Audiobook listeners and romance readers! We’re once again happy to announce AudioFile’s Best of Romance list for audiobook narration. For those who don’t know, AudioFile is a magazine available in print and online that reviews audiobooks.
You can also check out the rest of their Best Of categories!
Here’s what romances made AudioFile’s list, along with links to their reviews:
We continue to abide by the Harper Collins Union request that we not promote, feature, or review Harper titles until an agreement is reached. The strike is still ongoing, so we will not cross their picket line. To see the complete list of Best Of Romance 2022 audiobooks, please visit AudioFile Magazine. Our thanks to AudioFile for accommodating our efforts to support the Harper Collins Union, and for inviting us to announce this year’s best romance audiobooks.
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DELILAH GREEN DOESN’T CARE by Ashley Herring Blake, read by Kristen DiMercurio
KAMILA KNOWS BEST by Farah Heron, read by Soneela Nankani
SEATMATE by Cara Bastone, read by Amanda Ronconi, Zachary Webber, Josh Hurley, Carol Monda, Corey Allen, Allyson Johnson, Eric Yves Garcia, Tanya Eby, Dina Pearlman
SOMETHING FABULOUS by Alexis Hall, read by Nicholas Boulton
Congratulations to all the winners!
Have you listened to any of the books listed? What were your favorite audiobooks this year?
SOMETHING FABULOUS is available for reading AND listening on KU. The audio sample was excellent.
Of the audiofile list, I listened to and enjoyed SEAT MATE and HONEY & SPICE both a lot. I do a lot of my reading this way and my local libraries are good (though I buy too many, too).
Here is my list, kind of in order:
* Emily Henry, BOOK LOVERS
* Kennedy Ryan, BEFORE I LET GO
* Julia Whelan, THANK YOU FOR LISTENING
* Ali Hazelwood, LOVE ON THE BRAIN
* Diana Billier, THE BRIGHTEST STAR IN PARIS
* B.K. Borison, LOVELIGHT FARMS
* Becka Mack, CONSIDER ME
* Beth Leary, THE NO-SHOW
* Olivia Dade, SHIP WRECKED
• Julie Anne Long, AFTER DARK WITH THE DUKE
Favourite belated audio release: Kristen Callihan’s GAME ON series, though I wasn’t wild about the female narrator, these books really work for me and I’ve re-read THE HOT SHOT an embarrassing number of times. It’s so beautifully put together
@Qualisign:
You can also buy the book for $3.99 and the audio book for an additional $1.99 when you have the book.
I’ve noticed a new trend in contemporary audiobooks where the narrator ACTS OUT the non-lingual vocalizations and I hate it. When the book says a character laughs and then the narrator DOES a weird fake laugh in case we don’t know what that means???? Even more unsettling when listening at double speed. Guaranteed to pull me out of the book every time.
Anyway, I listened to a TON of excellent audiobooks this year on and off of this list. My highlights:
-Maria Vale’s LEGEND OF ALL WOLVES series audiobooks are great for sinking into the language
-A RIVER ENCHANTED by Rebecca Ross
-C.M. Nascosta is starting to get audiobooks for her backlist
-Beverly Jenkins latest TO CATCH A RAVEN
-THE UNDERTAKING OF HART AND MERCY
-ON ROTATION by Shirlene Obuobi
-STORM ECHO by Nalini Singh
-KJ Charles audiobooks for THE WILL DARLING ADVENTURES set the bar for me. All I want when the weather gets cold is plummy accents throwing away red herrings about the bolsheviks.
And I buddy listened to the kids remix of Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi. Honestly insane how well pitched this is for kids. It flows right at their attention span and knowlege and leaves breadcrumbs of names and events to dig deeper into later.
My “I’ll follow you weird places” SUPERSTAR narrators continue to be Jakobi Diem and Wesleigh Siobhan – they absolutely killed it on Jacinta Howard’s THE PROTOTYPE SERIES
I enjoyed Seatmate (Zachary Webber is my favourite romance hero narrator and he is prolific but I can rarely find writing worthy of his talents). I’m currently listening to The No-Show and loving it.
It’s really hard for me to find audio romances with the right combination of writing and narrator, so I usually only listen to a handful each year. I get through a ton of audiobooks but most of them are mysteries.
I love Audiobooks. I read fully half of my books each year in audio. And yeah, the narrator can make or break a book. Even a good narrator who has been excellent elsewhere might not be a good fit for a different book. Also some narrators become so tightly woven in with some authors/series that if they introduce a different narrator it can be jarring. For instance, Renee Raudmann narrates most of Ilona Andrews’ books including her Hidden Legacy series. But when the series switched Nevada’s trilogy to Catalina’s trilogy, a different narrator took over the series. This made sense, except these were the same characters from the earlier trilogy and their now ‘voice’ was different. It was all wrong and kept taking me out of the story so I didn’t use audio for Catalina’s series.
Anyway, my favorite audiobooks this year were:
Soul Taken – by Patricia Briggs
Nettle and Bone – by T. Kingfisher
After Dark with the Duke – by Julie Anne Long
Your Were Made to be Mine – by Julie Anne Long
The Montesoro Legacy – By Stella Riley