Story Rating: 4.5 stars
Audio Rating: 3 stars
Narrator: Piers Ryman
Length: 8 hours, 14 minutes
Audiobook Buy Links: Amazon/Audible | iBooks
Book Buy Links: Amazon | iBooks
I read Fade to Blank when it was first released as an ebook and I highly enjoyed it. I have since read the second book in the London Lies series as well. I rarely reread books, but as I am looking forward to reading the third and final book in the series, I was intrigued to listen to book one in audio, which says a lot for me about how much I enjoyed this story when I read it.
I am still going to keep my assessment of the story itself the same. The characters, as well as Jackson trying to clear his name of murder, and the developing relationship between Jackson and Fletcher are still high points of the story itself. The narration, however, did not elevate this book at all from my view and if this had been my first experience with the story, I would not have liked it nearly as much without the ebook version to fall back on.
The narration by Piers Ryman was not to my liking and his choice of voices for the characters cast them in a different light than how they came across in the book. Fletcher is in his early 20s and grew up on a farm in Ireland. His voice here sounded older and had a sneer to it that did not resemble the Fletcher described in the book. Jackson also didn’t come across as the celebrity he was and the accent for his character was not consistent. Additionally, some of the characters had the cadence of a mimicked voice and one secondary character that was supposed to be a suave Italian man sounded like a cartoon vampire. The book takes place in the late 1990s and I have mentioned before that there was barely any reference to the time frame and why it was set then became more of a question for me here.
The words in the ebook version created an intriguing atmosphere and that was completely lost here in audio format. The end of the ebook had me anticipating the next one and the end of the audio felt too abrupt for my liking and not at all in the same tone as the book. I still will recommend this series, but I will be staying with the written word.
