Absolutely beautiful!

Initially I struggled to get into the narrators way of speaking but once the story started to unfold it was fantastic and she did an outstanding job at the narration, my initial reservations long forgotten. The story itself is absolutely fantastic. I have read/listened to many of Irina Shapiro's work and this one does not dissapoint. If you start this audiobook and find the narrator a little off putting keep on I promise its worth it she does the story justice and its wonderful. It's filled with mystery, romance and hope you won't be dissapointed.

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1 person found this helpful

Great story - poor narration

Irina Shapiro's books are really good. The quality content is great and I'm generally "hooked" into the story from the first paragraph. I really enjoyed the Redmond and Haze series. I've just begun the first book in the Nicola Rayburn historical mystery series and although the story is very engaging I find my enjoyment is diminished by the distractions of the narrator's accent (for example pair becomes parr, jersey becomes jazzy, forest/fauxrest, water/woeter etc etc). I feel that a narrated story should be about the story and not the narrator, and unfortunately I have to read this book if I hope to finish it - what a pity.

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1 person found this helpful

Absolutely loved it

This is definitely definitely one of my favourite series. It is beautifully written and an intriguing story. I can’t recommend it more 😁

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Brilliant book, did not like narration

It's a testament to how good the book is that I continued to listen to it given the narration grated so badly. The lady is either incredibly posh or putting it on, the pronunciation of some words drove me to insanity...stairs. Although hearing the few swear words made me laugh. There was an annoying cadence to her reading with too many pauses. The story was amazing though and I would recommend to read, I was fully invested and although I guessed the ending early in it made it no less enjoyable

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Truly awful narration

I can’t get past this narrators own bizarre accent which is totally off putting, sounds like a cross between Coronation Street and the amazing actresses that take off Prinesses Beatrice and Eugenie in The Windsor’s. Some very strange vowel sounds going on here! Not to mention her awful ‘male’ voice, there is just one very bad one for all the male characters regardless of age or background. I can’t take it seriously when a young country blacksmith sounds like he’s a sixty plus old Etonian! I have given up and will read this on my Kindle as I am sure it will be an excellent read. What a waste of a credit, I’ll be pressing the sample button in future!

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3 people found this helpful

great story but .....

loved this latest book from Irina, however, the narrator was awful. i could not get to grips with her very odd accent. for an actress, the delivery was extremely stilted. please do not use this narrator again, Irina.

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Oh how disappointing!

I had hoped that I had found a new series ….. but the narration is dire. I’m not sure what the narrator’s natural voice sounds like, but the stilted attempt at telling this tale was dreadful. So many mispronounced words and occasional flips in accent midway through a sentence made this a trial. I have to return this as I can’t finish it. The story is promising, but I will have to read this, not listen to it. Having checked who reads the rest of the series I have to find something else to entertain me.

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2 people found this helpful

The terrible narration

I would love to listen to the rest of the series as the book was good, although not up to her previous books in my opinion, but Unfortunately, the narrator was so awful that I sadly won’t be listening to any more of the series

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