Fast Connection (Audio Review)

Title: Fast Connection (Cyberlove #2)
Author: Megan Erickson, Santino Hassell, Guy Locke (Narrator) and Eric London (Narrator)
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Release Date: September 27th 2016
Genre(s): M/M Contemporary Romance
Length: 8 hrs 54 mins
Reviewed by: Belen
Heat Level: 4 flames out of 5
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Blurb:

After a decade of serving in the Army, everyone still expects me to be Dominic “Nicky” Costigan, the skirt-chasing player. They don’t know I’ve been spending my days trying to figure out my post-military life. Including how to pick up guys. When I meet Luke on a hookup app, he makes it clear it’s for one night only. That’s fine with me, because I’m down to see what this silver fox can do. But after I arrive at his doorstep, it doesn’t take long to realize we have serious chemistry, and we end up meeting again. He’s got more walls around his heart than a military base, but I think he’s as addicted to me as I am to him. He can’t resist me for long. I mean, who can? Except Luke’s rules exist for a reason, and when I test his limits, things get complicated. Maybe too complicated.

Strong Signal is a standalone, full-length novel with no cliffhanger.

2.5 stars for the narration, but 5 stars for the story.

Let me start with the positive – which is this is a FANTASTIC story!

I devoured this book! It was SO GOOD! So many exclamations!! Seriously, though, Dominic is one of the best character turnarounds from dick to awesome dude that I’ve ever read.

The sex is scorching hot, the characters are awesome, the story is realistic without losing the “romance” story aspect… and I loved it. Absolutely loved it!

But I pretty much hated the narration.

It’s a very hard thing to pull off if there are two or more narrators on a story. It’s especially hard when the story is more dialogue driven. I wish in those cases the narrators would each choose a character and keep ONLY to that character voice and POV. The story would be much better served by that approach.

Why? Well, here we have two narrators with wildly different approaches and who each take a POV chapter. So Guy Locke narrates all of Luke’s chapters, and Eric London narrates all of Dominic’s.

So what’s the problem? It means you have 2 HUGELY different character voices FOR THE SAME CHARACTER. A total of four voices for two people. For me, in this case, it was often jarring and a bit off-putting while listening.

Then, again, I had the same issues with Guy Locke’s narration for Strong Signal for Fast Connection. Locke’s narration just does not work for me. His stilted way of speaking, the too slow narration, the over enunciation were just maddening.

There is one positive for Locke, though, as I did like his character voices.

I enjoyed London’s pacing, timing, emotion, and overall performance….but I’ll admit I preferred the character voices from Locke.

I wish I could have melded Locke and London together so I could have the character voices from Locke, but the actual narration from London.

In the end, it wasn’t a horrible listening experience, but it wasn’t a good one for me either. I doubt I’ll listen to the audio again, which is a shame, because the story is terrific and I was hoping to put the series into my re-listen rotation. But I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with just re-reading the book.

I highly recommend the book, but caution for the narration.