Texas Tall by Kaki Warner

texas-tallNarrated by Sean Crisden

Lottie Weyland was orphaned young and raised by her grandfather; at age 14, after his death in 1875, she burns the family West Texas home and heads out on her own. Three years later, she’s living peacefully in Greenbroke, Texas, where she has taught herself bookkeeping and dreams of investing in land and mineral rights, being independently wealthy and never going hungry again. She catches the eye of a young Texas Ranger, Tyree Benton, who was passing through Greenbroke with a prisoner. But Texas Rangers can’t be married, so Ty knows he has no business thinking of Lottie.

The story contains a lot of secondary characters and plot lines – Lottie’s best friend Becky, another orphaned young woman who has two different men in her life: the brothel owner Juno and the traveling preacher Nathaniel (guess which is the good guy); the Brackets, owners of the local general store who took Lottie in 3 years earlier; and the new hotel owners, Lady Jane Knightly and her companion Briggs. Lottie spends a lot of time managing everyone as much as possible, including Ty whenever he comes into town. The big looming question is, what will happen if anyone comes after Lottie wanting explanations for the mysterious death of her grandfather and the burning of her ranch home?

One reason I picked up Texas Tall was because I like the American Western historical romance genre; I also wanted to hear Sean Crisden’s narration – I have reviewed one other of his narrations here, and I liked it well enough. I haven’t read any of Kaki Warner’s books before, so I took the plunge. I found the story was only mildly entertaining – a feisty young woman, bossing everyone around her, no education to speak of but good with numbers and dreams of starting a real estate investment trust. That last part stretched credibility for me – where would she have even heard about such a thing, at age 17, in 1878? It took a couple of large leaps of faith to follow that subplot, and the rest of the many subplots were nothing new and didn’t really illuminate the overall story.

Sean Crisden once again gave a good narration. He has a wide range of voices, and produces very low ranges for Ty and Juno which are both very credible, with a minimum of southern/Texas accent. Jane and her companion Briggs hale from England, however, and those accents were not as convincing. The author describes Jane as being upper class, and the accent was mostly just a hint of what passed for British. Briggs is given something sounding more like Cockney, which the author describes as “not as refined”. Crisden’s Lottie was unfortunately often cringe-worthy. He didn’t exactly go falsetto, and to give him credit, she was extremely young, so it might have been in character but her voice had a lot of wobbling in it and was delivered as a whine much of the time. Becky’s voice was worse, but again, she was also very young and written to be immature (and annoying). This will be the second time I’ve listened to Crisden deliver annoying heroines, and I didn’t like either one. That’s a shame, really, considering his male voices (with American accents) are really very compelling, and in general his pacing and delivery are good.

I was pretty underwhelmed by the story – nothing unique or particularly interesting, and the narration was good enough but didn’t improve the listen.

Melinda


Narration: B-

Book Content: C

Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in, but at the tame end

Violence Rating: Minimal

Genre: Historical Romance (Western)

Publisher: Tantor Audio

 

 

 

Texas Tall was provided to AudioGals by Tantor Audio for a review.

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