Rough Beginnings

By: Erin R Flynn

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Imagine there weren’t three main gods of Olympus, but four. A sister who went through something so horrible, so traumatic she left and was written out of history. Arabella Baker and her two adopted daughters are moving to Boston to open a new business and start over. Things will be different this time with the new names and new life. The twins will live on their own at college—though still right in Boston—and experience something a bit more normal. The store she bought has a hefty price, but the location is fantastic, and she got the best spot in the new development… Which apparently comes with an immensely attractive man who owns it all. Nothing goes smoothly in opening a new business though, sample days, crazy busy, and fluff interviews taking dark turns. Honestly, it leaves Arabella asking one main question—why did she think opening in such a large city and right before the holidays was such a great idea? Karma Bakery is a slow burning romance with multiple interested parties that is full of sugar, spice, and everything nice while trying to find your place in life, doing the best you can, appreciating what you have, and figuring out a way to move beyond a traumatic past.

really enjoyed look forward to the next

have read books by this author. really enjoy some of our other work. this is my first time listening to one of her books I had in previously read. enjoy some of this small twists. really interested in the next book. highly recommend nice slow burn at least as of the first book

Nice voice

It's great you can't even really tell that it's a computer generated voice. I love this series I have read it a few times.

Love this series

Karma Bakery series is a fantastic world with new characters and challenges for Arabella Baker and her two twin daughters. While she deals with opening up a new business and moving to a new city she also has PTSD that she is dealing with. Run and download you very own copy and enjoy.

AI wasn’t too shabby, Karma is a good slow burn

I found that slowing down the voice to .85-.90 made the story better as I felt it was really fast and I felt like it needed more pauses. Other than that it was really decent and I am happy authors are having AI option as I know making audiobooks can be costly. I love this author and I am happy that there are audiobooks so that can be shared with individuals who maybe are unable to read. Karma is a good series though it is a slow burn. Check out other of Erin’s books as they are just as amazing if not more so!

Great Story!

Love Erin Flynn's work, and Karma Bakery is a great paranormal reverse harem series. It is very slow burn, and there are trigger warnings for SA that the FMC experienced before the story begins. She does have flashbacks on page. Her trauma is very real and present, so it is not a light read, although a lot of the plot is on the sweeter side of Bakery life. The virtual voice is decent and overall does a good job. So much better than having Alexa read it or using the voice reader from Kindle, and I appreciate that the author made these books accessible to her readers.

Hate virtual voice but love the author

Virtual voice doesn’t have the warmth, cadence or inflection that a real voice does. It detracts from a great book.

Rough Beginnings

If you can get over the monotone voice, the store has really good. I gave performance one star because I couldn’t get in to such a flat voice for such a sweet story.

2.5 stars rounded up

So this one was a difficult one for me to review, because I was first introduced to Erin Flynn with her Artemis University and Accidentally Wolf series and I absolutely LOVED them at the beginning. Truly truly loved them. But all of the issues I slowly started having with those books are truly full force in this one.

This book had soooo much potential, but it honestly just felt like a first draft.

There was essentially no plot for most of the book and things only started happening and potential plots developing in the last few chapters. Tbh it was mostly filled cake stuff. Like 80% of this book is just recipes, descriptions of fillings and baking tools and the hiring process. 10% of the book is basically just male-bashing, and I say this as a black ace woman in todays society, so trust me when I say the FMC (and essentially the author) was doing way too much. I am a very proud feminist and a champion of equality and diversity and just a more accepting, tolerant and kind society and AS a proud feminist I can say that there are some instances and comments in this book that made me feel mildly uncomfortable. The remaining 10% was plot, character and world building and that’s where the potential comes in! Excellent back story, lots to explore there with the FMC’s past as a goddess and her relationship with her godly family. I loved the relationship between her and the twins.

I found the FMC herself to be very unlikable to be honest. I know she’s been through a lot of awful, awful things and is dealing with understandable PTSD and trauma, but honestly I really didn’t like her. She was so annoying and preachy and judgemental (though she says she isn’t) and honestly a little closed-minded if you ask me. I wanted to care about her and root for her sooooo badly but honestly I just couldn’t. She pissed me off. I adored the twins though, even if their names are mildly ridiculous (Mary and Kary? And they willingly chose those?? Oh honey.)

Honestly writing this review I realise that given everything I’ve said you’re probably thinking that the rating should be lower, and you might be right, but honestly I’m loathe to give less than three stars to a novel unless I truly, truly despised it. This book did have its moments, and like I said there is lots of potential! I think it should probably go another few rounds of edits and could have done with some beta readers maybe,as well as ARC readers. But that’s just my opinion and I know that it takes a lot of really hard work and love to write a book and its very hard putting your work out there to get critiqued.

short and funny but a mechanical voice

This book was short and funny. A bit of light entertainment while my hands were busy. However, the virtual voice narrating it was pretty awful. The virtual voice was quite mechanical sounding, often seemed to portray the wrong emotion as it "read", and made it difficult to sometimes tell the different characters apart. I would be willing to spend $2 again for the audio as it is for more of the series but I wouldn't want to spend any more than that unless an actual person does the narration.

Not my favorite

Other series by this author are waaaaayyyy better. But I do love the author and hopefully book 2 is better