A review by pelicanfreak
Five Steps Ahead by Samantha Baca

mysterious medium-paced

3.5

First time ‘reading’ this author,

Written in alternating, first-person POVs and manages to deliver both police-procedural and cozy mystery vibes because the investigator is a cop, but has a vested personal interest. I always find this to be a fun approach. It also features alternating timelines, so the reader gets a good / more complete picture of what’s going on than the characters may have.

*A few instances of poor grammar noted—recommend using a strong editor to catch such instances. Overall though, it wasn’t bad. 

Dating apps / blind date.

Missing persons.

Lowkey suspense, on and off.

Psycho or socio path.

Serial unal!ver.

SA.

Overall:

This wasn’t a bad read, I would read more by this author—though they’ll need to be eyeball reads unless her audiobooks use a different narrator and/or production team.

3.5 stars.

🎧Audio:

Yikes.

So this is not a professional production—and whoever did produce it, sadly, might be preying on authors. All subjective details aside, there are undeniable issues with this production, a few being:

• Static can be heard throughout.
• At times, it sounds like the narrator is panting.
• Narrator sounds tinny.
• Narrator sounds like he’s underwater.
• At times, his voice just sorta faces off mid-sentence.

Etc.

 I’m not sure what causes issues like this to come through in the end production, but I do know that professional teams produce beautifully smooth productions. All of the various sound quality issues to distract from the ‘reading’ experience for me.

Onto the narrator, that part is certainly subjecting. For me, the ‘performance’ wasn’t great, and I use that term loosely, as there was no performing here. Some narrators do truly act and perform the books they read to us. This one apparently opted to just robotically dictate—if I wanted to hear books that way, I could just have Siri or Alexa read them.  😉

Zero stars. I’m shocked that quality control found this acceptable.