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My Review:Title: Cinder & Ella
Author: Kelly Oram
Series: Cinder & Ella #1
Published by: Indie
Release Date: March 17, 2015
Format: Audiobook
Narrator: Kirsten Leigh
Length: 10 hours and 10 minutes
Genres: Romance, Contemporary, Young Adult
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ iTunes
My rating:
Blurb:It's been almost a year since 18-year-old Ella Rodriguez was in a car accident that left her crippled, scarred, and without a mother. After a very difficult recovery, she's been uprooted across the country and forced into the custody of a father that abandoned her when she was a young child. If Ella wants to escape her father's home, and her awful new stepfamily, she must convince her doctors that she's capable, both physically and emotionally, of living on her own. The problem is, she's not ready yet. The only way she can think of to start healing is by reconnecting with the one person left in the world who's ever meant anything to her-her anonymous Internet best friend, Cinder.
Hollywood sensation Brian Oliver has a reputation for being trouble. There's major buzz around his performance in his upcoming film The Druid Prince, but his management team says he won't make the transition from teen heartthrob to serious A-list actor unless he can prove he's left his wild days behind and become a mature adult.
In order to douse the flames on Brian's bad-boy reputation, his management stages a fake engagement for him to his co-star Kaylee. Brian isn't thrilled with the arrangement - or his fake fiancée - but decides he'll suffer through it if it means he'll get an Oscar nomination. Then a surprise email from an old Internet friend changes everything.
This is going to be a review of the narration only. You can see my review of the book itself here. Nothing has changed, I love it just as much as I always do.
4 stars for narration — Overall I thought Kirsten Leigh did a great job! She lent a lot of emotion to the story, and I truly felt all the feelz listening to her. I can’t really speak to her Boston accent, and how accurate it was…I know sometimes I get annoyed when people exaggerate a Canadian accent, and not being a Bostonian, I really have no idea how it fared in that aspect. However, I appreciated that it was pretty subtle most of the time, and really just came out when Ella got emotional, or when she was teasing Cinder/Brian. I’ve been spoiled with dual narration in a lot of the audiobooks I’ve listened to, so I was curious how Ms. Leigh was going to handle narrating Brian’s chapters. But honestly, I thought she did really good! She gave him a distinctive voice, and it was guy-y enough…I know that sounds weird, but I’ve listened to some narrators do a terrible job of the opposite gender, and Ms. Leigh was a winner for me.
The only reason I didn’t give the narration a higher rating is that while her voices were pretty distinctive for the different characters, there were a few times it slipped and I’d get confused about who was speaking. And crap…there was another reason…but of course I didn’t write it down and so I don’t remember what it was. Pacing? *sigh* I’m kind of annoyed with myself now for not writing that down. But there was another reason.
But all in all it was a great alternative way to reread one of my favourite books of all time!
I loved this book when I read it! It’s great to know it stands up to a re-read or a listen. I wish I would have listened to it originally. I can imagine it being even more powerful.
I loved this book so much, I wanna listen to it to see if I feel the same way about the accents that you do.