I think I've found myself another audiobook series for my various commutes!
Still Hope is the second book in Ava Strong’s Lily Dawn series, and this one was another solid four-star listen for me. It didn’t make me sit in the car after I got home or keep listening when I had other things to do, but it kept me entertained and made the drive go by much faster. That’s exactly what I want from a commuting companion.
This time, FBI agent Lily Dawn and her partner, Xander, are hunting a serial killer who has come up with a particularly creepy calling card: treasure maps leading to the locations of his buried victims on the islands. Because apparently simply murdering people wasn’t disturbing enough. We needed arts and crafts too.
I continue to like Lily. She’s smart, capable, and flawed enough to feel human. I also like her partnership with Xander, and I especially enjoyed the fact that the investigation gave us plenty of suspects. Lily and Xander knew who the killer was several times. So did I. We were all wrong together.
That was actually one of the things I enjoyed most about the story. There were enough believable possibilities to keep me guessing without making the eventual solution feel like it came completely out of nowhere.
Tim Alexander returned as narrator, and I think I’ve figured out exactly why I enjoy his narration so much: he doesn’t perform vocal gymnastics. He’ll change his pitch a little or use an accent when it makes sense, but he never goes overboard trying to give every character a wildly different voice. His narration is smooth, natural, and very easy to follow, which is particularly important when I’m listening while driving.
Four stars for Still Hope. A creepy premise, a solid mystery, characters I’m happy to spend more time with, and a narrator who knows he doesn’t have to sound like seventeen different people.
Lily Dawn can ride with me again. I've already reserved the next in the series.
