The Touch of Fire by Linda Howard ***

This is an older Linda Howard, now out on Audiobook, narrated by Natalie Ross. I liked Natalie Ross as narrator, but the story itself never really rose above "just ok". It's a western, where the heroine, Annie, is a doctor in a small Western mining town - the only place that would have a woman doctor in post-Civil War America. Rafe McCae is on the lam, being hunted by several bounty hunters, when he's injured. He goes to Doc Parker, and he ends up kidnapping her and taking her hostage - sorta. She doesn't really go willingly, and he is sorta mean to her, but it turns out he's really a lawyer from New York City ("git a rope") who is being pursued to cover a governmental scandal. It was ok - not great, not bad.

Money, Honey by Susan Sey ****

Finally finished this - it may have been the only print book in January (actually it was the fourth, but who's counting?)! I have been knitting so much and listening to audiobooks well into the night, so that by the time I go to bed I'm too tired to read more than a few pages, and that makes it hard to keep up with the story.

This is a contemporary Good Girl Cop/Bad Boy Thief romantic suspense - the heroine is FBI Special Agent Liz Brynn, a by-the-book woman who met up with Patrick O'Connor years back when he turned himself in to save his sister. Patrick came from a long line of thieves - all in the family - and to keep from going to jail, spent some time working for the FBI as an informant to Liz. He's back - several years later - and it's not clear to Liz or the FBI whether it's really to help his sister with a counterfeiting problem or to hook up with an old crime buddy and pull another heist. The FBI reels him in to help on the counterfeiting scheme, hoping to catch him with the other bad guy as well.

The old sparks between Liz and Patrick are back - and Patrick pushes Liz hard to give in. Except when she does, he's suspicious. Is she using him or does she really want him?

There's a slight taste of Eve Dallas and Roarke here (In Death): Liz is the polyester-suit wearing hardass, and Patrick the rich and debonair former thief. Sey's writing is almost old-time-film-noir, with Liz as the private eye and Patrick the femme fatale. Everything seems fast paced, and exaggerated - "fury buzzed in her ears like a swarm of killer bees" "Self-disgust dripped cold and slippery into her gut", and Patrick calls her "Liz. Darling." every time he speaks to her. I could imagine it being narrated by a Humphrey Bogart style voice.

I liked it pretty well, 4 stars, and I think I'd have liked it even better if I got to read it in 3 or 4 sittings instead of 20 pages a night for 2 weeks!

Days of Gold by Jude Deveraux ***

Days of Gold by Jude Deveraux

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I'm giving this 3 stars as in "I liked it" but not more than 3 stars. However, the narration by Davina Porter was definitely 5 stars! In fact, she may have saved the book for me. I'm a sort of on-again, off-again Jude Deveraux follower - I love some of her books, and hate some. I did not particularly like A Knight in Shining Armor.

This one starts in 1766 Scotland, with a young, orphaned British heiress living with an uncle who won a Scottish keep in a game of cards with the original laird. Edelean finds herself in a number of scrapes - falling in love with a young British fellow who tries to scam her fortune; her uncle tries to marry her off to one of his old cronies, again for the fortune. She ends up being smuggled out of Scotland with her gold and the most recent laird, Angus MacTern, and the two of them cross the ocean disguised as man and wife, with false names.

Once in America, more - well, misunderstandings, some standard Deveraux story twists, a stint in the army for Angus, more scrapes for Edelean who finally creates her own business. Truly, with Davina Porter reading the story, I'm convinced it was much more likable than if I had read it in print. Her wonderful Scots accents and warm British accents are so delightful (and having listened to literally dozens of hours of her voice I feel I can say that!). I'll say this: Deveraux is no Gabaldon!

Still, it was an enjoyable (enough) listen.

Trouble in High Heels by Christina Dodd ****

Trouble in High Heels by Christina Dodd

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was a fun romp! It's the first in the Fortune Hunter series, and I read #3 first, and found it just ok. The genre must be suspenseful romantic comedy because it had moments of each.


Brandi had just moved to Chicago - in the winter - to be closer to her fiance Alan. She also just got a job with a prestigious law firm in Chicago, which she would start in just a few days. While having trouble getting settled in, what with frozen water pipes and a mistake in her furniture order, she received a call from Alan: he'd just gotten married in Las Vegas. In revenge, she pawned the engagement ring and spent it all on getting ready for a big charity ball she would now be attending alone. The revenge plan: pick up a man and spend the night forgetting all about Alan.


Roberto was that man: an Italian count rumored to be an international jewel thief. He was perfect except for one small detail she learned on her first day at work: she was his lawyer.

The narrator is Amanda Ronconi, a new-to-me narrator with 19 listings at audible.com. I liked her regular reading voice and her female characters a lot, her male voices and especially her Italian-accented male voices somewhat less. The gravelly/throaty voices and not-very-authentic foreign accents didn't work for me very well.

I think this story has the absolute best grovel scene I've ever read, and the last 20 minutes or so were pretty funny as I imagined what the scene looked like.

Call Me Irresistible by Susan Elizabeth Phillips*****

Call Me Irresistible by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I loved it! I was very happy with the new narrator, Shannon Cochran, too - she almost rises to the level of Kate Fleming/Anna Fields, and although I haven't done a re-listen to the earlier books in a while, I felt like her voices were close enough to the originals.

This is Ted and Meg's book, although when you start, it's Lucy Jorik from First Lady as the bride. Lucy's best friend Meg seems to be the only one who can tell that Lucy and Ted aren't the love-match everyone thinks, and encourages Lucy to follow her heart. Lucy does exactly that - jilting Ted at the altar! Of course, Meg is such a blunt screw-up that she ends up taking the blame, which everyone in Wynette, including Ted, heaps on her. Meg, whose parents have cut off the money to force her to take responsibility, realizes she's stuck there with no money, forced to work at whatever she can find and live out of her car until she can repay the hotel. Over the next several weeks, Meg experiences what Ted's mother Francesca did in her own story (Fancy Pants) - the growth of self-esteem from doing a job well.

It really was such fun to revisit all the citizens of Wynette and the original stories - I was almost disappointed when Lady Emma was mentioned reading Beatrix Potter because I expected her to be reading Daphne The Bunny books! Of course, that was a completely different series, but then how did Glitter Baby, What I Did For Love and First Lady get into the golf series??

I did have the slightest quibble with Cochran's narration - I mean, really I liked it a LOT, and I felt like she followed in Anna Fields' footsteps well. I even thought she sounded a little bit like SEP herself, having heard her in online videos. There were some passages that seemed to drone on and on that she could have livened up somewhat, but overall her voice suited the story well. I'm not sure if I had read the other stories right before this that her other characters would have fared all that well - hearing them sound different might not have worked, but they did seem to match well enough what was in my head.

Let Sleeping Rogues Lie by Sabrina Jeffries ***

Got this in audiobook for a "mini review" for the Speaking of Audiobooks at AAR. Didn't like it any better in audio - narrated by Justin Eyre, who I did like. What follows in my original review here from April 2009:

I can't believe I read this one out of order!! It's actually #4 in the series after Beware A Scot's Revenge which I read last.

This one was just average/mediocre - the whole setup/premise was a little too contrived for my taste. First, the prim schoolteacher and the rake are the protagonists - (yawn) - and the prim schoolteacher has a dark secret she cannot reveal about her father, and wants to use the rake to get the resolution, so she arranges for him teach Rake Lessons at the school (this is the School For Heiresses series) to prove he can be a responsible guardian. Yes, if you are thinking "WTF?" like I was, then we agree on the premise: it's inane. It's something about his being desperate to be the guardian of his niece to protect her from his aunt - so desperate, he'll teach the lessons; meanwhile, Ms Prim Schoolteacher is also desperate, hence her convincing Mrs. Harris to allow his niece to attend if he'll prove he's responsible.

Because of her so-called "dark secret", she pretty much lies throughout to the rake - and yet she expects him to be honorable?? Once she finally gets what she wants - well, whatever, it sorta became The Big Misunderstanding - meanwhile, he's immediately attracted to her like he has never been before to any other woman, in spite of his reputation and vast experience. Doesn't that get old after a while? So he has to have her, whatever it takes and...

Jeffries writes an enjoyable enough story but this one pushed my "so what" buttons, hence the 3 stars.

Thigh High by Christina Dodd ***

This is another of my "mini review" books I did for AAR's Speaking of Audiobooks - it was just a 3 star listen, but the first in the series was better - Trouble in High Heels - so I do plan to read the others. The review:

Thigh High by Christina Dodd

Narrated by Natalie Ross

When Jeremiah “Mac” MacNaught goes undercover in New Orleans for the bank he owns, he’s got a major lust-on for his bank’s employee Nessa Dahl but he’s also convinced she’s behind the annual Mardi Gras robberies, something he finds detestable. Nessa is working hard to help her eccentric great-aunts get out of debt, which is hard to do when her immediate boss is almost as difficult to work for as the bank’s owner. She’s assisting Mac (in disguise as the insurance inspector) in solving the robberies.

I rate narrator Natalie Ross a cut above run-of-the-mill, and her southern accents are generally good. I really enjoyed her narration of a Linda Howard favorite, After the Night, also set in Louisiana. She articulates Thigh High’s characters with age and gender-appropriate voices, even if I do have a quibble with some pronunciations and out-of-place or overdone local accents (I lived in south Louisiana). But these aren’t just characters, they are Characters. That being said, when a narrator is faced with the aunts from Arsenic and Old Lace, how else could she go about creating them in audio?

Christina Dodd is a new-to-me author and I wondered if her style in writing this Romantic Suspense was intended to be beyond-quirky comedy, or more like Linda Howard, whose realistically drawn characters are often in extremely humorous situations. I did laugh out loud a few times, but generally, the story veered sharply away from realism with the antics of heroine Nessa’s aunts. Was it comedy or tragedy? Suspense or allegory? Even after it was over, I couldn’t make up my mind. But the combination of intermittent humor with stock characters, love scenes that seemed without sufficient motivation, and a creepy villain not associated with any of the ongoing conflicts had me confused and kept this story from rising above a C for story.

Narration: B