Archer’s Voice by Mia Sheridan

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Title: Archer's Voice
Author: Mia Sheridan
Published by: Tantor Audio
Release Date: December 9, 2014
Format: Audiobook
Narrator: Emily Durante, Kris Koscheski
Length: 11 hours and 5 minutes
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2018 Beat the Backlist Challenge, Lenoreo's 2018 New Adult Challenge, Lenoreo's 2018 Platypire Diversity Challenge, Lenoreo's 2018 Reading Assignment Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iTunes
My rating:

Blurb:

When Bree Prescott arrives in the sleepy, lakeside town of Pelion, Maine, she hopes against hope that this is the place where she will finally find the peace she so desperately seeks. On her first day there, her life collides with Archer Hale, an isolated man who holds a secret agony of his own. A man no one else sees.

Archer's Voice is the story of a woman chained to the memory of one horrifying night and the man whose love is the key to her freedom. It is the story of a silent man who lives with an excruciating wound and the woman who helps him find his voice. It is the story of suffering, fate, and the transformative power of love.

My Review:

4 stars — My Mom and I listened to this audiobook during a roadtrip this past weekend (while my husband listened to podcasts with his earbuds in…  😛 ), and while we both thoroughly enjoyed the book, we both agreed that the narrators weren’t our favourite. I can only speak for myself in this review, but we at least both agreed on that point.

I think audio narration tastes can vary from person to person, so not everyone will feel this way, but Ms. Durante and Mr. Koscheski were not my favourites.  They both felt a little bland in my opinion, there wasn’t enough emotion or personality in their delivery.  I can’t help but wonder if I would have liked the book even more if I’d read it instead of listened to it.  I can honestly say that listening to the MULTIPLE LONG sex scenes in this book became tedious and boring, and I just wanted to get back to the plot.  That doesn’t often happen for me in romances, but it was one of my major issues in this one.  So I would definitely rate the narration at maybe only a 3 or 3.5 stars.

Bree was almost too sweet.  But I also enjoyed the genuine goodness in her.  You could tell she truly cared for Archer and wanted to make a connection with him.  She was ridiculously optimistic (and thus naive) when it came to Travis.  I loved that she was persistent and didn’t give up on Archer at the beginning.  I got tired of her constantly going on and on about Archer’s physical appearance perfection…that’s just not as interesting to me as his inner beauty.  Her struggles with her past were heartbreaking too, and I felt for what she was going through.  After awhile I felt like her story got passed over for Archer’s, but I didn’t feel too cheated…I thought she got the resolution she needed.

Archer’s story was kind of fascinating.  I loved that through Bree we empathized with his story, but didn’t feel sorry for him.  His story truly broke my heart.  I’ve seen him on countless book boyfriend lists, and I truly understand why.  The funny thing is he would go off the deep end and react a bit over the top, and in any other hero it would have been a turn off, but I totally understood why Archer behaved that way given how he grew up, and how little he understood social interactions.  He was sweet, kind, his shyness was adorable, and his eagerness and genuineness in his love and lust for Bree was a total turn on.

Their romance had lots of great butterfly moments, moments that made me smile soooo wide.  But as I alluded to up there, I got tired of the sexy times.  Their initial sexy times were super steamy and enjoyable…but after awhile I was like “enough already, we get it.”  There wasn’t enough variety to have so many scenes.

I loved all the people Bree came to know and love in the new town (Anne, Maggie, Norm, Melanie, Liza).  I was even pleasantly surprised with some of the secondary characters who did better than I expected — Jordan, even Travis eventually.

As for the plot, I predicted a lot of what was going to happen, but I didn’t mind that necessarily…I was there mostly for character development.  There were a few plot points that annoyed me though.  For example, I started really getting annoyed with how often people would try to talk Bree out of her love for Archer, especially her friends.  View Spoiler »And I didn’t like the fake-out death near the end, it felt like a cheap plot device, and I’m just never a fan of its use. « Hide Spoiler

So yeah…I really did thoroughly enjoy so much of this book, but I do believe this is one book that I would have enjoyed reading on my own instead of listening to it.