I wasn’t a fan of Laurie Catherine Winkel’s narration. Granted I was only able to listen to the first 45 minutes before I had to return the book but in that time Laurie’s voice took on an edge where it became shrill and was constantly at odds between Jeff Hays’ performance. I had no issues with Jeff Hays and have listened to several of his performances before.
The story was probably good but I wasn’t able to get passed the first 45 minutes. Moving forward if the author would switch to using only Jeff Hays as the narrator, his story would probably be more widely circulated because Jeff is a very popular narrator within this genre. I know that I only took a shot at this book because I saw his name on the billet. I will admit that if I knew his performance was relegated to such a minor role, I wouldn’t have even given it the 45 minutes I did.
It is also odd that this book has the main protagonist is male but the primary narrator is female. I’m not sure who made the judgement call on that one but I think it may be one of the reasons why this book isn’t as popular as some others within the same genre. As a listener I want to identify with whoever the main character is within the story and I found it jarring every time Jeff Hays would pop in for a couple of seconds to do the main characters voice. To avoid this, the primary narrator should be the primary voice for the main character(s).