Bear My Soul

De: T. S. Joyce

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Rory Dodson is done running. After one night of bliss with a man she never thought she’d see again, she’s in trouble with a young son who is housing one ferocious little bear cub inside of him. Desperate to keep her baby’s secret safe, she has nowhere to turn but to the man she was determined to keep in her past. What she doesn’t expect is the instantaneous, heart-pounding connection she remembers from before. But all of the sex appeal in the world can’t hide the fact that Cody Keller is keeping dark secrets of his own. Alpha bear shifter, Cody, is a firefighter by day but something more sinister by night. Towing a fine line between leading a normal life and keeping the government off his crew’s back, he has been running missions that few sane men would take, and even fewer would survive. But when the woman he has searched six years for blows back into town, toting a kid who bears his mark, his life is about to get a whole lot more complicated. It’s not enough to protect the Breck Crew from the growing threats around him anymore. Cody will have to push back and stand up for his kind if he wants a shot at keeping his fragile new family safe from what he’s become. Content Warning: explicit love scenes, naughty language, and piles of sexy shifter secrets. Adult only bear shifter romance.

Good One

While this is the first in this series I just didn’t become invested in the secondary characters enough to want to know more. I liked Cody as he is sweet, strong and carries a load. He feels protective of his family and by extension Rory and Aaron. Speaking of Aaron he is the cutest! He is probably my fav character in here then of course Cody.

So this isn’t only about the romance but there is also an underlying danger from Cody’s past. It involves his clan and brings in some other shifters. I just didn’t feel any connection to Cody’s brothers to want to read more in this series.

Still it’s a good story with a lot of protective alpha action, family fun and some sweet, sexy romance

Virtual narration is better but not good enough

Story was good for shifter romance with a little erotic spice.

Virtual Narration
Virtual narration should be called automated speech as that is more correct. Narration has the inflections and pronunciation down. And good narration has different voices and accents.

So I remembered when I would go to TTS on my Kindle when I was driving and it was hard to understand the "speech", this is definitely not that but, there are still places with mispronounced words that you then have to think about and there is no inflection for feeling. Half the reason I listen to Audible books is for the inflections accents and different characters with different voices. The narrators are artists and although this does in a pinch if you have to listen to a book with no narration, it is not a first or second way I would choose to "read" a book. It is close to being read to by a parent, that reads with just normal voice. I did this with my children but I didn't mispronounce the words (s sound for k was one of the many issues), and I stopped and started at inflection points. The automated speech is better at pauses than the old TTS but not as good as your mom reading to you that has no voice acting skills. I appreciate it as it works but I'll read the next in the series.

Love these books!

The virtual voice. But these books, this author, I just love it! I can’t wait to read them all!

First Virtual Voice listen

I love T S Joyce's bear series - I have pretty much all of them on kindle and have bought as many as I could find on Audible. This is the first one I've listened to with Virtual Voice. I have almost all of her books, with one series exception, but these series are great. They're fairly short, but really good. It didn't take me any time to get used to VV. It's so much better for me to listen to as some of the people narrators annoy me. The only thing with VV is when there's a word that has two completely different meanings and are pronounced differently. VV doesn't always say it the right way. But that's a small price to pay - the regular audio books often have women narrators trying to sound like men (doesn't work) and men narrators trying to do the women's voices (also doesn't work) Virtual Voice is kind of neutral and is MUCH more listenable.

So, T S Joyce has so many books that follow each other, but not necessarily in the same series, I bought the Reading Order book that was written by her ( there are others that weren't). It's cheap but essential to follow them in order.
I give Bear My Soul 5 stars

Great storyline!

First, the story itself is awesome! As others have stated, AI narrative is not the best, some word pronunciations were wrong, and you don't get all the emotions or "different" character voices. BUT at the same time I have also heard real people narratives that are worse. It was not as monotone as I thought it would be and I gave the performance a 3. Since the book was free for me to listen to, 100% of my reading is audio, and this is the only way I will be able to read TS's books, I can put up with the less than perfect performance.

Bear My Soul

Great story! I recommend reading with the Saw Bears shifter stories, this series intertwines with the other stories.

Flat no personality

Will never listen to ia again. This was painful to listen to. The story wasn’t to bad, if only it was done by a real person.

horrible narration

having AI narrate is annoying it is monotone no emotion and can't even pronounce words correctly. for the love of God don't use an AI to narrate hire someone anyone except this. the narration overshadows the story can't even enjoy it