Never Look Back

By: Mary Burton

Narrated by: Mary Robinette Kowal

Length: 10 hrs

Publisher's summary

Expect the unexpected in this gritty, tense mystery from New York Times bestselling author Mary Burton.

After multiple women go missing, Agent Melina Shepard of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation makes the impulsive decision to go undercover as a prostitute. While working the street, she narrowly avoids becoming a serial killer’s latest victim; as much as it pains her to admit, she needs backup.

Enter lone wolf FBI agent Jerrod Ramsey. Stonewalled by a lack of leads, he and Melina investigate a scene where a little girl has been found abandoned in a crashed vehicle. They open the trunk to reveal a horror show and quickly realize they’re dealing with two serial killers with very different MOs. The whole situation brings back memories for Melina - why does this particular case feel so connected to her painful past?

Before time runs out, Melina must catch not one but two serial killers, both ready to claim another victim - and both with their sights set on her.

©2020 Mary Burton (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Okay story - not helped by the narration

It was hard to really get into this story due to the narration. The very long pregnant pauses, which I presume to occur at the end of a paragraph in the books, almost caused me to abandon the whole book. No matter how I increased the speed, I couldn’t decrease the odd pacing. Also the attempt at the varied male voices wasn’t very good.

The story started off very interesting and I feel the ending someone felt flat. Due in part to the narration, it was difficult towards the end to figure out which male voice was speaking and I am still confused as to who the actual killer is.

Story good but audio is not

I don’t think the poor audio was the narrator’s fault, but the sound editing. There were distracting pauses where there should not have been...like mid-sentence.

Great story, struggled with the Narrator

I had a really hard time listening to this narrator. Some of her voices for the males were just not good and very distracting. However, with her voice being a high-pitched tone, I believe, you can understand why some of those were a challenge for her. She also read every single word I don’t know if all narrators do that or not now that I think about it. Every time in a discussion she would read he said, she said, he said, she said, etc. He got really difficult to follow the dialogue because the voices weren’t distinct for some of the characters. So when she was doing that he said she said I still didn’t know who she was talking about because the voice is blended for me. I really enjoyed the story and got used to the voices after the first hour or two so it wasn’t too bad to follow after that. I do recommend the book just give it time to get past the awkward voice is it first.

Good book

This is the first book I have read by this author. I enjoyed the story and the characters were well developed. The narration was good and I believe this is the first time I have heard her. I look forward to reading and listening to this author and narrator.

Questionable narration

Story good - a little unpractical but good. Make voices NOT a strong suit for narrator and cam close to ruining book. Had to grit my teeth thru them. But when not doing male voices easy to listen to.

Narrater ruins this book with one character

Story seems really good, but he narrators voice as Jackson is horrible. The rest of the characters are well done, but I couldn’t even finish the book because of the voice of Jackson, it’s too annoying to get past. I’ve really enjoyed this authors other booms, so this is very disappointing.

Kept me interested, would have been 5* except..

Good story, unexpected twists. I almost stopped listening due to the annoying villain voice of the lead male character. It was strange, the other voices were eh to good and the male lead was so bad. The story was good enough to keep me interested although slightly annoyed.
If I had read it instead of listened probably would have been 5*s.

Story was great!

The story was great but the narration could use some work. There were random pauses that seemed to be mid-sentence that made me think the narrator was either turning the page or lost her place. I am guessing the narrator is newer. She did a great job other than this and I am sure will get better as her experience increases. I really enjoyed the story and will recommend this to anyone looking for a new book.

Narration spoils a good story

I nearly returned this book 20 minutes into the story because of the very irritating male voice narration. Fortunately, those particular characters faded out of the plot before long. However, the narration continued to be irritating because of pauses for no apparent reason. I sometimes wondered if the book had a flaw. Read the Kindle or paperback version if you're still interested in the story.

Great suspenseful book.

This was a well written and well constructed suspenseful story. It had a smattering of romance but very little. It was a very good book - to the tune I wanted to know what was going to happen next. Looking forward to another book written by her.