Brad's Reviews > Beyond Shame

So I listened to Beyond Shame, and I find myself wanting to apologize to Kit Rocha for listening to her book rather than reading it because my enjoyment was completely ruined by the sound of Lucy Malone's voice.

How someone with a voice like Ms. Malone's can have such a successful career as a narrator of smut is beyond me (and that may be the problem, perhaps it is only beyond me and not beyond countless others). To my ears, Malone's voice was anything but sexy; it was nasally, whiny and monotonous. Moreover, her characterizations were as difficult to differentiate as they were to stomach. You can imagine what all of this does to Kit Rocha's erotica ... the result is very far from arousing, although from the words I heard, it should have been.

And this is why I feel compelled to apologize to Kit Rocha. I should have loved this book, but I could barely get through it. Her dystopian near future world, with the gleaming and dysfunctional city of Eden surrounded by the "criminal" sectors and their gangland denizens is a nice start to world building; her penchant for BDSM and group sex is the sort of naughty smut that gets me going (although I would have preferred seeing some Guy on Guy action to go along with the Gal on Gal action); her set up for what's to come actually makes me want to read on (not listen, though), so book one of the Beyond books is really something I should like much more than I do. I am sorry, Ms. Rocha, that it didn't turn out that way, but if you have any influence over Tantor Audio, perhaps you could convince them to find someone better than Lucy Malone to read your stories in the future. You deserve better, I think.