Audiobook Review: Keep Me Safe by Maya Banks

Keep Me Safe 
by Maya Banks
Series:  Slow Burn #1
Pub. Date:  Oct. 7, 2014
Publisher:  HarperAudio
Narrator:  Jeffrey Kafer
Length:  7hrs 16min
Format:  Audiobook
Source:  Audible
   

My Rating:  
Sultry Scale:

A sizzling story of a woman who risks her life and her heart to find a wealthy man’s missing sister — the first novel in a sexy new romantic suspense series from #1 New York Times bestselling author Maya Banks

When Caleb Devereaux's younger sister is kidnapped, this scion of a powerful and wealthy family turns to an unlikely source for help: a beautiful and sensitive woman with a gift for finding answers others cannot.

While Ramie can connect to victims and locate them by feeling their pain, her ability comes with a price. Every time she uses it, it costs her a piece of herself. Helping the infuriatingly attractive and impatient Caleb successfully find his sister nearly destroys her. Even though his sexual intensity draws her like a magnet, she needs to get as far away from him as she can.

Deeply remorseful for the pain he’s caused, Caleb is determined to make things right. But just when he thinks Ramie's vanished forever, she reappears. She’s in trouble and she needs his help. Now, Caleb will risk everything to protect her — including his heart....

I adore Maya Banks, so I was very excited to sign up for an ARC of the third book in this series, and the publisher generously sent me books 1 and 2 so I could catch up. I was a bit impatient to start the series, but I had a ton of housework to do, so I decided to pull the audiobook off Audible. If you follow my reviews, you will see this is a regular occurrence for me on the weekends, listening while doing things I hate (like cleaning and mowing the yard).

Anywho, so as I said, I adore Maya Banks and was stoked for this story. Unfortunately, the narrator absolutely KILLED it for me. I am not a huge fan of male narrators, but this one was a very poor choice for this book. He would be great at narrating horror stories, but romance - not so much. I swear that listening to this narrator read sex scenes made me think Caleb's schlong was gonna turn into an alien monster and eat her (literally). It was disturbing. And ALL of the narrator's character voices sounded exactly the same, so I could not tell who was speaking half the time. So I will not be listening to anything else by this narrator (unless it's written by Stephen King or Dean Koontz). I give the narration/performance only 1 star.

Rant over, on to the story. This was quite different from what I normally expect from Maya Banks. It almost transcends the line from romantic suspense to psychological thriller. While the romance is contemporary in nature, some of the characters have psychic abilities. And not just "they know things" or have visions, but that they can control other people with their mind. Fah-reaky.

Our heroine, Ramie, is this uber-delicate psychic lady who can find missing victims by touching something of theirs. Unfortunately doing so comes at great sacrifice to Ramie and she has gone into hiding. When the sister of our hero, Caleb, has been kidnapped, he tracks Ramie down and forces her to help. So they do not start off on the best of terms.

When Ramie seeks Caleb's help, he pretty much takes over her life and she let's him because she is the uber-weak heroine and he has a magic peen. The intimate scenes in this book seemed forced in, there was no natural flow for me. So unlike Ms. Banks' usual work. Unfortunately I cannot tell if I would have liked the story because of that dang narrator. It may have been better as just a straight thriller without trying to force the romance. I wanted to connect to the characters more, but they came off as a bit superficial to me.

I will continue on to the second book, and hopefully reading this one (instead of listening) will improve my connection to the story.

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Slow Burn Series

My Review	Review Coming July 2, 2015	Review Coming July 3, 2015