Horrible male reader

The story is acceptable (interesting take, but a bit cringe/cliché in dialogue) and I was entertained. The female reader deserves 4 stars, but the male reader! Yikes! I’m not difficult and this is the first time in 5 years of subscribing to Audible, that I’ve really disliked a reader. He has the most weird breaks in the sentences, and really misses the mark with the accent.
Every time there was a switch to him I considered to stop listening, but the story was interesting enough that I chose to continue.
So recommended, but not if you’re sensitive with who’s doing the reading.

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This makes me angry and sad

This story from the great Jennifer Estep should have been, well, great. But it wasn't - and one of the narrators was truly terrible.

It was an interesting idea for a book, with a decent heroine (very Gin-like) and some good/believable magical world building. But the ending was "meh", and I'm sure not sure I would bother with a Book 2.

Definitely NOT if the same man (Grant Cartwright) was employed as the narrator. He was supposed to be a handsome Australian with a Crocodile Dundee accent to match. Instead, he sounded like a robot who'd learn't English from High Grant.

TERRIBLE - I ended up by-passing the chapters he narrated - and plan on asking for my money back.

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Great Story!

I really enjoyed this book and hope that there will be more books from Section 47. Anyone who enjoyed SPI Files by Lisa Sherin will likely enjoy this book too.

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Tightly Written and Entertaining

I’d probably give this book 4.5 ⭐️ If could.

This is a standalone Urban Fantasy novel, with elements of romance. The romance is not the main driving force of the plot, but there are undercurrents until the end when it becomes more important. There are no cliffhangers, but it feels like there could be more books written in this series if the author chose, because not all loose ends are tied off.

Charlotte Locke is an analyst who works for a shady government agency, Section 47. Section 47 deals with terrorists, dangerous criminals and other paramortals who are a danger to society. The people who work for Section 47 are paramortals, many who are ‘Legacies’ or people whose family worked for Section 47 too, and trained their offspring in the family trade. Charlotte Locke’s father and grandmother both worked for Section 47 and her father in particular was a notorious Cleaner who died in the line of duty. Charlotte decided to follow in her grandmother’s footsteps and become an analyst because her the danger from her father’s job often followed him home and put Charlotte in danger too.

Charlotte uses her paramortals abilities of being able to sense truth, lies and danger, to uncover secrets and then uses her mighty brain to interpret the data that she discovers. When her abilities go off around a new guy in the building, she knows he must be a Cleaner and his interest in her makes her very suspicious.

Desmond Percy is another Legacy. He’s one of the most deadly Cleaners in Section 47, and he’s moved to Washington DC to find out why his last mission went horribly wrong and caused his best friend’s death. He’s read some of Charlotte’s reports and knows she’s his best hope of tracking down the paramortals responsible. He tries his usual smooth charm and good looks approach, not knowing Charlotte’s abilities and intelligence spot his ulterior motives a mile away. He’s going to have to work a lot harder than normal to get her on his side.

I really enjoyed the world building in this book. The abilities of the paramortals are well thought out and I like how Charlotte and Desmond’s abilities complement each other. The framework of Section 47 is set up interestingly and I enjoyed learning about how it all worked, as well as finding out about the various characters working there.

Charlotte is a fantastic character. She has a fantastic mind, a useful set of skills and was highly trained by both her grandmother and father, who had very different skill sets. It makes her a very dangerous woman. She also has a very well defined set of morals. They might not follow the rules other people set, but she always acts in the way she believes best and that fits in with her moral framework. She is determined and capable of following through with her plans no matter what.

Desmond is not quite as interesting, but he’s still a good solid character, who provides a great foil for Charlotte. He’s brave, strong, arrogant and ruthless. He gets the job done, no matter the cost. Though Charlotte does make his tiny conscience tweak a little for how he plans to use her.

The plot was very tightly written, which is no surprise to anyone who’s read this author before. She writes great stories that engage your brain as well as your emotions as you grow to care about the characters at the same time as you wonder what is going to happen next.

The narrators were pretty good and definitely increased my enjoyment though the accents were a little dicey in places, which is not uncommon when you through an Australian accent at an American narrator. Other than that they were engaging and convincing actors with each narrator solely reading their relevant chapters.

I really hope that there are more books written about this world, and especially these characters, because I think Charlotte may be one of my favourite characters to come from this author.

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1 person found this helpful

Great story but what is up with the male narrator?!

So I really liked the storyline of this book, but the narration was just plain painful. The female narrator (Helen Laser) was great but the male (Grant Cartwright) seriously what is this guy on, no scratch that what the hell is the production company on. No sane person would listen back to his, stilted robot performance and go ‘yeah that sounds great’!

You can try and increase the speed of the audio but he then just sounds like a speeded up stilted robot. It’s ridiculous and really ruins what is actually a good book. It’s really hard to get past his weird performance, I stuck it out to the end but it was like nails down a chalk board at times 😖

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should have just used the female reader

Male reader supposed to be australian more like a very stilted james bond.
female reader can do an australian accent and speaks at a decent reading speed
next time just choose one reader please.
this really was distracting and annoying.

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1 person found this helpful

Enjoyable

If you're expecting this to be similar to Ms Estep's Gin Blanco series you will be disappointed. Whilst still in the UF genre this also falls into the whodunit/revenge genres.
I really enjoyed this book Dundee and Numbers kept me entertained whist I was spring cleaning in preparation to move house. My only niggle is the male narrator. This book is read in the first person, chapters mostly alternate between male and female, the female narrator is very good and acts the story, she really is having a conversation with her best friend or arguing with male main character. The male main character is Australian and the narrator's Strine comes and goes and at times sounds more like Roger Moore's James Bond. He comes across as reading the book and is quite stilted, he doesn't have the relaxed natural style of his female counterpart. When voicing other main characters this is not so evident. That is the only reason I gave the performance 4 stars instead of 4, if I could have given it 4.5 I would have.
This could become a good series and I'll keep watching for news of book 2.
Story. 4
Performance 4
Overall 4

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Brilliant story, BUT !

Estep’s modern version of a female Bond !
But Cartwright and especially Laser are just wrong for an Estep novel.
It’s very difficult to listen to the entire story, if you’re able to read yourself buy an ebook or a physical book and enjoy this book.
I can’t read but everything by Estep, so fare, I have enjoyed over and over again, this is the first of her books I don’t know what to do with ???

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