I finally figured out what it is about this audiobook narrator's speech that's driving me up a wall. She says some words so weirdly—to the point I couldn't even replicate it. But it hit me: she adds random h's to certain words. Once I realized it I was reminded of these scenes from Family Guy. What she does sounds very similar except  in FG the words do have h's, they're just improperly stressed.

This book started off so well. At least much better than the first book. There was definitely a spark of something there between the hero and heroine more than sex. I appreciated that. Then when they did have sex it was the only scene for the longest time, there was even a judicious FTB. Then a flipped was switched and it seemed that suddenly Shalvis felt she needed to make up for less sex later in the book and there was more for no reason. Also, I really dislike when books end on sex scenes. It is infinitely worse when the book is needlessly extended to shove in yet another elongated, overly descriptive sex scene. Eight minutes left in the book and does the heroine take the hero to meet her family while they are in Chicago? Nope. Is there a cute little scene where she's showing him the city I doubt he's ever been to while the story sweetly fades into their HEA? Nooope.

Sex.

Sexsexsexsexsexsexsex because apparently THAT'S ALL THERE EVER IS ON EARTH AND GOD FORBID WE SEPARATE ROMANCE FROM IT.

Like another book I just finished reading. They get snowbound together. They really only just met, so do they talk for awhile, get to know each other? OF COURSE NOT. No, fifteen, FIFTEEN, pages of sex scene and then two lines at the end of the chapter that says they talked. THAT IS COMPLETELY THE OPPOSITE OF HOW A ROMANCE NOVEL SHOULD BE, DAMMIT!!!

*heavy breathing*

*glares at books*

"Romance" genre I love you, but you are on such thin ice with me. 

Jonathan Maberry is real hit or miss for me. I like the Joe Ledger series even though I generally hate his writing style. But I still keep giving him a chance. This book won the Bram Stoker Award so I thought I was in for something good here. If this is what they honor, then I don't actually get what the BSA is about.

Once again Maberry has about fifty million characters and we have to jump to all of their POVs. It didn't feel like there was any sort of cohesive story just random vignettes that pull together separately. It was all slow as hell. There were hints at horror elements, but not enough for there to be anything called horror, really. There was more of the human crime element.

Even the people that were obviously supposed to be the good protagonists weren't in my opinion. Everyone knew this guy Vic is beating on his 14-year-old stepson but no one does anything about it because Vic is friends with cops or some such nonsense. Our "hero" Crowe calls himself doing something by befriending the kid, Mike. On this night Mike had already gotten into an accident and was injured and Crowe knew that sending him home with his stepfather was a bad, dangerous idea but did it anyway because the Mayor told him to. When he leaves the kid to do the job he was tasked with and comes back to be told by a witness that Vic came to get Mike and full on punched him in the gut before tossing him in the car, Crowe was pissed. And that was about it. We're then treated to a very extended and graphic scene of Vic beating the ever-loving shit out of Mike. It was horrific and supposed to somehow be ameliorated because Mike realizes that Vic is nothing more than human during the beating? What the?

Back to Crowe and the very next thing he's thinking about getting home to his girlfriend and the meal she cooked him. That's when I was done with this book. There are no good guys in this story if they just let something like that go on and do nothing. He didn't even bother to go check on the kid! Then he realized said girlfriend was probably in trouble and that's all that mattered. Speaking of the girlfriend, the topper on my DNF was her running back to the farm where the killer who had kidnapped her and her family was instead of trying to get any sort of help.

I don't care about these characters at all. Except Mike and since he isn't getting help I can't stand to read/listen to more. I don't care about what's coming, if anything is coming because the whole thing has been boring as hell. And long as hell. I actually groaned out loud when I was halfway through because there was still another seven hours left! I tried, but it's not worth my time. I'm super disappointed. I was hoping to have a fun creepy/scary trilogy to get me through the rest of October.

ETA: I forgot to mention that the narrator was pretty awful as well. I actually ended up getting used to him eventually, but he was in no way good.

You can tell Audible out a lot of work into producing this audiobook. There is a full cast of actors playing different voices, fully acting out their parts complete with sound effects.

All of this is really great, however, when adapting the graphic novel they did not adapt the action in the panels. So this was very much like listening to a television show. There were a ton of times where action was happening but the listener has absolutely no idea what is going on or what just happened (unless, if course, they are following along in the books or have read them before). I could follow along with the story for the most part but there were big gaps in my understanding. The people adapting the comic should have turned the action panels into exposition. Especially in this case as the authors were involved in the production. 

I can't complain too much, I suppose, as I got a decent amount of entertainment from this free audiobook. Thankfully my library has these in e-comic form so I'll eventually go through them. If you're going to listen to this I'd suggest you check to see if you can get your hands on the books to read along.

I liked the story itself well enough though the resolution of one element at the end didn't make sense to me. I didn't mind that it happened—I expected it to—I just wasn't down with the way it happened. And I really disliked some of the deaths. Speaking of which,

P.S. If you want to try it out, it is still free and will be until November 4th. Can't beat that price, at least.

No, that was Contact. That movie was annoying as hell.

I can't say the alien situation in this book was all that much better.

There is a lot that's enjoyable about Kline's writing. Even with sucky first person and all. He may be headed into overkill with the pop culture references but they are still fun references. And Wil Wheaton's narration is just plain great. He's not the best with accents, unfortunately, but he brings a lot to the characters and sound effects, etc.

There is a lot of preamble before the story actually gets going. It takes place over two days and a lot happens so some of hat beginning could have been cut to get into the action quicker and give more time to areas that need it.

The biggest problem with this book is plausibility. Obviously it's SF/F so you have to suspend disbelief. That's not the problem because everything you question about the alien backstory our protagonist, Zach, questions as well. Still, lampshading something that doesn't make sense without resolution doesn't make it better. It's like when Supernatural admitted to jumping the shark with Papa Winchester's third son in the title of the episode. That doesn't make it okay!!

At the end when

Well, okay, good. But that still leaves the reader in a state of WTF!? at the end. I also had a problem with Zach being allowed to make a choice for everyone.

Also, of course, I really hated what went down with

Sorry this review isn't as helpful to you if you don't want to read spoilers. It's just one of those times it's impossible to talk around what happens.

There are definitely fun aspects to the story but I didn't enjoy it as much as I did Ready Player One.