Doubletalk

Busy Bean Series

De: Teralyn Mitchell

Narrado por: Morae Brehon, Leon Nixon

Zeke Armstrong never imagined he'd be back in Vermont, but here he is, living in Colebury and trying to rehab an injury that could mean an early retirement from pro basketball. Running into his former classmate, Mallory Barrett, shouldn't be a distraction. It shouldn't mean anything, so why is he accidentally on purpose showing up at the coffee shop where the beautiful writer spends her time?

Mallory Barrett has met a guy. Well, she hasn't met him yet, except for on the dating app she almost refused to download. "Coby" sparks her interest and gets her jokes-and gives the romance-novel heroes she loves so much a full-court run for their money. When their first date doesn't work out, she decides to give him another shot...just as a man she despises reenters her life. While her interest in the mystery man on the app grows, she clashes constantly with Zeke in real life. She can't forgive him for humiliating her in high school, yet she can't deny she's drawn to him now.

She's somehow gone from confirmed bachelorette to the tie-breaker between two men. Meanwhile, Zeke has a secret - one that will cost him the game if Mallory finds out....

Contains mature themes.

©2021 Teralyn Mitchell (P)2021 Tantor

Potential not achieved

It starts okay, but the last half or maybe the last third are flat. It feels like a weak first draft rather than a finished project. Resolutions are weak, narration sounds routine and at least one major element drops in from nowhere. I kept thinking the writer didn’t make a deadline and they just published whatever there was.

Doubletalk - Mehhh

I recently realized that I usually started my reviews with all the negativity right out the gate…which isn’t fair. So…here goes…

In spite of the rest of my review, I did enjoy the banter between the MFC and her roommate/best friend. Stacy cracked me up! Also, I liked the conclusion okay…not too much angst getting there. Truly, the story isn’t terrible.

Now…

Awful narration! Just yuck…the unnatural pauses and inflections, the over-the-top MFC’s dramatic delivery of “annoyance”…quite ironic, really…since that annoyed the mess out of me. No real difference in characters’ tones or even personalities! Very hard to listen to…distracting.

Those too-close-to-the-microphone mouth sounds by both narrators. UGHHH! I fixed it a bit by listening to it…almost the entire book…at 2.0x speed. *shrug* I guess that’s a positive.

The MFC has quite the row-to-hoe with that most abrasive personality for most of the book…seems like she’d need a complete personality replacement to make me (the reader) not dislike her…forever.

The whole thing could have been told in half the time…although I would have listened to an extra hour if the antagonistic “friend” from high school got his proper comeuppance.

This one was not my favorite, but was still better than books 3 & 4 in this series. Well…would you look at that…another positive. 😉

Go ahead…listen for yourself so we can compare and contrast…all of our brilliant and beautiful differences of opinions. Enjoy! 💖

Narration takes you out of the story

Both narrators have trouble doing more than one voice. When narrating they are fine, when speaking as characters it’s not great

l was hoping for more!

The story was ok...it was lacking substance. I was expecting much more. No to mention the narration was slow...the energy just was not there. But it wasn't necessarily a bad story overall.

Ugggg....Terrible!

I love women with confidence and a little attitude but this went overboard. I finally called this one quits mid-story. The main character was rude, unforgiving and just all together bitter. It's been a while since I quit reading a book because the main character was so ill-natured. I couldn't even root for the main male character to like her so I was not going to invest anymore time on this!