A Stone in the Sea by AL Jackson

Narrated by Sebastian York and Andi Arndt

I requested A Stone in the Sea for review after hearing how much Lea loved it. I saw on Goodreads that Lea had given it 5 stars for narration and 5 stars for content. The audiobook didn’t work as well for me as it did for Lea but I will be interested to hear from her whether what was a bug for me was a feature for her, or whether she liked different things about it altogether/had a different listening focus.  I can’t tell if I’m an outlier or not here.

Sebastian “Baz” Stone is the lead singer for indie metal band, Sunder. The band is in Georgia staying at the beach house of their agent, following the cancellation of their world tour. The tour was cancelled because Baz beat a record executive after a heated confrontation and assault charges are pending, as well as a civil suit. Sunder needs a place out of the spotlight while their agent tries some damage control.

It took a while for that to actually become clear to me – the way it is presented in the story is in mysterious bits and annoying/tantalising (depending on your point of view) pieces. I basically suck at mysteries and I found myself on the frustrated side of things here. It took a long time for me to work out who “Mark” was and what his connection was to Sunder and there are still a lot of things we don’t know about Sebastian and Shea, our heroine.

Shea Bentley is a waitress at her Uncle Charlie’s bar in Savannah. She is clearly hiding something and has a lot of secrets. It takes most of the book for this to become clear because most of the conflict in this first book of the duology focuses on Baz’s demons and not hers.

I don’t mind “feels” books. I read for the feels quite often. If I don’t emotionally connect with the main characters, a book probably won’t be successful for me. Here, I felt the feels began at eight or nine on the scale and quickly progressed to eleven. I was left behind I’m afraid and it took most of the book for me to catch up.  It was only really at the very end where I got a dose of the emotional reaction I suspect those who love the book felt from the beginning.

Shea and Baz are instantly attracted to one another but both are reluctant to get involved because reasons. Then they do get involved. Then he walks away. Then he comes back. Then things become really extra difficult for them and the book ends with them together but facing some tremendous challenges. I gather that their resolution will be the subject of the next book in the series, which is due out in June. That’s obviously a very simplistic overview of the plot and it is not intended to be insulting. If I had a bit more of the “then they do get involved” I may have found the connection I was missing and been all over it. There is a crucial section about ½-2/3 into the book where they are happily exploring a relationship for about three weeks. Unfortunately, almost none of that is on the page.  Shea has a young daughter, Callie, and I didn’t see the development of the connection she had with Baz. I can contrast this with my experience of another child named Callie in Nora Roberts’ The Liar which I reviewed here recently. There, Callie was a distinct character and part of the story arc was the slowly developing father/daughter relationship between her and Griffin, the hero of the book. In A Stone in the Sea, I felt that Callie was largely used as a plot moppet and she didn’t feel like a fully realised character to me. When she was convenient to the story, she was there but there was a lot of the time when it was inconvenient to the plot and at those times, she disappeared. Frankly, it felt inconsistent with what the narrative told me about Shea’s devotion to her. I also wasn’t super impressed with the way she was voiced by both narrators. Neither of them, for me, gave Callie a child’s voice. They sounded like adults speaking a child’s words. Callie wasn’t in the book a lot, so it didn’t have a huge impact on my feelings about the narration however.

I also found the narrative to be far too adjective-heavy for my taste. The metaphors and similes didn’t always work for me.

There was also a stylistic issue which didn’t work for me at all. Throughout the book, the author uses the triple repetition of single words – for example: trouble, trouble, trouble. Or, pain, pain, pain. It was all through the book and in the POVs of both characters.

It’s difficult to me to tell whether I noticed these things because I felt disconnected to the story and the emotional intensity of the characters for most of the book, or, whether these issues were the cause of that disconnect. And it is always difficult to know how much listening mood has on an audiobook experience.

The narration was actually mostly pretty good. Sebastian York could give Phil Gigante a run for his money in the deep baritone stakes and his tones suited the dark, indie/metal vibe I’d expect from Baz. His female character voices were less impressive. Here, he softened his tones rather than sounding believably female. This is a good thing because falsetto is terrible. However, it does take a suspension of disbelief to accept the voice belongs to a woman or girl. He’s by no means the only male narrator I have to do this with and I was able to go along for the ride here.

Andi Arndt’s male voices were better overall, although they tended to slip occasionally. If I was interrupted by the phone for example and had to pause the listen mid-conversation, it was sometimes difficult to tell who was speaking when I got back to it.

In Mr. York’s section there was a problem with pickups. There was no background noise but the volume was very different and there would suddenly be a sentence uttered which was significantly louder than the rest of the narration. This happened about six or seven times I think and each time it jarred.

I liked the fairly subtle twang Ms. Arndt gave to Shea. Both narrators impressed me enough that I’d want to listen to them again, but the audiobook overall wasn’t a huge success for me. Sorry Lea!

Kaetrin

Narration: B

Book Content: C

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in

Violence: References to drug use, some fighting

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Publisher: AL Jackson Books

A Stone in the Sea was provided to AudioGals for a review.