AudioGals – 2012-2024 – We Had a Great Run!
Before AudioGals was conceived and launched in 2012, there was an informal online group of us who enjoyed both reading and listening to romance novels – Lea, Brenda, Kaetrin, Carrie, Caz, me and some others. For me, this journey started in the mid 2000s when I was reading the Outlander series. I read on Diana Gabaldon’s bulletin board (so, so many years ago!) that listening to them added a new dimension to the experience, and as a die-hard Outlander junkie, I had to feel that for myself. (It’s so true!) For years after that, I read the book in print first then got the audiobook and it was truly amazing how much more I got from listening!
This online group was coordinated by Lea Hensley, who wrote a column for All About Romance called Speaking of Audiobooks that featured reviews by group members. Lea kept a tight leash on us – our reviews had to be under 500 words, and she used a few reviews per column. She also wrote about various bits of audiobook news, opinions on narrators and other romance-audiobook related topics. But we all wanted to publish more, so she and Brenda researched how to set up a website and AudioGals (AG) was born! Kaetrin, Carrie and I were brought in at the beginning, and now we weren’t tethered to a 500-word-count limit! Plus, Lea involved narrators, authors and publishers in discussions and round-tables. She published opinion pieces not just about books and audiobooks, but also of best practices in the industry, wish lists we developed of books we wanted to hear as well as some amazing interviews both in print and audio! It was so wonderful to create a community of like-minded romance audiobook-philes!
In 2015, Lea and Brenda, who was the technical guru working behind the scenes as well as a prolific reviewer, both decided to “retire” from AG to pursue other endeavors and I stepped up as the owner and chief editor of the site. Our basic philosophy – a place for listeners to discuss romance audiobooks – didn’t change. We posted honest reviews about both content and narration/technical quality of audiobooks – part of our mission was to make discussion about narration/performances be as important as the content.
AudioGals continued to be the only website to post reviews of romance audiobooks as our main focus, with occasional reviews of books in romance-adjacent genres such as women’s fiction. Our group had expanded since the beginning to include Caz, Shannon and BJ, with other contributors from time to time. Our reviews were often favorable – generally, we didn’t listen to genres, authors or narrators that we weren’t interested in – LOL – so our grading skewed to the upper part of the scale. Many, if not most of the “new” audiobooks being released were of books published years earlier, and we were all eagerly awaiting our favorites to be recorded! Over time, as audiobook publishing grew exponentially, books and audiobooks were released simultaneously. The tastes of the reviewers morphed from focusing on favorite historical romance and well-known contemporary romance authors to more indie/self-pubbed authors and additional sub-genres.
I retired from the workplace in 2023, with the intention of really working on AG. I had so many ideas for ways to increase posts, reviewers, readership! The reality for me was that my interests during this part of my retirement have changed. I recognized that I was ready to pass the torch – and after months of discussion amongst The Gals, the succession plan became to wind down AG altogether. It seems that longform review blogs – only a decade or so ago, a new and easy way to connect readers and listeners to books/audiobooks – are being replaced by social media “influencers” posting more review content in short bursts – BookTok on TikTok, and similar on Instagram. We offered AAR the review content in the hopes of keeping our reviews available, and Dabney and her crew have done a genuinely amazing job of pulling the data from AG’s website and reformatting it so that generations to come will have access to our reviews right here at AAR!
We are all so pleased and honored to have our reviews be part of the AAR experience and hope that you will also find pleasure in our reviews and the wonderful audiobook experience they cover!
Melinda Parmer
Great post thank you! I’m so pleased that you’ve been able to save the Audiogals posts here. I love audiobooks, though it takes me a long time to ‘read’ them. Around 15 years ago I spent an entire year listening to the audiobooks of The Wheel of Time series (the magnificent Kate Reading and her husband Michael Kramer) as each one was 30-40+ hours long, in preparation for the finale of the series being written by Brandon Sanderson. During that year, I read hardly any paper books, intent on listening to the WOT series and it was a fabulous and rich experience, as there were so many things I’d forgotten or missed from the books that revealed themselves in the audio versions. I definitely enjoy listening to a book that I’ve already ‘read’ before to catch those extra bits.
I have such wonderful memories of my years here at AAR. What a great group of ladies! A huge thanks to Dabney for accepting our AudioGals reviews and Caz for working on getting us all together. And a thanks to Melinda for keeping the site going after Brenda and departed. Kaetrin, Carrie, Melinda, Brenda – I miss you all. We had such a fantastic time with AudioGals and again, thank you AAR for preserving our audiobook adventures.
I really appreciate you, and then Caz, for being my editors. I learned a lot from you both. Plus it was more relaxing knowing my more egregious errors would be caught! :-)
I’m so glad the reviews are available again. Thank you.
I miss AudioGals but we still have a monthly email catch up amongst the Gals and of course one of the big topics is “what are you listening to?” :)
if you guys ever want to publish that here, we’d love to have your picks!
Maybe we could do a monthly post of what we’ve listened to over the preceding weeks. Food for thought…
Sure!
Hey Kaetrin – glad we are talking on Goodreads cause I’ve missed you!
Waves to K :-)
I was so excited when Lea invited me to review for AG back in 2012. As you said, audiobooks were coming out slowly, and we were all waiting for our favorite books to finally be released. I had a great time listening to and reviewing Georgette Heyer’s audiobook that were finally making it “across the pond” to the US, plus Elizabeth Gaskell among a few. One of my favorite early reviews is Envy by Sandra Brown. I stopped reviewing about the same time Lea did when I had to return to working full-time, but I was so happy to return to AG for the last year or so of it’s run.
Thank you Dabney and AAR for taking on the task of importing these reviews. I’m so happy all the AG reviews will be in one place again.
Note: At the moment I can’t find the reviews by searching for the titles, or following the link at the bottom of the above blog post. (Although I love having easier access to the Speaking of Audiobooks column!) I’ve also tried the tag: Audiogals and got some results, but can’t search within the results. I know these transitions take a lot of work and time, so I’m prepared to be patient.
They are here–under the tag audiogals. But we are still working on getting all the data in.
https://allaboutromance.com/review-tag/audiogals/
I know it’s a big job! Thank you!
You can now search in Powersearch for the tag audiogals!
We both loved Envy. In fact, it may be time for another relisten. It was a different time for audiobooks and I recall how exciting it was to check out the “Coming Soon” titles, all the while hoping for the audio release of a favorite romance. Such good memories.
Good to see you, Lea! Yes, Envy is still a book I listen to every year or so. I made my way through a lot of Sandra Brown’s backlist after that, especially those narrated by Victor Slezak.