When the audiobook literally reads 'asterisk asterisk asterisk' out loud… we have a problem.
I listened to Bound for Murder by Audrey Shine, and this one falls squarely into my "it was fine, but I won’t be recommending it" category.
The premise itself was decent enough. A woman discovers her husband is cheating, gets divorced, and decides to follow her dreams. Along the way, because this is a mystery after all, there’s a murder. It’s a familiar setup, but sometimes familiar works. This time it worked almost just enough.
The story kept me mildly interested, but I was never fully invested. It leaned much more toward cozy mystery than thriller, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I kept waiting for more tension, more urgency, more anything. Instead, the pacing stayed comfortable, predictable, and slow. Honestly, though, the audiobook narration may have hurt this one more than anything else.
This version was read by Caroline, a synthesized voice. And while I’m open-minded about new technology, this one didn’t quite land. There were mispronunciations. The inflection for different characters was sometimes off… and sometimes completely absent. Conversations occasionally blurred together, and emotional moments didn’t quite feel emotional. And then there was the moment that completely took me out of the story. The narration literally read:
"asterisk… asterisk… asterisk…"
Yeah. That’s when I realized I was no longer listening to a story. I was listening to software.
Would the story have worked better with a human reader? I suspect yes. A skilled narrator can add nuance, pacing, and personality, all things this artificial reader struggled with.
Using my rather snarky rating system, this one lands at a 3 out of 5. It kept me mildly interested, but I won’t be recommending it, and I probably won’t remember much about it in a few weeks. It wasn’t terrible. It just never rose above “okay.”
And for the record, as much as I love technology, I think authors might want to stick with human readers… at least for now.
