The Wolf at the Door by Charlie Adhara

Narrated by Erik Bloomquist

Charlie Adhara’s Big Bad Wolf series of romantic suspense novels with a paranormal twist was a surprise hit for me given I’m not usually a fan of shifter/werewolf stories. But I was persuaded to pick up the first book – The Wolf at the Door – last year by one of my fellow AAR reviewers, and was immediately hooked by the unique premise and the skilful way in which the author combined romance, mystery and paranormal elements into an exciting and entertaining procedural drama. I’d hoped that perhaps the series would make it into audio, and was really excited when I saw it pop up on a forthcoming release list… although that excitement was tempered slightly by the fact that the narrator was new-to-me and because Tantor doesn’t have the greatest track record when it comes to selecting the right narrator for the job.

Around a year before the story begins, FBI agent Cooper Dayton narrowly survived an attack which left him seriously injured. At the time, he had no idea what happened – one moment he was chasing down a murder suspect, and the next thing he knew he was waking up in the hospital. After he recovered, he was offered the chance to learn the truth – provided he first joined the Bureau of Special Investigations, a small unit within the FBI that was created specifically to deal with “monsters”. Cooper thus becomes one of the handful of people who know that werewolves actually exist and live freely among the general population, their leadership group – the Trust – having decided to reveal the truth to governments around the world in an attempt to help werewolves to continue to live peaceably in the modern world.

Now, however, there are rumblings among members of the Trust, many of whom aren’t happy with the way they’re treated by human law-enforcement. As an experiment to help foster werewolf/human co-operation Cooper is paired with a Trust agent, Oliver Park, and assigned to investigate the deaths of two – possibly three – hikers in the White Mountain National Forest in Maine, who are believed to have been killed by werewolves. When a fourth victim is found alive, it seems at first to be an unrelated case of kidnap and assault – but is it? Cooper and Park have to navigate their way through small-town politics as well as the wider political canvas of human/werewolf relations – not to mention risk their lives – if they’re going to find out the truth.

The mystery element of the story is well executed, and the author creates a suitably menacing small-town atmosphere for the fictional town where much of the story takes place as Cooper and Park gradually pull together the disparate clues they uncover. They’ve got a kind of Odd Couple thing going on; Park is always smartly dressed and exudes confidence while Cooper is a bit of a shambles most of the time; he’s very shrewd and observant (as Park notices) but he sometimes lacks the courage of his own convictions and tends to second guess himself. Given his experience with werewolves, it’s to be expected that he isn’t best pleased at having one for a partner, plus his previous, more experienced BSI partner has drummed it into him to be suspicious of all wolves; which makes his instinct to trust Park that much more confusing. While he’s trying – not too hard at first – to get used to his new partner, Cooper tends to be snippy and displays an inordinate talent for putting his foot in his mouth, but the author does a great job of creating a strong rapport between the pair. Park is calm and unflappable; he gives Cooper the space to work things out and his quiet confidence that Cooper will make the right calls goes a long way towards helping Cooper to come into his own over the course of the story. Plus – you gotta love a couple who can reference movie quotes in perilous situations! The author develops their relationship really well, the chemistry between them and the strong connection they’re forming making the physical relationship they embark upon later in the book feel like a natural extension of their working one.

The story is told entirely in Cooper’s PoV, which means that for most of the story, Park is somewhat aloof; he’s hard to read until Cooper starts to get to know him and to recognise his subtle non-verbal signals, and that means he’s pretty much an enigma for the reader, too. But there’s no question he’s strongly attracted to Cooper and is developing feelings for him, even though Cooper doesn’t really see it. Most of the things we learn about Park at this stage – he’s from an old and very much venerated pack, but doesn’t live with them any more – pose more questions, which will be answered as the series progresses.

Ms. Adhara gets the balance between the romance and the suspense just about right here, and does a tremendous job of paralleling the development of the relationships – personal and professional – between her two principals. The Wolf at the Door is an extremely strong début and I’m happy to say that the other novels in the series are equally good.

But sadly, my misgivings about the narration were born out when I started listening. Erik Bloomquist’s performance is animated and he does inject a degree of expression into the narrative portions of the story, but those are about the only positive things I can say about the narration. His pacing is quite fast – he doesn’t trip over his words or mispronounce them, but he’s one of the fastest audio performers I’ve ever heard! His voice is pleasant enough, but it’s almost impossible to tell the difference between Cooper and Park, there’s practically no differentiation between any of the characters (apart from Cooper’s father, for whom Mr. Bloomquist lowers his pitch a little, and one other secondary character whose name I forget) and there’s no discernible difference between the male and female characters. He misses most of the textual cues, so that if, for instance, something is shouted or whispered or snarled, it just sounds like normal speech; in fact, the dialogue generally lacks expression or the correct sort of inflection. The sex scenes are singularly uninspired; on the page, the chemistry between Cooper and Park is smoking, but here … crickets, a damp squib instead of fireworks.

It’s bad enough when you’re a fan of a book and have eagerly awaited the chance to listen to it – I’m annoyed that something I’d looked forward to has proved to be such a disappointment. But mostly, I feel sorry for Charlie Adhara, whose fantastic book has been ruined by a poor choice of narrator. If you’re like me, and your TBR is so huge that you find it hard to get around to reading even the books you really want to read and find it easier to pick them up in audio, do yourself a favour and bump this series further up your TBR, because audio is a no-no.

(Note – I’m giving the same content grade I gave the print version as it’s not fair to the author to downgrade the story because the narration made it hard to follow or engage with.)

Caz