Crane

Hilarious and Charming!

Reviewed: 03-26-25 Listener received this title free

A wonderful follow-up to the Undead Detective Agency books. I was extremely excited about this book since I loved the first three and I wasn’t disappointed. All of the characters are back (though a couple just got cameos) with amusing new antics and a new mystery. This book is a great continuation and even possibly an improvement on the quality of an already fun series.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Fun and Feels

Reviewed: 01-01-25

Despite the backdrop of a fantastical world full of monsters this is a fairly simple story at its core about two people falling in love and helping to heal each other (both physically and mentally). I mean that in the best way. The story is very character driven and Ivy and Lau are stubborn but loveble and were very entertaining to experience. There’s humor as well as some gut-punching feels. Loved this book!
Great performance from narrator Michael Ferraiuolo!

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Good Narrator, No Good Story

Reviewed: 04-24-24

I really wanted to like this book because the premise was interesting but the execution was very flawed. The professor in this student/teacher romance was unbearably unlikeable. The introduction to his character was just him complaining about how stupid all his students are. The student was better but he was somewhat boring as a character. The side characters were stereotypes. There’s the professor’s friend whose personality is being inappropriately sexual and predatory to everyone. A classic gay stereotype. Then there was the roommate character who was a stereotypical nerdy Indian foreign exchange student. He’s pretty much exactly Raj from The Big Bang Theory except gay.
The narrator’s performance was excellent. He did his best with the source material.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Wonderful!

Reviewed: 01-31-24

A very fun book with excellent narration by Joel Froomkin. It’s got a bit of everything I like in a book. There’s magic, action, love, and thoroughly enjoyable characters. Can’t wait for more in the second book.
Also, it is a spin-off of the Magic in Manhattan series and I’d recommend those first but reading those isn’t necessary to enjoy the series. Proper Scoundrels lets you in on a bit of how the last series went and references characters from the Magic in Manhattan books but this is a new adventure with different main characters.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Very Overdramatic

Reviewed: 12-20-23

This book started with a nice meet cute and some time spent with fluffy dates but quickly devolved into nothing but cartoonish drama. The actions the villains took were very unrealistic and a lot of the characters reacted to things strangely. I think this absolutely had potential and good ideas behind it but could have used some tweaking to make more sense.
Nick J. Russo’s performance was very good.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Wonderful book! Meh narration.

Reviewed: 09-07-23

Lovely book. The couple and conflict were interesting and the side characters and details about the setting really made the world of the story seem real. Exactly the quality I expect of KJ Charles. The characters aren’t perfect but their flaws make them seem more well rounded.
Not a fan of the narration. The narrator frequently pauses in a lot of strange places so I had to speed it up so the pauses weren’t so noticeable. I like the sound of his voice and the accents and voices he does for different characters but the pacing could use work.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

Narration was awful, story was fine

Reviewed: 07-16-23

I never thought I’d find a book narrated by Joel Leslie unlistenable but I couldn’t finish this one in audio. The accent for the Korean grandmother sounded like a racist parody. Upon checking the book’s text it seems it was in the performance choices. He stutters and pauses and uses a cartoonishly bad accent even though it isn’t written that way. I’m surprised he wasn’t told to redo her parts of the book. The German accents also sound off to me (kind of like The Count from Sesame street) but not as dramatically as the Korean accent. Also he chose to do a posh British accent for the non-dialogue parts of the book even though nobody is British so I just found that a somewhat strange choice.
As far as the story goes, I think it was decent but my opinion has definitely been colored by the strange narration choices. It feels like the book is a bit longer than it needs to be and I didn’t feel like there was much development with the two main characters even though they didn’t even kiss for a long time. They seemed to have chemistry at first but then it got dragged out and they didn’t make any progress besides continuing to think the other one was good looking. I guess I just wanted more from the romance. I’m still planning to pick up the second book on kindle to see if I like it better but I definitely won’t be continuing with audio.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Delightful!

Reviewed: 07-15-23

This is my favorite book in the series. I was extremely happy to see it come to audio. The characters are loveably shallow himbos who truly became two of my favorite romance book main characters of all time. This book is funny and I love the world the authors have created. I was a bit nervous when I saw the narrator had switched from the previous two as Cornell Collins is one of my favorite narrators and I’d never seen the name Oscar Delaney before. Oscar Delaney was excellent and I’m definitely adding him to list of narrators I’m excited to listen to!

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!