New Author, New Narrator!

Chapters 1 thru 9

Diveen Henry is a really unique narrator. I know she has done some voicework for video games before so she is no stranger to using her voice to convey emotions, but I am not sure how many audiobooks she has narrated. I only see the three Anjelica Henley books in Nadine’s series that she has done.

Diveen’s voice is the kind of voice that ticks many boxes for me and she’s the kind of narrator who ACTS the lines of dialogue she reads which is what I prefer and rarely get. There is a HUGE difference in reading lines and doing line reads when it comes to audiobook narration. For example when a line says – “Do we have to go over this again?” Beth sighed. – what I want to hear is the line spoken with a sigh. I want the line ACTED out; a line read. I want the narrator to make an actors decision on how that character would sigh out that line and express those feelings.

Not all narrators are actors and honestly, as someone who consumes a lot of audiobooks and has worked and been friends with many voice actors, I can tell you that there is a great difference in quality when actors are narrating books.

Diveen is fascinating because she ACTS the HELL out of every single line of dialogue and I mean every sigh, every laugh, every subtle inflection. You can hear it in her voice when she is smiling while reading a line or if she tilts her head to the side. Every breath that goes into what a character would be doing if walking and talking or stepping into a room or shaking a characters hand … it’s ALL in her delivery as if she’s doing it physically. When the characters are talking or there is any banter or dialogue it feels like I’m listening to a television show. It’s absolutely amazing and I’ve NEVER listened to a narrator do that consistently and perfectly like Diveen.

But her reading of the book – lines that are not dialogue – are … odd. There are pauses at the ends of lines where the sentence rolls into the next line or a paragraph breaks. She reads the “lines” but not the “story”, if that makes any sense. Her voice doesn’t build up tension or add any “feeling” to the words which seems so strange. I feel like this may be the first audiobook she is doing and she might get better as she goes on in this book and the other two.

My enjoyment of any audiobook starts first and foremost with the voice narrating it, second is the story itself and the writing. Diveen is an amazing actress and it comes through, but Nadine’s book is really interesting so far and her characters are also coming through strongly. I’ve said before that with crime fiction I don’t normally care about the cases, I care about the team solving the cases and how they work together and who they are separate as well as together. So far, the characters Nadine has written are people I am very interested in especially the lead Inspector Anjelica Henley.

I can’t wait to dive back in tonight!

Story this session: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars5.0
Narration: 4.5 out of 5.0 stars4.5