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Review – Shadow Man – Cody McFadyen

05 Jul

Shadow Man
Author: Cody McFadyen
Series: #1 in the Smoky Barrett

Narrator: Kate Reading
Run Time: 13 hours, 14 minutes

Book Description
Once, Special Agent Smoky Barrett hunted serial killers for the FBI. She was one of the best–until a madman terrorized her family, killed her husband and daughter, and left her face scarred and her soul brutalized. Turning the tables on the killer, Smoky shot him dead–but her life was shattered forever.

Now Smoky dreams about picking up her weapon again. She dreams about placing the cold steel between her lips and pulling the trigger one last time. Because for a woman who’s lost everything, what is there left to lose?

She’s about to find out.

In all her years at the Bureau, Smoky has never encountered anyone like him–a new and fascinating kind of monster, a twisted genius who defies profilers’ attempts to understand him. And he’s issued Smoky a direct challenge, coaxing her back from the brink with the only thing that could convince her to live.

The killer videotaped his latest crime–an act of horror that left a child motherless–then sent a message addressed to Agent Smoky Barrett. The message is enough to shock Smoky back to work, back to her FBI team. And that child awakens something in Smoky she thought was gone forever.

Suddenly the stakes are raised. The game has changed. For as this deranged monster embarks on an unspeakable spree of perversion and murder, Smoky is coming alive again–and she’s about to face her greatest fears as a cop, a woman, a mother…and a merciless killer’s next victim.

Review
I’ll have to admit, at first when I started listening to Shadow Man, I was skeptical. The first hour or so that I listened to, I was a bit confused over what was going on but that soon changed. I was glad that I was listening to this at work, because I could easily stop when I was at a more suspenseful part and take a break (aka, go and bug my co-workers) before resuming the listening. The author has a way with his writing that made me feel as though I was with Smoky as she was dealing with the crimes perpetrated by the killer. In this instance, I had an inkling of who I thought the killer was, but nothing was clear up until the final reveal and then it was a definate ah-ha moment.

I enjoyed Kate Reading’s narration – to my knowledge, I don’t think that I have ever listened to anything that she has narrated before. I know that I will def. look out for more stuff done by her in the future and will be continuing this series for sure (I already have the next one on my queue at booksfree.com). I would likely never have picked up this book to listen to if it hadn’t show up on the list of books that readers who enjoyed Vanish (Tess Gerritsen) also enjoyed and I am glad that I did.

 
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Posted by on July 5, 2012 in Book Review

 

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Review – The Night Ferry – Michael Robotham

29 May

One of my pet peeves when it comes to books is authors who double-dip characters in books that aren’t part of series, because I feel like I am always missing something. That was precisely the case of what happened with The Night Ferry. I knew that the author had written a series, but for my purposes, I wasn’t looking to starting a new series, so I opted to read what I assumed to be a stand-alone. Unfortunately, I soon found out that while The Night Ferry was technically a stand-alone, the author did refer back to events that had occurred in previous books. So I ended up spending a good portion of my time, puzzling that out (my library didn’t have any of the other books in audio format and I was looking specifically for an audiobook at the time). When viewing other reviews of this book after finishing it, it does appear as though I wasn’t the only person who felt that way, which was nice to see.

Overall, I liked the story that was presented, although at the same time it did seem to be very obvious from the beginning as to where the whole storyline was going. I wasn’t surprised by any of the twists in the story as they occurred. Based on my experiences with this book, I am not sure whether I will rush out to try this author again, but at the same time, I do have my standard, at least two books by an author prior to giving up on them. so maybe I’ll check out one of the books in the series and see how that plays out.

This is the first time that I have listened to a narration by Clare Corbett but I ended up enjoying it. I felt that she had a good range of voices that she used through-out and I didn’t feel like any of the voices had been over-done or repeated through-out the various characters. I will likely pick up other books narrated by her in the future to see if she can maintain this ability in other books.

 
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Posted by on May 29, 2012 in Book Review

 

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Review: Vanish

14 Apr

Vanish
Vanish by Tess Gerritsen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Review of the Book
Every once in a while a book comes along that touches on a significant topic and as a reader you are just blown away by not only the events that transpire, but that the fact that events like this happen in world. For me, Vanish, is just one of those books. In the past eight years since I have been in the military, every year I had had to complete a mandatory training called Trafficking in Persons – but like with most of the required trainings, I didn’t really take it seriously, clicked through the slides, in order to get the check in the box for having completed it. Now, looking back on that and after reading Vanish, I’m amazed by my ignorance of such a topic.

The book begins with the line, My name is Mila and this is my story and told in Gerritsen’s normal alternating perspective between Boston Homicide Detective Jane Rizzoli and Medical Examiner Maura Isle, as well as the perspective of Mila. There were times I was on the edge of my seat waiting to hear what happened and I didn’t want to stop listening to the book (unfortunately, since I was doing it on my commute to and from work I had to). The only thing holding me back from giving this a 5-star rating is the fact that I don’t know if I could see myself re-reading it in the future and those are the books I tend to give 5-stars to. Not because it wasn’t well-written, but because it was so disturbing.

Review of the Narration
So far I have listened to four books in this series, and gone through 3 different narrators. In this one, Susan Denaker, took over the reins from Kathe Mazur, who narrated book 4 and did a good job of it. All the voices had good inflection and I think she did a good job with Rizzoli’s Boston Irish accent. I think she did a slightly better job that Mazur with the male voices, and I was able to distinguish each character, but they didn’t quite live up the narration of the first 2 books by Anna Fields. I will however look for more narrations by her in the future.

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Posted by on April 14, 2012 in Book Review

 

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Review: Body Double

01 Apr

Body Double
Body Double by Tess Gerritsen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

About the Book
Tess Gerritsen did it again with Body Double – originally when I read the blurb I thought it was going to be similar to a book by Lisa Scottaline, but TG blew that book out of the water. It was so quickly enveloped in what was happening to Maura and loved how there was so much a focus on her, and not split between Jane and her as in the previous books. But at the same time, the cameo’s of Jane and the solving of the crime were great – especially due to her condition (but you won’t get any spoilers from me) 😉

About the Narration
I’ll have to admit, I was a bit worried when I picked up this audiobook to listen to, because I had been spoiled by the awesome narration that is Anna Fields in the previous 2 books, and to switch a narrator, part of the way through a series, I was concerned, but Kathe Mazur did a good job. I won’t say it was great, and I wasn’t necessarily a fan of how some of the male voices turned out, but I think she did a good job on the variety of female ones. Unfortunately, as I looked at the next book in the series, I realized that it once again had a different narrator, so I can’t even see how she develops. That being said, I will potentially be looking for more narrations by her in the future.

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Posted by on April 1, 2012 in Book Review

 

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