Audiobook review: Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry

Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry
Audiobook link
Original book review

I don't think the importance of the story's reader can ever be overstated. There are a few books out there that I've read a dozen times in book form...but I've deleted their audiobooks right out of my Audible account so I never have to suffer hearing the voice/portrayal again, even by accident.

Then there are some readers that will take a book I love and by the end, I love it more than I did after reading it.

Pushing the Limits is one of the latter.

Tara Sands does the voice for Echo, and in a move that only made the audiobook that much more haunting, she shares reading duties with MacLeod Andrews who voices Noah.

Tara's got a brilliant sense of Echo, her father, and I about die when she does Ashley's PerkyBarbie voice. The one that haunted me most was when Tara voiced Echo's mother...both during the flashbacks and in person. Just the right quality of selfish and flighty, depending on which scene she was reading. Most importantly, she had Echo's inflections, and her sarcasm, perfectly. I had no trouble when she was reading dialogue and when she was reading Echo's asides.

MacLeod. I don't know that there are enough adjectives for how much I loved his voice, and his portrayal of Noah. He made me laugh, he raised goosebumps, and during one memorable scene, made me have to pull into a parking lot to cry because his voice was breaking just like Noah's was in the story. From anger, sorrow, desire, pure boy moments, his tenderness for Echo and his amazement that there are also people not out to take from him.

Well worth the listen if you're an audiobook fan. It's not often I find ones that are so well done that I know I'll listen not just again, but often.

Review: Audiobooks

I think it's pretty well established that I love to read and that when I find a story I like, I'll reread it several times. One of the ways I do this is through audiobooks. My commute is 30-45 minutes, each way, depending on traffic. Listening to the radio/XM is fine, but it doesn't hold my attention and more often than not, I found myself checking email and Facebook while inching my way home. Bad juju, bwana. That's when I decided to go back to my previous commute time pleasure - audiobooks. I'd fallen out of the habit when my travel time dropped to ten minutes and after one too many near-rearendings, I knew it was time to go back. I've listened to a few now - and so, a few mini-reviews for those looking for an audiobook.

Harry Potter - read by Jim Dale. Five stars. These are my benchmark. Any reader of any book/series will inevitably be held to Jim's standard (and I'm not biased just because I've met him - I loved his reading well before that.) His use of individual voices for each character (over 150 of them) makes you feel more like you're listening to a play than a book narration.

Hunger Games trilogy - read by Caroline McCormick. Four and a half stars. The half-star is only taken off because at the beginning of Hunger Games, Katniss' voice is almost too girlish and its somewhat offputting. That girlish voice doesn't last long, though. Also, the voices she uses for both Peeta and Cinna give me chills every time I hear them.

Chronicles of Nick - read by Holter Graham. Five stars. There is something about Holter's voice that just...*is* the Dark Hunter world. Especially when he does Nick's Cajun accent. He's got the right level of sarcasm and a brilliant ability to deliver it flawlessly to the point I'm sitting in my car, laughing in traffic.

Acheron - also by Holter Graham. Five stars. Where Holter gets Nick's sarcasm, he also REALLY gets Acheron's pain - both during the human part of his life where he's more shell than person, and again as 11,000 year old god resigned to an eternity alone and terrified to accept that that might actually change. Well paced, well read, and flawlessly delivered.

Night Pleasures - read by Carrington MacDuffie. One star. And here we see how when it goes wrong, it goes really, REALLY wrong. There are times I'm thrilled that readers try to use the accents for varying characters in the books they're reading. (See above regarding Holter Graham and Nick's cajun dialect.) However, when the main voice in the story is either an overly saccharine southern belle, a southerner pretending to be Gaelic, or ...whatever it is she was trying to do with Kyrian's voice...it gets to the point you're not listening to the words or the story. You're trying to keep from driving into oncoming traffic to stop the pain.

Twilight - Read by Ilyana Kadushin and Matt Walters. This is a tough one to rate. Ilyana's okay, but she has an annoying tendency to get the dialogue intonation wrong. It's at the best nose-wrinkling, at the worst, jarring to the point you get pulled out of the story. The only saving grace of the whole Twilight audiobook series is in Book 4, when Matt Walters takes the helm. He's got Jake's timing, Jake's sarcasm, and Jake's pain...all perfect. Ilyana gets two stars, Matt gets five.



The Host - read by Kate Reading Four stars. This was another of those times I had to settle in to the audiobook before the reader's narration clicked. It wasn't immediate, but as I listened, I realized that the static voice she used was more Wanderer than it was the reader. As the main characters settled, so did she. And Kate's alto voice made the make voices more believable than any most women-reading-men can manage. Occasional blips with intonation and inflection, but not enough to draw away from the overall enjoyment.