Overall Rating: 1 star
Narrator: Ron Herczig
Length: 6 hours, 8 minutes
Audiobook Buy Links: Audible
Book Buy Links: Amazon | All Romance
Being a police detective is hard. Add the complication of being a werewolf subject to human prejudice, and you might say Ray Branigan has his work cut out for him. He’s hot on the trail of a killer when he realizes he needs help.
Enter Cal Parker, the beautiful half-fairy Ray’s secretly been in love with for years—secretly, because while werewolves mate for life, fairies…don’t. Ray needs Cal’s expertise, but it isn’t easy to concentrate with his mate walking around half-naked trying to publicly seduce him. By the time Ray identifies the killer—and sorts out a few prejudices of his own—it may be too late for Cal.
The above is the published blurb for the book, Some Kind of Magic. I am using this in place of writing a synopsis as is the style here at Joyfully Jay as this is the first time that I am unable to tell you what a book is about.
I listened to this book on audio and the delivery had a negative impact on my enjoyment of the story. Ray is a policeman and he is also a werewolf and we are dropped into the middle of the story and the middle of a world. There is no world building, there is little character building, and we have to accept that he is a werewolf and that he lives in a world with humans and other magical beings, such as fairies and dragons. Ray is called in on a case when a fairy is attacked during a robbery and then later there is a murder. Despite listening to several passages more than once, that is about all I can tell you about the case. I found it impossible to follow.
Ray is also in love with a fairy named Cal. He has known Cal for a few years and they have some kind of history that isn’t clear. Ray has never allowed himself to make a move on Cal because fairies do not settle on just one mate while werewolves do. Cal is brought in to help with the case, although it was not clear what his expertise in the area might be. There is no relationship building and we are told that Ray was in love with Cal and attracted to him. When Cal winds up in Ray’s lap finally kissing him it was not possible to connect the story to how that actually happened. There is also a lot of talk about candy and sweets and sugar in the story because fairies love sweets. That is about all I can tell you as so much of this part didn’t make sense to me either. Just one example was at the end of the book one MC is in bed with another character and I listened to it two times to figure out that it wasn’t the love interest and I couldn’t figure out who the other guy was and how he wound up in bed with the MC.
The word that comes to mind to describe the narration would be odd. The narrator had a deep rasp to his voice and was often groaning, which I found unpleasant. What was most difficult to listen to was the emphasis he placed on certain words in sentences, which made all of the inflections sound off. The entire narration sounded amateurish and dry and listening to it at the regular speed was unbearably slow. There were other side characters added in, most of them sounded the same, and the female characters did not sound female. The intimate scene was not enjoyable to listen to as the men sounded as if they were in pain and there was no connection established to the characters. And, after the book ended a portion of the first chapter repeated itself before the closing.
I cannot say if this story would have worked in the text version, but my rating is reflective of the overall experience I had listening to it in audio. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend either the story or the audio.
A review copy of this book was provided by Dreamspinner Press.
Whoa, Michelle, I’m sorry you had such a bad experience. I’ve read and enjoyed R. Cooper’s books before, but haven’t read this one yet. I’ve been there with terrible narration, and it’s zero fun to have to sit through it when all you want is for it to be over. Thank you for the heads up on the audiobook. I hope Dreamspinner sees this and deals with the repetition. I had a book of theirs that had a section missing, just jumped over a piece and started up at another chapter. Luckily it was a book I’d read in text, so I knew what was going on. Still, I was able to return it to Audible, and then I let them both know why.
Yikes! It really sucks that your experience with this audiobook totally wrecked your reading. I get it, though. I once picked up an audiobook featuring a teenage girl and was really excited to read it. Well, that is until I began to listen to it and was confused by the narrator’s voice (who sounded like a heavy smoker in her mid 50s). O_O!
For what is worth, Cooper has a particular writing style that can best be described as labyrinthine. For example, I read this book (and enjoyed the banter and pining of the romance between Cal and ray) and I still can’t tell you what reasons the villain had to do what he did or why was Cal even involved in the case.