It infuriated me because it revealed a certain skill that's not being used correctly. Way too many stops and starts! Odd thing is, the narrator does a notably impressive job with a few short bits of dialogue, but these are random outliers only lightly sprinkled throughout the story. I never did, even when sped up to 1.5x speed to try to ignore the pauses-it doesn't work because the rhythm of speech is unnatural. I listened to the whole audiobook with the hope I'd get used to it. Wish I could rate 5 stars for the story, but the narration is unlistenable! The narrator pauses every few words mid-sentence, creating disjointed fragments that don't make sense. Narrator pauses every few words, near unlistenable

And when Gareth finds himself threatened from every side, the gentleman and the smuggler must trust one another not just with their hearts but also with their lives. But the bleak, bare Marsh holds deadly secrets. Soon, all Joss and Gareth want is the chance to be together. Their reunion is anything but happy, yet after the dust settles, neither can stay away. When the new baronet-his old lover-agrees to testify against Joss's sister, Joss acts fast to stop him. Joss Doomsday has run the Doomsday smuggling clan since he was a boy. The Marsh is another world, a strange, empty place notorious for its ruthless gangs of smugglers. Then Gareth's father dies, turning the shabby London clerk into Sir Gareth, with a grand house on the remote Romney Marsh and a family he doesn't know. When he meets a charming stranger, he falls head over heels-until everything goes wrong and he's left alone again. Abandoned by his father, Gareth Inglis grew up lonely, prickly, and used to disappointment.

Slippery Creatures by K.J. Charles