Jaded Visions

By: T.L. Jones

Narrated by: Jennifer Saucedo, Brooklyn Ella Grace Nelson

One step is never a big enough lead when a ruthless killer is involved.

Visions have been a part of Jade Hamilton's life since she was 10, but this time her visions have put her in the middle of a murder. This latest episode has Jade struggling to keep six-year-old Emmie Linderhoff safe from the killer, as well as, keeping herself out of jail for kidnapping. Certain her only chance is to run, Jade goes into hiding with the child after the girl's parents are murdered.

Along the way, she meets St. Joseph's most eligible bachelor, Detective Ryan Douglas. Ryan, along with his partner, work with Jade to find the killer before more murders occur. As the case grows more bizarre and intense, Ryan realizes his feelings for Jade, but the killer is getting closer!

Can the unlikely team uncover the truth and find the determined maniac before it's too late? Or have Jade's visions led her down a path with no way back?

©2013 T.L. Jones (P)2015 The Loquacious Accomplice, LLC.

Loved the Child Narration!

This was a pretty good story, a little slow at first but it picks up pretty fast. But I really enjoyed listening to a child narrator, I have never heard one on Audible before. Great job!

Awesome.

loved it!! Narrator did an awesome job!
Will definitely recommend to my friends!
Loved the story line.

The 5-star reviews aren't doing Jones any favors

My assumption here is that the 5-star reviewers have to be friends and family, because this book is nowhere near a 5-star book.

First, the simple thing. The performance is atrocious. The reader does such a monotone yet somehow fast reading of the material, that quite often, it was hard to tell when the POV changed to another character. The delivery was both dull and frantic, which is a neat trick to pull off. I almost gave this another star for the child (half a star, actually), who outshone the "main" reader, but the child reading was too rare for me to really add that much of an impact to the score.

Next, the book/story itself.

The story is cliched, but that isn't its main problem -- if in the hands of a better writer, it was good enough to work. The problem is that it's easy to tell that the writer needs time to gain the polish to actually write a good narrative.

She switches between too little detail about important scenes, to too much in unimportant matters. She tries "humor" that falls horribly flat. And she also has people react in ways that just don't make any sense. If you add in the shallow characters and the ridiculous need for exposition, it's a really tough book to read/listen to.

She has a serious tin ear when it comes to dialog. People just don't talk the way that she writes them. Coupled with the horrible reader, I had to stop the audiobook many, many times, choosing to listen to the sounds of my car on the blacktop instead of the inane dialog.

A few stylistic "choices" she made also drove me nuts.

She "tells" but doesn't "show". This is Writing 101. She's got psychic powers? Show her having psychic powers. Don't TELL US she has psychic powers. This shouldn't have made it past the rewrite, but too many "well-wishers" gave her the idea that it was all great.

Why did she like lists of questions so much? What made her love lists of questions? What would the writer do if she didn't love lists of questions?

Also, I reveled in the fact that she reveled over getting stuck on certain words. Reveled.

All told, this just isn't a very good book. I can tell the author wants to be a good writer, but she definitely needs a lot more experience and, more importantly, people telling her the truth before she becomes one. Giving this thing 5-stars is just deluding the author into believing that it's better than it is.

(Note that, when I first started listening to this book, I had to look online to make sure that Mrs. Jones wasn't a teenager who I was about to give a bad review to. The writing is just that "raw", and not in a good way.)

Poorly narrated.

The story was a little hokey which was made so much worse by the reader. The people in my home who hear my audiobooks everyday even notice the poor narration.

Desperate Need For A Better Narrator

There are elements of this work of fiction that feel right and others that come off as phony or formulaic. Whether this is due to poor writing or a narrator whose limit seems to be some of the erotic novels she reads for Audible. Her stilted singsong oration could turn the best of Shakespeare's writings into a rendition of Curious George or Mother Goose. I had hopes that this might be something along the lines of Colleen Helme's Shelby Nichols mysteries but until they find a better narrator, who knows?