Stick with it!

The narrator is completely wrong for this character and unfortunately she sticks around for the first 3 books. Mac, the lead character, is annoying in the beginning but really transforms into someone much more interesting. The real disappointment in this narrators representation of the story is Barrons, which she makes sound like an 80 year old man. Any chemistry that happens between Mac and Barrons comes across a little creepy, instead of hot. That being said, stick with the story. Read the first 3 if you can't handle this narrator but be sure to listen to Dreamfever and Shadowfever. You will be blown away by the 2 narrators and the way they interpret the story.

116 people found this helpful

Who picked the cover for this book?

STORY - Darkfever is an interesting mystery with a supernatural twist. I enjoyed it very much, but the cover is completely misleading. It is NOT a romance and there is basically zero sex. The story is an "easy listen" but with a much better plot than most books I put in that category. It doesn't really come to a conclusion but sets the background for what should be a really good series.

Some reviewers have commented that Mac is a shallow heroine and is overly concerned about her outfits and appearance, but I disagree. She does have a girly aspect to her personality, but it's just character development and I don't think it detracted from the story at all.

NARRATOR - The narrator does a pretty good job but nothing awesome. She performs male voices, Irish and Southern accents convincingly enough.

OVERALL - You will enjoy this book if you are looking for a fairly light supernatural mystery, but you will have to continue hearing the series for a conclusion.

59 people found this helpful

Geez She's Shallow

I have liked the author's Highlander series, but I don't know if I'm going to be able to stand the Fever series if all the heroines are this annoying. She's surround by death and creatures of terror but all the girl can do is go on and on about her nail polish, pink capris and strappy sandals. (How did she fit all this clothing into her suitcase??) Almost everyone she comes into contact with is dangerous, but she just can't see it. Somehow, I think, if you watch someone being killed you will probably experience enough anxiety to stop caring if your panties and bra match. Unless, of course, you are shallow and clueless. I was disappointed that another reviewer put in spoilers, but at least now I don't have to finish it. The narrator does a good job not mixing accents between characters, but the main male character sounds like an 80 year old Irish emphysema victim and the heroine's southern accent was just this side of painful. I hope someone can convince me once again that this is a good series because I don't know if I can spend another eight hours listening to the fashion report.

58 people found this helpful

Narration ruins it.

I may have liked this book more if I had read it rather than listened to it. The narrator sounds much older than the protagonist and the southern accent in unbearable. That being said by a Southern girl. The writer takes a while to develop the main character with lackluster results. The heroine's personality seems to be modeled after Sookie Stackhouse of The Southern Vampire Series by Charlaine Harris. This is like trying to turn Andy Griffith into Elvis. The sound quality was poor and depressive. May read the next book, may not. Blah....

42 people found this helpful

Poor narrator, weak lead character.

I think my main problem with this book was the narrator. I wish Audible would let you rate the story and the narrator separately. This narrator's voice was way too old to be a 22 year old girl and yet she made the main male character sound like a leprechaun who had smoked for 30 years. It was so awful. Here was a guy who was supposed to be attractive, and his voice was totally irritating.

The main character was also annoying in that you had to continually hear about every thing she wore, including her underwear, her nail polish, etc, again and again. I've heard that it was supposed to show us in the following books how her character matures, but give me a break. I'm not even sure I'll make it to the further books, although the premise of this one was pretty good. I know there are some real devotees of the series, so maybe I'll read book 2 rather than listen to this narrator again. I notice that for book 4, they have new narrators, a man and a woman. I think that the man/woman combination could work well and I hope they are better.

26 people found this helpful

Karen Moning gets better and better

This book is the first of in a series, MacKayla Lane gets a call that her sister is was murdered and goes to Ireland to find out who did it where she meets Jerricho Barons and... well read for a mystery, paranormal,chemisty, fairies, twisits and much more! As it is a series of 5 books (if I remember right and only two published as now) if you want that "traditional romance" you may want to look else where, this book sets up much of the story. But if you just want a really really great read, one that you will can't wait till the next installment, this is the book! Oh the next installment is the Bloodfever which is just as good, but the one after that isnt due out until September. I am counting the days. All in all, I totally recommend ALL Karen Monings books. They are all my favorite!

23 people found this helpful

Give it a miss

Listening to a tale such as this should send shivers up and down your spine. This one sent me to sleep. Repeatedly.

The book failed on several points. First, the primary character spends most of the book in close proximity to a vampire. She recognizes vampires repeatedly, but never suspects her mentor. This is so even though he fits the steriotype better than a drag queen fits the term cross-dresser.
Second, no real progress is made in the story line until the last two chapters. Also, in her first walkabout in Dublin, our heroine spends hours (so it seems) walking the streets in an area chock full of ghosties that would scare the monster-under-the-bed out of it's skivvies. Yet she remains un-harassed. The rest of the book has drivers who get out of their cars being killed in seconds in the same area.

Inconsistencies in a book can often be overcome by the reader, but in this case it only made things worse. The woman who narrated had a vocal range too short to do justice to the male voices. Her attempts at invoking a male presence were valiant, but unsuccessful and her only truly successful accent was the southern belle heroine's.

While the book isn't a stinker, it isn't stuff of legends either. I'd recommend you give it a miss.

22 people found this helpful

I'll pass on the rest of the series

I had high hopes for the book based on the description but it was a disappointment. The main character is an annoying caricature of a modern day southern belle which is less believable than the existence of the supernatural faeries in the story. I think I was tired of her by about the 3rd time she described her wardrobe, her underwear, or her make-up... unfortunately those sorts of passages continue throughout the book. I honestly could careless if she was wearing a matching pair of peach panties when she went to bed. To call her personality annoying would be putting it mildly.

The ending is completely unsatisfying - it neither solves the mystery nor ends on a cliffhanger that leaves me wanting to know more.

One positive thing I can say is that the narrator did a good job.

20 people found this helpful

22?

I can't get around the voice of the narrator .She sounds closer to 50 years old ,its very distracting .I am going to read the hard copy.
It's too bad, she's a good narrator just wrong for this by a mile [or thirty ?]

19 people found this helpful

Lazy writing, yet strangely addictive

What did you like best about Darkfever? What did you like least?

Hands down, the best thing about Darkfever is Barrons. JZB is one of the most compelling characters I've come across in a long time. What I liked least? Moning's lazy writing. Would it have killed her to invest in even a modicum of research? Irish people speaking in American English was jarring and it detracted from the story. I'm not talking about the narrator's accent, either. I'm talking about Americanisms that are rarely used in Ireland, and it happened so frequently that I'm not going to list them.

Would you be willing to try another book from Karen Marie Moning? Why or why not?

I was on the fence about this. The writing and so-so narration didn't exactly win me over, but I love Barrons so I continued with the series.

Did Joyce Bean do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

I was surprised that I didn't hate Joyce Bean's narration. After reading the reviews, I braced myself for terrible narration. That wasn't the case. It wasn't great, but it wasn't horrible. The Southern accent was slightly over-the-top, Scarlett O'Hara-esque, and the Irish accent was that fake Irish Spring/Lucky Charms commercial kind of accent, but it wasn't as bad as I'd feared. I actually wish she had continued narrating Mac's parts in the later books, because I didn't like the female narrator for the last few books.

Was Darkfever worth the listening time?

A qualified yes. I rolled my eyes quite a bit and the writing was so inconsistent, but it was a relatively quick listen and it introduced Barrons. Mmm...Barrons....

Any additional comments?

I think categorizing this as "Romance" is a stretch. There is very little romance in it. I also think that Mac comes off as Sookie-Lite, and Karen Marie Moning wasn't successful in developing Mac into an endearing character in the same vein as Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse.

18 people found this helpful