Here we are at the beginning of a new year and welcome back to AudioGals and our weekly Currently Playing feature. Every week, the Gals chat over email (the best way, given that we’re spread across different timezones in the US and in the UK and Australia!) about what we’ve listened to/are listening to/are planning to listen to next that week, and chime in with opinions about new authors and narrators and ideas for future listens. We hope these columns give you some ideas as to what you might want to listen to next – often, we’re listening to audiobooks we’re planning to review, but most of us have been having a bit of a break over the holidays, doing re-listens of old favourites before we get back to our regular steady diet of review copies!
Here’s wishing everyone out there a very happy and healthy New Year – and please don’t forget to drop by each week to tell us what you’ve been listening to and what you thought of it.
BJ
Narrated by Therese Plummer
Caz
Narrated by Gomez Pugh
Melinda
Narrated by Jakobi Diem and Adenrele Ojo
Shannon
Narrated by Bahni Turpin
I’m doing my first buddy listen ever, the Adrien English series by Josh Lanyon. I’ve read/listened to these multiple times, but this series is so enticing I decided to jump in on this. It’s fun so far, but I’m having a hard time not blazing through all 5 books in one week. Lol!! So I’m alternating with other books, right now it’s The Pilot and the Puck-up by Pippa Grant. It’s pretty silly, but funny like only Pippa can pull off, and I like funny. I’m about 20% into it and laughing a lot so that’s a good thing! Life has been full of obstacles lately, so fun books have been my jam for a while now. This one is perfect thus far!
I binged AE over the summer – I tried to ration myself, but it didn’t work! It’s such a great series, and Chris Patton’s Jake is one of those characterisations that I suspect will live forever in my mind!
I’m currently on a PsyCop binge; Gomez Pugh’s Victor Bayne is another of those unforgettable characters performed by a narrator who gets him perfectly and completely.
AE is one of my top two or three MM series, and it’s really fun revisiting it with a group of people whom I have not only known for years but who nearly all have re-read it multiple times like me. It’s interesting what one person zeroes in one and someone else doesn’t even notice! Jake is indeed voiced very well; Patton conveys that flat, skeptical attitude of Jake’s to perfection.
I’ve tried PsyCops several times and just can’t get into it. But I know it’s much beloved, and I’m glad you are loving it, too.
The thing with PsyCop is that it starts off fairly ‘small’, it’s kind of deceptive in that it seems at first as though it’s going to be a series of fairly light-hearted “monster of the week” novellas – but by book 4, things are getting much more involved as Vic starts making discoveries about his past, things he can’t remember or has blocked out – and starts to really grow as a character. The narration is fabulous and is what really hooked me in.