Amazing!!

Shaun Grindell has done an amazing job bringing these characters to life definitely recommend to everyone!

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Sweet

A highly predictable queer, slightly gory, very thirsty re-imagining of Beauty and the Beast. World-building is minimal, and the ending is a cop-out for sure. I don't think it was the author's intention to create some grand earth- shattering love story here, so I take it for what it is, and what it is, is a perfectly acceptable little escape. The narrator did an excellent job.

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Would not recommend

I’m sure the story is fine, but the narrator….. imagine listening to Siri, prototype version 0.001 reading to you for several hours and you will get the idea. In fact, I think that’s unfair to Siri as the AI does try to show human like inflections in its speech. I couldn’t listen to much more after an hour or two. Ben’s books are great but I’d start with one narrated by another person.

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Enjoyable Story

The concept is interesting and reasonable well written. The characters are likeable and the narration is very good.

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Narration not my cup of tea.

I've previously read a fair share of Ben's books and was looking forward to enjoying them in an audiobook form however the narration does not work with the story. The performance is too much and too put on to make the characters feel as themselves rather than just accents.

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Thrilling and engaging 

A truly amazing book, so engaging I couldn’t stop listening. Can’t wait to read more!

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Brilliant narration

This story is so well narrated that at times I was almost able to ignore the complete mess that is made of this well conceived story for the want of a dedicated editor. However, the narrator’s voice often became lost to my own narration that l felt compelled to provide in order that this story make sense. So many words were used incorrectly that I had to keep up a running commentary providing the correct versions or become completely swamped by the absurdity of what was actually being said. What amazes me is that not only did someone publish this story without noticing the mistakes but then several other people turned it into an audio book! ( I’ll admit that l have to do the same with the 3 prequel Star Wars films; and still maintain that some enterprising student could make a fortune dubbing those films with a script worth listening to. )
No doubt I have made my own mistakes in this review but no one is paying for this :)

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1 person found this helpful

TikTok Recommendation not what I was expecting

I'm more used to reading stories in three parts though this book happily reminded me I need to listen to shorter stories more often even if the pace was faster than what I'm used too in a romance.
I liked that it wasn't a direct retelling of a single book almost, I appreciate the nods too Dracula even if this wasn't the authors intention and noticing the parallels to Beauty & The Beast was done very nicely. It had a nice play on traditional vampire tropes without naming them directly and the constant power shift between the two main characters is refreshing and kept me intrigued.

Regrettably I wasn't keen on the narration which, although did a wonderful job of giving me nervous chills during the hunt with his great tone for suspense moments I struggled to get through the more intimate scenes. This is clearly not the fault of the narrator I just don't think the sound of his voice worked for the content.

I would defiantly recommend listening if you enjoy retellings or stand alone books you can read in a day

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iritatimg

The prose sounds like a queer 14 year old read a DnD, book, then armed themselves with a thesaurus, hubris and refused the help of an editor. The narrator is hamming it up to the maximum, and could do with taking a deep breath every now and then, but to be honest it could be the material. Love mm fantasy which sadly means I have read a lot of trash in search of the food stuff... this was definitively not that.

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Horrible Performance Forced me to Stop

I have wanted to listen to/read Ben's books for a while because they sound interesting but the performance of this is just horrible.
The actor barely pauses between words which means I am losing the nuances. I could not even bare it for 15 minutes, let alone a whole book.
I will buy a physical copy instead and then be able to give the story proper consideration.

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