Dangerous Destiny
Authors: Suzanne Brockmann and Melanie Brockmann
Series: #.5 in the Night Sky series
Narrator: Melanie Brockmann
Run Time: 1hr 16min
Review Copy Provided by Publisher via Audiobook Jukebox
Description:
I know her.
Know her from inside the dreams. Inside those terrible, murderous, bloody dreams. I’ve heard her-screaming, her voice mixing in an awful chorus with all those other girls. Little girls.
Please, God.
That’s what one of the little girls keeps saying, in the dream that is not just a dream. Please, God.
But I know better. There’s no escaping this fate. This is destiny.
I must kill Skylar.
Skylar Reid is the new girl at school. Her mom just moved them to Florida—aka The Land of the Living Dead where the average age of her new neighbors was seventy-five—to start over. Skylar is not a fan of the change or her total lack of friends. Until she meets Calvin, a funny, sarcastic boy who doesn’t let being in a wheelchair stop him from verbally shredding their preppy classmates. Skylar’s just about to decide her new school’s not a total loss when an odd girl wearing an oversized trench coat in the murderous Southern heat declares, “You’re one of us.” And then tries to kill her.
Review:
I’ve been a fan of Suzanne Brockmann’s since I picked up her Harlequin series based around SeAL’s (Tall, Dark and Dangerous) as a teenager and while my enjoyment of her books has waxed and waned over the years – I typically knew what I was in for when I picked up a copy. So when I saw that she had co-authors a YA book series with her daughter, I was intrigued. It was the first time, that I know of, that she had delved into the YA realm (although in previous books, she had a good handle on writing kids) – so I was curious to see how it played it. Being as it was the prequel to a new series and only about 60pages, there wasn’t a lot of room for substantial world building, the book itself relied more on the hint of things to come, to hopefully make the reader interested in picking up the later books. All you really glean about Skyler (the female main character) is that she has some kind of super-power that is going to come into play later on in the series. I don’t know, I just felt like I couldn’t get invested enough in the series based on the short prequel storyline – I probably would have been better off picking up the full-length first book in the series and then going back and reading the prequel, because based on what I read, I would be hesitant to pick up later books in the series.
As an avid audiobook listened, I am also always on the lookout for new narrators, but typically tend to be skeptical of authors narrating their own works. So when I saw the Melanie Brockmann, the co-author had narrated the book, I was concerned and worried, but I figured since the book itself was short, and so was the narration (only just over an hour) – that even if the narration wasn’t that good, I could survive. So I decided to plunge on in. Within about 20 minutes (so about 1/6 of the book), I knew I had made a mistake. I found the narration to be monotonous and dragging – there was no real distinction between the various characters (and I realize that the book was told in first person, but there still needed to be some inflection or something to differentiate the characters). Honestly, I was glad that the book was so short, but if it hadn’t been, I probably would have DNF’d it – but I stuck with it but unfortunately, it just didn’t work for me.
If I continue the series in the future (and that is still up in the air), it will be by reading it because I noticed that the same person narrates at least the first book in the series. Overall, the story got 2.5 stars and the narration only 1 star, for a 2 star rating overall. If you do consider reading/listening to this series, I would recommend reading.
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