Take a photo of a barcode or cover
kayedacus 's review for:
Silent in the Grave
by Deanna Raybourn
2.5 stars
Meh. It was just barely interesting enough to keep me listening through to the end. Rather than being a true mystery novel, it's more of a "lifestyle of the rich and widowed in Victorian England" story, which is interrupted at the end by the climax of the minor plot of the murder mystery. I never grew to like Lady Julia---she's one step up from a typical Too Stupid to Live heroine. Anytime she's told: "DON'T DO THE THING," of course she has to immediately run out and do the thing. And because it's written in first-person, from her POV, I never grew to like Brisbane all that much, either, because I was so disconnected emotionally from her and from everything she did and thought.
So, at least I avoided getting sucked into yet another series.
The narrator, Ellen Archer, annoyed me with her fake British accent (repetitive mispronunciations and accent slippages made it VERY obvious) and pauses/breaks in odd places in the middle of sentences and paragraphs. I've heard samples of other books she does in a regular (generic American) accent, and she sounds much better--with a better rhythm--in those. (She also does commercial voiceovers, like this one for Met Life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIYi-wXk7eA) I'd actually purchased this audiobook back in 2008, before the boom, and before there was much information available about the narrators online. I might have enjoyed the book much more had it been narrated by Charlotte Parry, who did the other book of Raybourn's I've listened to twice and enjoyed both times: The Dead Travel Fast.
Meh. It was just barely interesting enough to keep me listening through to the end. Rather than being a true mystery novel, it's more of a "lifestyle of the rich and widowed in Victorian England" story, which is interrupted at the end by the climax of the minor plot of the murder mystery. I never grew to like Lady Julia---she's one step up from a typical Too Stupid to Live heroine. Anytime she's told: "DON'T DO THE THING," of course she has to immediately run out and do the thing. And because it's written in first-person, from her POV, I never grew to like Brisbane all that much, either, because I was so disconnected emotionally from her and from everything she did and thought.
So, at least I avoided getting sucked into yet another series.
The narrator, Ellen Archer, annoyed me with her fake British accent (repetitive mispronunciations and accent slippages made it VERY obvious) and pauses/breaks in odd places in the middle of sentences and paragraphs. I've heard samples of other books she does in a regular (generic American) accent, and she sounds much better--with a better rhythm--in those. (She also does commercial voiceovers, like this one for Met Life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIYi-wXk7eA) I'd actually purchased this audiobook back in 2008, before the boom, and before there was much information available about the narrators online. I might have enjoyed the book much more had it been narrated by Charlotte Parry, who did the other book of Raybourn's I've listened to twice and enjoyed both times: The Dead Travel Fast.