Gwen’s review of Birthright by Nora Roberts 
Abridged Audio Book (CD), distributed and produced by Brilliance Audio

I typically stay away from Nora Roberts’s books, if only because I feel that she’s a bit overexposed and there’s very little she can say that’s original (J.D.Robb, notwithstanding).  At least, nothing that I would be interested in.  But this audio book was inexpensive for an audio book and I was desperate for some entertainment for my hour-long commute (one way L ).  So I picked it up at a local Borders.

Here’s the jacket summary:

“When five-thousand-year-old human bones are found at a construction site in the small town of Woodsboro, the news draws archaeologist Callie Dunbrook out of her sabbatical and into a whirlwind of adventure, danger, and romance. While overseeing the dig, she must try to make sense of a cloud of death and misfortune that hangs over the project-fueling rumors that the site is cursed. And she must cope with the presence of her irritating-but irresistible-ex-husband, Jake. Furthermore, when a stranger claims to know a secret about her privileged Boston childhood, she is forced to question her own past as well.”

I’ll talk first about the audio performance.  I felt the reader, Bernadette Quigley, did a fine job.  Not outstanding, but very passable.  Her female character voices were varied enough that I could track which voice she was using and her Southern accent was spot-on (a pleasant surprise to me, native Texan that I am).  Her older female characters were especially good.  Her male characters, however, not so much – I frequently couldn’t tell who was speaking because her male voices were all so similar.  I never realized before how important it was for an audio performance to be more varied.  It might have been challenging to do that with this book – there are a LOT of male characters with speaking voices.  It was an overall good performance, just not a great one.

Now my thoughts on the book.  This was a fun one.  I found myself really cheering for the main characters.  You actually get two (three?) love stories in one – Callie and Jake, and Lana and Doug.  You could even think of Callie’s relationship with her parents (multiple) as a sweet love story as well.  

Toward the end of the book there were a couple of details that came out of the blue (a little deus ex machina, to use my new vocabulary calendar word), but that probably had more to do with the abridgement than anything.  I really liked Callie and found myself laughing with her and Jake.  I can’t say the plot transported me to other planes, but it didn’t bore me and had a beginning, middle, and end that made sense.

Grade: audio performance B-, book B+