Love Only Once by Johanna Lindsey - DNF

I'm struggling not to DNF this audio book. This is only my second Lindsey book (and I wasn't that taken with the first one), so I was willing to give her books another try or two, and it seems a lot of folks really like this series (The Malorys).

I got the audio book free from the library - thank gawd because I'd be really pissed to have wasted an Audible credit on this book. The narrator is Laural Merlington, who has 193 listings on audible.com. I recognized her name as she also narrates some Elizabeth Lowell books, and I think I've even listened to some of them. It's not that she cannot narrate books - it's that her British accents are beyond dreadful, and if she goes "heh heh" in my ears one more time when the author has written "he chuckled" or "she giggled" I'm likely to throw the iPhone across the room. Which would not be a good thing for the iPhone and so totally not its fault. Jesus H Christ, woman! Your "heh heh" is about the most obnoxious thing I've heard since that awful narrator of the 1st two of Christine Feehan's Dark series said Car - path -ian (rhyming it with bath) a couple hundred times (along with all her other wrong pronunciations). I cringe when Merlington says anything that implies a laugh from a character, knowing I will next hear it - "heh heh". ARGGG.

Now, I can't decide if this is Lindsey's or Merlington's fault, but the so-called heroine of this book, Miss Regina/Reggie/Reagan (??) might as well also be called Scarlett O'Hara. Twiddle dee dee, I'll just worry about that tomorrow. She's spoiled and headstrong and seemingly way too wise for all of her 19 years and FRANKLY I DON'T GIVE A DAMN. And Ms Merlington's Regina voice is petulant and high-pitched and pouty and might as well be Scarlett O'Hara too.

The so-called hero is at least as obnoxious. I say he's an alcoholic. He's constantly foxed - well, as constantly as a hero who has been gone a big part of the book can be. He was drunk when he accidentally kidnapped Lady R the first time (ok, it was his first time to kidnap her, but her third kidnapping in her life, soon to be followed by a fourth); he was drunk when he ran into Captain Hawk; he was drunk when he poured out his soul in whatever part of the tropics he was in. He's violent. He's a ruthless cad, a seducer/ruiner of multiple virgins - I'm sorry, this main male protagonist doesn't have an ounce of the character of most romance novel heros. Give me whatshimname from Linda Howard's Death Angel (I really loved that book, but the hero was a paid assassin, so he wasn't exactly an angel).

and wait - isn't this a Malory novel? The spoiled Regina is a the daughter of a deceased Malory woman, so technically she isn't a Malory at all, although she's been raised by her [several] Malory uncles. And I'm troubled by the fact that her uncles all dote on her so much, even though at least one of them has other children her age. Where the hell are they?

I kept listening, along with cringing and wondering why I am bothering. I felt the need to write some of these complaints down, and now that I've re-read what I've written, I am going to go ahead and DNF this one. At least with Lisa Kleypas, I just didn't find her books as great as others said - I didn't actually hate them. I think I'll stop trying to understand why I don't like certain authors - surely 2 books is enough to decide. The end.

The Lady Chosen and Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens *

I am choosing to lump these 2 into one review because they are both going DNF - did not finish.

I got The Lady Chosen as an audio download at audible.com some time back. I believe I mentioned it in a few posts already. I love audio books, although I don't love every audio book or narrator, and I'm pretty sure I've finished every audio book before - even the dreaded Christine Feehan Dark series, #1 and #2. I truly disliked the narrator on the Dark series, and often yanked the earplugs out of my ears in frustration because she mispronounced so many words. I even started a list of badly and wrongly pronounced words!!

I had decided that the narrator Jill Tanner on The Lady Chosen was almost as bad (but not quite) as narrator Juanita Parker of the Dark Series. Ms. Tanner's accent grated on me - I have no idea if she's a native British speaker or if she's American. But worst of all were the odd pauses - in the middle of sentences, as though the sentence ended and then just started up again.

Then I got Devil's Bride as a print book. It's on the AAR Top 100 and is the first in the Bar Cynster series that so many romance readers love. And DAMN if that trait I thought was the narrator's poor reading isn't actually a writing conceit used by Ms. Laurens. Yes, she actually ends a sentence, even a paragraph, and then starts up again with another phrase - an incomplete phrase that should have been part of the previous sentence.

Look - it isn't because it's incorrect grammar - after all, good authors can break grammar rules to create tension, mood, whatever. I'm only a stickler for grammar and spelling when it's obvious the author just did it wrong. When the incomplete phrases are used effectively to the author's advantage, it can enhance the story. I can tell Laurens uses this style of writing on purpose. Over and over. And it's damnably annoying. It's driving me nuts and has pushed both the audio book The Lady Chosen and the print book Devil's Bride into my very, very short list of DNFs.

Oh - there is one other thing about these 2 books that drove me to distraction - the heroine's lungs kept siezing. Her lungs siezed a lot when she got excited (sexually that is). I guess every author has some phrase like that she uses over and over, but that one got old after, oh, 1 time.

And Jill Tanner is hereby forgiven for trying to make Ms. Laurens' prose work as an audio book. Obviously, I'm in the minority because so many readers just love her work. Not me. DNF - 1 star.