business” but Nora will do anything to make Libby happy. The other problem is that the new book is fantastic – Dusty’s best yet. And for reasons, Charlie takes over the editing so Nora and Charlie begin working together on it over the summer.
Charlie has his own troubles with his family and not quite fitting into the Sunshine Falls aesthetic.
Whatever is going on with Libby causes Nora no end of angst as she schemes to identify the problem and fix it, just like she’s always done.
There are nods to common small town romance tropes which I heard as fond, including a very handsome horse farmer Libby encourages Nora to date.
But it is always Charlie Nora keeps going back to. They’re like magnets, always attracted to one another no matter what. After an unexpected kiss, Charlie tells Nora that it “can’t happen” between them and they skirt around each other for a little while but are inevitably drawn back together.
They have a delightful connection. They aren’t really enemies in my view but I suppose some might classify this as an enemies to lovers story. They aren’t ever truly mean to one another but they do a lot of sarcastic sniping – it never crossed the line for me. There was always an underlying attraction and chemistry which was obvious and a genuine care that shone through. Charlie agrees Nora is a bit of a shark but he loves that about her. He doesn’t want to change a thing. Nora, for her part, comes to realise that Charlie keeps things very close to his chest but once she gains a little insight she reads him like a book and realises there’s much more to him than she first thought. They have the best banter – flirty, funny, witty and smart and I was completely there for it.
The narration only highlighted all the good things in the text. I’m sure I enjoyed it more on audio than I would have in print simply because Julia Whelan’s narration is just that good. (On her Instagram feed there’s a sample of her doing Charlie’s voice and it is fire.) Charlie’s tones were husky and rich; like honey with just a touch of gravel in my ear (apologies for the mixed metaphor). The humour throughout the book is enhanced by Ms. Whelan’s excellent comedic timing and the emotion that breaks and reforms Nora was embedded in the performance too. There’s one particular scene where Nora’s voice has a hitch in it when she’s talking about something difficult and it was perfectly portrayed.
I always like lots of the love interests together in a romance and I got that in Book Lovers – Charlie and Nora spend a lot of time together and there’s plenty of evidence of just how much they belong together and how good for each other they could be if only they can find their way to a HEA.
There was a little too much bait-and-switch in the Libby subplot which I don’t think worked quite as well as the rest of the book but the romance was fantastic and the narration excellent. Definitely recommend.
Grade: A
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