Narrated by Emma Taylor

The Gamble is the first in the Colorado Mountain series, published in 2011 along with several other KA books. Expat Nina Sheridan is taking a timeout from her British fiancé in a secluded Colorado mountain cabin, except it isn’t as secluded as she was expecting because owner Holden “Max” Maxwell happens to be there as well. Apparently there was a mixup in reservations since Max only rents his cabin when he is out of town for work.

Max is a classic KA hero: he’s alpha, bossy, intimidating and gruff, and Nina decides to leave. One complication sets the chain of events into action – she’s got the flu, and Max cares for her in the cabin until she recovers. Nina isn’t one of KA’s young ditzy heroines – she’s a lawyer in England and she has enough moxy to stand up to Max and any number of characters in the small Colorado town of Gnaw Bone, including Max’s bitchy sister, overbearing mother and a number of his life-long buddies and neighbors. She decides to take a gamble, stay in the cabin and complete her “timeout” even when her fiancé (with whom she’s broken it off, by email, as soon as she recovers from the flu, since he never even called to see how she was doing) and evil father show up to convince her to get back with him.

This is a long, complicated plot with a dash of suspense thrown in when a hated member of the community is murdered and Max becomes a potential suspect for about 24 hours. Narrator Emma Taylor does a wonderful job narrating it, as all KA books are told, from the heroine’s POV in first person. Taylor switches from the British accents to the American and back, each of the dozens of characters getting his or her own special treatment with local accents, pitch and other vocal techniques. Her Max voice is wonderful, gravelly and deep in a way I kept expecting to make her voice hoarse, which never happens. She kept the story moving forward and interesting, which is saying something for a 25+ hour audiobook that should have had about 5 hours cut in editing – and I mean in the writing before it was read out loud! This was one book where the narration exacerbated KA’s rambling, stream of consciousness style of writing – even though Ms Taylor was doing a bangup job of reading it, I found myself rolling my eyes at the sheer mind-numbing repetition of concepts. Maybe this style worked better in the Dream Man series because the heroines were ditzy or because the books were much, much shorter. I must have checked the recording time 100 times a day – was the book never going to end? This wasn’t so much a function of the plot or narration as it was of KA’s way of having the heroine think something, then say the exact thing she thought out loud, and then somehow manage to repeat the concept at least one more time, like this (not a book quote but my own example – I’m too overwhelmed to go back through the book and find a real quote!!):

“I looked at him and thought how good he looked in his suit and tie, so I said,’I was just looking at you and thinking how good you look in your suit and tie,’ which was a dumb thing to say since he wasn’t even wearing a suit and tie but he had been wearing a suit and tie the day before…” Etc etc. (admit it, amiright?)

Seriously, this is irritating in an already long audiobook, especially when it happens every few minutes. I think I must have skimmed this book a lot in print. Although I rated the ebook 4 stars, now that I’ve heard it read out loud, I just cannot give it anything higher than C, mostly for the annoyance factor. Forget my usual KA squee fangrrrrl reaction. I notice even my own sentences in this review are over-long and rambling, reflecting the storyline and her writing style – it’s as if I can’t even condense it to normal size. (smh)

And for her talented and interesting narration, Ms Taylor gets a big ol’ A!

Melinda