Audiobook Review Bites

Night Pleasures by Sherrilyn Kenyon
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: Dark Hunter #1
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press (September 15)
Tiara’s Rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Night Pleasures follows the misadventures of Amanda Devereaux and the hunter Kyrian of Thrace. Amanda comes from a family of magically talented women including herself, but her gifts have stagnated because she’d prefer to have a normal life as an accountant and marry a normal man. However, her family’s strangeness manages to run off the only normal man who seemed willing to marry her at the start of this story. Her family’s strangeness, specifically the fact that she looks exactly like her vampire hunter twin, is the reason she finds herself cuffed to Kyrian, who is a supernatural being akin to a vampire, a few pages later.

Kenyon created a story that fused the supernatural and myths (of the gods and goddesses variety) together well. I did enjoy learning about what makes Kyrian and his “brothers” different from a normal vampire, and the few other beings like Kyrian that we meet have interesting back stories including Kyrian himself. I liked the Devereaux sisters well-enough, and I sympathized with Amanda’s need for something normal and safe until she comes to terms with the fact that her life won’t allow such luxuries. Despite all the the things that I liked in the story, there was still something about the story that was a little off. Bits of it dragged for far too long in my opinion, and there were parts of the story that just felt too much like somebody threw up rainbows all over these characters.

The narration for this was pretty good. I liked that MacDuffie used the what I call the “old money” Southern accent for the sisters, but it did make them sound a bit older than they were for that reason. Her voices for the men were okay, nothing that really stood out aside from one of Kyrian’s human friends we meet in the beginning. I’ll definitely continue to listen to these books for however long I continue this series.

This wasn’t a bad book, but I just didn’t find myself overly impressed with the story  I’ll read the next book or two in this series (and maybe backtrack to Dark Lover as a friend suggested) before deciding if I want to continue with this series or not because I did enjoy the characters and the elements she added to what could’ve been another stale vampire story and could see the lore of this world becoming something that I could enjoy.

Narrator: Carrington MacDuffie | Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins | Audiobook Publisher: Macmillan Audio (July 11, 2008) | Whispersync Ready: Yes

Burn for Me by Ilona Andrews
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: Hidden Legacy #1
Publisher: Avon (October 28, 2014)
Tiara’s Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Nevada Baylor is a detective tasked with trying to find a powerful suspect in a very tense case. She’s note sure if she has the prowess to handle the case. However, she can’t really afford to turn down the case. Soon, she finds herself in the clutches of Connor Rogan who happens to be rich, sexy, a powerful magic user, and rumored insane, and he has his own reasons for needing to find this same target.

Like all their stories, this book is fun. The characters are engaging, and as a reader you just find yourself wanting to keep going. I still think Dina from their Innkeeper Chronicles (review for Clean Sweep here) is my favorite heroine so far out of their books that I’ve read, but Nevada is probably a close second. Out of all their male heroes I’ve met so far, Connor is my favorite. He does follow the typical ‘bad boy who isn’t that bad” formula, but he feels the most nuanced of their male characters so far. I liked Connor much more than I did their other male characters upon his arrival in the story.

This husband and wife duo definitely writes some compelling stories, but I find that I’m often not that into the romance part of their stories. I’m being more forgiving about this because I enjoy almost every other element of their stories, and I’m going to assume that the romance will start to feel more natural in subsequent books. (Note: I’ve only read the first book in three of their series, including this one.) I also enjoy the narrator they use to narrate their books who really brings personality to their stories.

Narrator: Renée Raudman | Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins | Audiobook Publisher: HarperAudio (October 28, 2014) | Whispersync Ready: Yes