Narrated by Joel Leslie

Alice Winters is a new-to-me author, but I’m a fan of paranormal romantic suspense stories and the synopsis of Within the Mind caught my eye. Seeing Joel Leslie listed as the narrator sealed the deal and I decided to give her work a try.

Chevy Wright and his partner Seneca Bates (Seneca?
Really?) are both psychics within a
special department of the Westlands PD. (Which is where? It’s never made
clear.) Chevy has the ability to access people’s memories and Seneca is a
mimic, able to replicate and use the gift of the last person he touched. Together,
they work with victims of crime to retrieve memories of whatever happened to
them in order to help the police to bring the perpetrators to justice.

So they’re surprised when they’re
approached by a couple of homicide detectives and asked to enter the mind of a
man – Mason Page, a well-known artist – believed to be responsible for several
murders to see if they can find out where he’s holding his two most recent
victims… assuming they’re still alive. This will be like nothing they’ve done
before, and turns out to be a lot more dangerous than either of them had
expected as they are thrown into a horribly deranged mind that leaves them
scared, confused and struggling to tell the difference between reality, memory
and fabrication.

I enjoyed this audiobook the most when it
focused on the plot, which is well thought-out and, at times, creepy AF. The
scenes in which Chevy is trapped in Page’s mind and then in his own memories are
superbly written and have a truly nightmarish quality to them, and I was on the
edge of my seat waiting to see how things would play out. The author does a
terrific job creating a sense of unreality and not knowing quite what or who to
trust, and the way that Page always seems one step ahead only adds to the tension
and menacing atmosphere.

BUT. There’s one really big problem with
the book, which is the overall lack of balance. It’s almost as though Ms.
Winters has smushed two different books together, because the spooky thriller
and the juvenile, undeveloped romance (and I use the term loosely) just don’t
gel. At. All. Right from the very beginning Chevy and Seneca communicate almost
entirely through snark; there are, I don’t know, a dozen sentences of ‘normal’
conversation in the entire book. Now, I love good, well-written banter, but
this book proves that it really IS possible to have too much of a good thing,
because there’s so much banter that
it goes beyond saturation point. Said banter is ALL sexual – honestly, Seneca
is a sexual harassment suit waiting to happen – and a lot of it just isn’t very
funny. In the very first minutes of the book, we get this, as Chevy and Seneca
are (in a memory) chasing down a suspect:

“I
can’t wait to deflower you.”

“There’s
no fucking flower in there for you.”

“You’re
right, it’s not a flower, it’s been so long for you that you probably have a
cactus in there. Or like, a Venus Fly Trap… wait… wait…”

“Don’t,”
I warn, knowing him all too well.

“A penis fly trap! Is that why you never
date? You just snap their penis off before they even get close?”

And later:

“Please
don’t come to work tomorrow.”

“I’ll
come just for you. I’d always come for you.”

Have we somehow gone back to the 1970s and
I didn’t notice? Imagine if a remark like either of those had been made to a female
character by a male one…

Seneca also goes into banter mode at the
most inappropriate moments. During his and Chevy’s first foray into Page’s
mind, after some seriously creepy shit has gone down, Seneca comes out with his
usual stream of sexual innuendo, which completely ruined the atmosphere of
menace the author had so skilfully built up. I get the use of humour to
decompress or diffuse potentially difficult situations, but what the author did
there was incredibly jarring – and not even funny.

As the story is told from Chevy’s PoV, we
know that even though he finds Seneca exasperating, he is nonetheless attracted
to him. Given Seneca behaves like a hormonally challenged twelve-year-old who
doesn’t seem to have a single thought in his head beyond getting Chevy into bed
and doesn’t appear able to hold an adult conversation, I had no idea what he
saw in him beyond his good looks and oft-mentioned (but never really
demonstrated) charm. But okay, taking the attraction at face value, they then
go from ‘You want me/I really don’t’ to ILY in the blink of an eye. There’s no
relationship development whatsoever – unless you count the fact that the pair
has worked together for two years and Chevy has been subjected to two years of
constant sexual innuendo – and because they hardly ever have a serious, adult
conversation (they have ONE, I think, during which they talk about the guilt
they’ve both carried for deaths of people close to them) it’s impossible to
take their relationship seriously or believe in an emotional connection between
them.

If Ms. Winters had written Within the Mind as a ‘serious’ romantic-paranormal
thriller and achieved a good balance between plot, humour and romance in the
way that Jordan Castillo Price has managed to do consistently throughout her
long-running Psycop series, I’d be
able to give it a strong recommendation in terms of both narration and story. But as it is, the poor
characterisation – the best developed character was the villain! – and constant
stream of sexual innuendo completely tanks the relationship, there’s no
chemistry between Chevy and Seneca and no romantic development whatsoever. If I
were grading the thriller, I’d be giving it at least a B+, but the rest of it
would get a D, so my content grade is a compromise because I can’t, in good
conscience, recommend the story as it is.

It’s a different story when it comes to the
narration, however, as Joel Leslie delivers another flat-out A grade
performance. I’ve listened to him quite a lot, but this audiobook was something
of a first for me, because it’s the first one I’ve listened to where he’s
narrating using an American accent throughout. (Apart from the English villain,
that is.) Yes, amazing as it may seem given the number of audiobooks he’s
recorded, I’ve only listened to him so far in ‘Brit mode’! And when I’m used to
hearing someone speaking in a certain way, it always takes my brain a few
minutes to catch up with my ears and it sounds a bit strange until I get used
to it. Once I did however, I was able to enjoy the performance immensely; the
pacing is spot on, the character interpretation and differentiation is
excellent and his vocal acting is superb; the ghastly, throat-wrecking growl he
gives the nightmarish ‘birdy’ character is utterly grotesque. As we’re in
Chevy’s head, we get to experience all the fear, horror and uncertainty that he
does, and Mr. Leslie absolutely nails all of it, conveying a wide range of
emotions with consummate skill. When it comes to the relationship between the leads,
he does the best he can with such weak material; the incessant back-and-forth
is expertly timed and delivered with all of Seneca’s insufferable smugness and
Chevy’s world-weary exasperation. I just wish it had been as sparkling and
witty as the author clearly thought it was.

So there you go. Listen to Within the Mind for Joel Leslie’s
terrific performance and the creepy plot, but don’t look for any depth of
characterisation or romance.