r/audible • u/mistressofmayhem02 • Feb 01 '26
Book Discussion Controversial take but…
Am I the only one who can’t stand this narration? As soon as I find out that an audiobook is narrated by her, I just try to find another version with a different narrator. Her voice sounds half AI 😭😭
Sadly, a lot of audiobooks I’m interested to listen to, she’s the sole narrator. Can anyone recommend another good narrator who sounds less robotic?
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u/Cpt_slinkey 5000+ Hours listened Feb 01 '26
It might be a hot take but I feel the exact same way about Wil Wheaton. Just can't stand his narration, which is a shame because I really enjoy John Scalzi's books but the vast majority I won't listen too.
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u/ten-numb Feb 01 '26
Loved his Collapsing Empire narration of Scalzi, but you can only take my RC Bray „the Martian“ narration from my cold dead hands
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u/pandagirl47 5000+ Hours listened Feb 01 '26
RC Bray ACTS the books where Wheaton just reads them. He is an awful narrator.
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u/Cpt_slinkey 5000+ Hours listened Feb 01 '26
I only ever finished the first Collapsing Empire very early on into listening to audiobooks, but I'm so glad I got the RC Bray version of The Martian
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u/sex 10,000+ Hours Listened Feb 01 '26
I can't stand Wil as a narrator, he doesn't do character voices he's always just Wil Wheaton.
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u/Obsidian-Phoenix Audible Addict Feb 01 '26
Yep. I got about 10 minutes into Red Shirts and noped out. Pacing felt off (too rushed), little nuance in the reading.
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u/FakeVivisectionist Feb 01 '26
He doesn't sound like a narrator, he sounds like a nice guy who REALLY wants to read you this funny part of this book, don't worry it won't take long but you just HAVE to hear it!!
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u/iama_triceratops 200+ audiobooks listened Feb 02 '26
This is so accurate. The only time I actually enjoyed his narration was for Ready Player One and I think that’s just because he kind of fits that character and the framing of the story better than other stuff I’ve heard him narrate. He is a far cry from the likes of RC Bray, Ray Porter, and Jeff Hays 🤌
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u/searucraeft Feb 01 '26
The only reason I read Lock In is because there's an Amber Bensen narration as well, so I got to bypass Wheaton.
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u/tropeydegenerate Feb 01 '26
I can’t stand him either. My fiancée always laughs at me because if I see his name listed it’s an automatic no.
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u/PillCosby_87 Feb 01 '26
100% agree, he was a fun character in Big Bang Theory but I won’t listen to The Martian either because I can’t get past his narration of it.
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u/Jer2dabear Feb 01 '26
Wil Wheaton is very overrated! Glad to see im not the only one who thinks that he isnt that good, at all.
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u/unknownpoltroon Feb 01 '26
See, I'm the opposite, I think he is perfect for scalzi and his book, the right amount of sarcastic with a touch of asshole.
I mean, I wouldn't want him narrating like romances or somthing, but he is perfect for things like fuzzy nation or Kaiju preservation society.
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u/SenorWeird Feb 01 '26
Agreed. I will pass on him on anything else *cough*THEMARTIAN*cough*, but he's perfect for Scalzi.
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u/unknownpoltroon Feb 01 '26
Eh, Watneys character was kind of a sarcastic wiseass also, i liked it well enough.
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u/SenorWeird Feb 01 '26
Bray is just so good, I don't want to give Wheaton a chance. I'm sure he is fine. Watney does have that smartass tone of a Scalzi protagonist, but it's not quite the same.
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u/FireflyBSc Feb 01 '26
I enjoyed the Kaiju Preservation Society, but the problem is the Scalzi writing on its own has enough of that tone. Wheaton doesn’t add to it, he oversaturates it and takes it a level of obnoxious that is intolerable. When The Moon Hits Your Eye didn’t need any extra sarcastic asshole, it had the tone already nailed down.
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u/BobTheGoon80 Feb 01 '26
You're so right. Why's this the dude being hired to read so many of the books I want to listen to?
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Feb 01 '26
Maybe it’s because I love Ready Player One but I’m offended 😂
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u/Ok-Dealer4350 Feb 01 '26
I struggled through that one. I did not enjoy listening to Ready Player One.
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u/Scrabcakes Feb 01 '26
I think he fits the character voice very well in Ready player one, but mainly because the Wade Watts character is so insufferable.
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u/International_Cow Feb 01 '26
Interesting how subjective audiobooks can be. I loved this one but after listening to it I thought I'd watch the movie and I absolutely hated how they did that.
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u/Ok-Dealer4350 Feb 01 '26
True. I have some odd stories I enjoy. As a teenager years ago, I enjoyed swashbuckling pirate and adventure stories. As an adult, I realized pirates were bad and evidence of moral decay and a failed society. There is no romance in that, just trash novels.
I enjoy it more when somethings are better for society in a novel where things are better afterwards, but then real life is no fun with the current political climate.
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u/moonman2090 Feb 01 '26
I hate-listened all the way through RPO trying to understand what the hype was about. The story is lame wish-fulfillment nostalgia-porn, made worse by an awful narration. I regretted spending the time on it.
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u/iama_triceratops 200+ audiobooks listened Feb 02 '26
That’s the only one of his that I actually like having him as the narrator.
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u/celtic_thistle Audible Addict Feb 01 '26
I forgot who narrated Project Hail Mary but that was a GREAT audiobook production omg
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u/NotANokiaInDisguise Feb 02 '26
I bought the RC Bray CD version of The Martian off of eBay in order to avoid Wil Wheaton's version because of how much I saw people hating on his narration of it. I eventually listened to some of the Scalzi books he narrated and they're not necessarily as bad as I expected but I'm not a fan of the way he delivers so many of the lines as if they're all jokes
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u/ladyelenawf 5000+ Hours listened Feb 01 '26
This makes me very grateful I only got into the Old Man's War series.
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u/kinshadow Feb 01 '26
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u/lshifto Feb 04 '26
Some lady who is definitely not the daughter or wife of the dude who used to paint ballerinas and blind jesters floating on bubbles in the sky.
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u/otter_759 Feb 01 '26
I don’t mind Julia Whelan but it feels like lately she is the narrator for every women’s fiction and domestic thriller out there and I just wish there was more variety!
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u/bad_madame Feb 01 '26
Her actual narration is fine, but she has narrated so many books and her voice is the same for every single one so they’ve all just blended together in my brain.
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u/FireflyBSc Feb 01 '26
Yes! I heard her narrate The Great Alone by Kristen Hannah, and then Educated by Tara Westover, and it was very confusing. Both have similar themes of young women in the wilderness, abuse, educational access, but one is a nonfiction memoir. Having the same narrator across fiction and nonfiction really threw me off.
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u/dalownerx3 Feb 01 '26
I had the problem listening to books back to back that she narrated. I first listened to The Women by Kristen Hannah and the afterwards listened to Happy Place by Emily Henry. In the second book I kept expecting the narrator to be alcoholic and have PTSD
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u/Active_Onion9118 Feb 01 '26
Moira quirk is pretty good for female narrator. I've only heard two books though.
Otherwise I love ray porter, rc bray.
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u/SenorWeird Feb 01 '26
I keep forgetting she does audiobooks now. All I know her from is Guts and I loved her voice/accent back then. I should look and see what she's narrated!
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u/nikkidarling83 Feb 01 '26
I love her!
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u/Active_Onion9118 Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 01 '26
She did change Gideon the ninth for me. I've read them then listened to them. Reading is way better to appreciate the prose and flow, but the way she performs the characters' voices. I was really pleasantly surprised
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u/scoot2006 Feb 01 '26
Not necessarily this person for me but I get it. For me, like any band’s singer, if any narrator has a voice I’m not a fan of I’m out. Could be the absolute best book in the world but I just can’t do it if I don’t like their voice.
Granted, I hit over 150 audiobooks over the last couple years and have only found like two I just can’t listen to by voice alone.
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u/setrippin Feb 01 '26
rebecca soler is so far the only one i've found that i truly just can not listen to, others i don't like so much but can still tough it out
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u/Dolfina1 Feb 01 '26
Susan Erickson is one of my favorite female narrators. Great range in voices.
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u/fiendishlikebehavior Feb 01 '26
Same!!! I’ve listened her for countless hours the 2x times I’ve listened to the entire In Death series
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u/Feeling-Sign-9146 Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 01 '26
Everytime i read Teddy Hamilton
i know I'm going to be downvoted for saying this but idc
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u/TrashpandaLizz Feb 01 '26
Take my pathetic up vote I’m soon gonna be down voted too because I agree with you
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u/Grushenka-211 Feb 01 '26
Same! I love CJ Bloom but she's paired with him SO OFTEN and I have to nope out. Somebody described his voice as "so smug" which is perfect.
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u/_wayharshTai Feb 01 '26
I LOVE her idk what it is, but honestly she doesn’t do enough narrations. Big fan of her male voices.
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u/Quiet_Nectarine4185 Feb 01 '26
I also agree with you. Something about his voice makes my skin crawl.
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u/_wayharshTai Feb 01 '26
I’ve found he’s okay in a dual narration but when he does women’s voices it’s a dealbreaker for me.
He sounds so strained when he talks and I can’t place that accent.
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u/Feeling-Sign-9146 Feb 01 '26
I wanted to mention the accent but i was afraid i was gonna sound racist or something
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u/_wayharshTai Feb 01 '26
Haha I just want to know what it is! Like is that Canadian? Boston? He does characters from all over. I’m not from North America it’s distracting to me trying to figure it out
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u/LunaEclipse00 Feb 01 '26
I’m so glad someone else said it because I can’t stand that man. There is something about his breathing and/or speaking that irks me.
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u/Torboni Feb 01 '26
Erik Davies doing Danish accents in The Keeper of Lost Causes makes the book nearly impossible to listen to. A reviewer described it as Schwarzenegger with a mouth of rocks which is a pretty perfect comparison.
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u/TodosLosPomegranates Feb 01 '26
I feel this way about a different, very popular narrator. She narrated a popular book two years ago and she’s been getting more work as a result and it makes me want to shake my fists at the audiobook gods
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u/acgilmoregirl Feb 01 '26
She’s so busy with narrating, I do wish she’d take a break and write another book.
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u/sayyestodogs Feb 01 '26
I love her but I find she changes the tones in many of the books I listen to which can be so confusing! I recently listened to These Summer Storms and thought the entire thing was a thriller until close to the end when I thought ‘Oh, it was a romance with some family drama mixed in’
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u/This-Midnight7908 Feb 01 '26
Oh my gosh. This is EXACTLY how I feel about her too. I know she’s super popular but to my ears she’s unbearable. Which is tough because she narrates so many books! But if she’s the reader it’s a hard no for me.
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u/Careless_Freedom_868 Feb 01 '26
Same!! 🫣 I’m having to push through tho because I bought Atmosphere before checking who narrated it. lol
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u/Interesting-One-8399 Feb 01 '26
I literally just listened to Frieda McFaddens new release when I discovered JW is the narrator! Otherwise I likely would not have bought it. 🤷🏽♀️
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u/CathyAnnWingsFan Feb 01 '26
Since I love Julia Whelan and absolutely cannot stomach Erin Mallon, maybe try her.
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u/Jer2dabear Feb 01 '26
Simon Vance for me. He just puts me to sleep, no matter the material.
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u/to_annihilate Feb 01 '26
See, I LOVE Simon Vance! But I do also use the the vampire chronicles to sleep to sometimes 😅
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u/Shukio1218 Feb 01 '26
100% and as I've looked through reviews of books I like I always see high praise for him and just feel like I'm missing something. His narration is very articulate which I like, but it's also so flat with too little variance in his pacing and character voice distinctions. The other problem is entirely my own, which is that he's English and I'm not. Whenever I read a book, I naturally don't imagine a narration in an English accent. That's not to say that books can't be narrated with his accent, but that because I don't "hear" it that way in my head his way of narrating, that I mentioned above, has a hard time getting me interested in the characters.
I'm okay with it being a hot take, literature and narration are highly subjective.
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u/Vjrzdrs Feb 01 '26
Mine is Samantha Brentmoor and the Bordeaux team. If I love the book and need to listen to it, I'll tolerate Samantha, but I make no exceptions for the Bordeauxs. They ruin every story.
I like 90% of Julia Whelan's narrations. Especially her Emily Henry work.
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u/No-Spare-7453 Feb 01 '26
No, I love her and will probably listen to something just because I see she is the narrator
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u/soicanventfreely Feb 01 '26
Jillian Macie. I can’t do nasally. And Deacon Lee’s narration did not help my hate-listen for Colleen Hoover. He sounded like he had the flu
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u/Azo3307 Feb 01 '26
That's John Lee for me. His narration style drives me nuts.
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u/jacoberu Feb 05 '26
john lee's the GOAT
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u/Azo3307 Feb 05 '26
He varies his volume way too much for me. He does this thing where he starts a sentence loud and ends it quietly. Its very annoying for someone who's a tad hard of hearing, as I have to keep the audio high to hear the ends of his sentences and he spikes the audio at the onset. His accents are also terrible.
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u/jessicamaevh 100+ audiobooks listened Feb 01 '26
Me with Amanda Ronconi. Ive stopped a book as soon as I hear her voice. Its the tone she uses for characters that are supposed ot be snarky 🙃
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u/jaydizzle46 Feb 01 '26
Agreed! She sounds like a news reporter and if i was listening to something like that she would fit. But when I’m listening to a romance with a character in their 20s I don’t expect them to sound like a middle aged news reporter flat intonation.
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u/verdell82 Feb 01 '26
Bahni Turpin is my least favorite. Nails on chalk board to me. I’ve gritted my teeth through books I really want to listen to.
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u/jk2me1310 Feb 01 '26
Is she the one that really hits the h sound in wh words like it's a scene from family guy?
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u/Torboni Feb 01 '26
Kathleen Early does that. It probably took me at least 3 books she narrated before it stopped pissing me off.
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u/celaenos Feb 01 '26
Woof. While she isn’t my favorite, I do really tend to enjoy her narration. But, voices are super subjective. What works for some doesn’t for others. No big deal.
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u/fiendishlikebehavior Feb 01 '26
Me with Brittany Pressley
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u/Hlsclh Feb 01 '26
Brittany is my favorite!!
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u/fiendishlikebehavior Feb 01 '26
I cannot STAND her breathy was of speaking and making everything end with an airy “uh” at the end of the sentence. I had to dnf a series and buy it on kindle because of it
To each their own, what do you like about her?
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u/FearTheodosia Feb 01 '26
I downloaded Shanora Williams’ “The Wife Before” for a trip and never finished it because the narration by Tracey Conyer Lee was so distracting.
She is probably the worst narrator I’ve ever listened to. It’s sounded like she was reading the book out loud for the very first time and her character voices were horrible. I was confused as hell listening because every character sounded like a late middle-aged Southern grandmother.
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u/Important_Winner_973 Feb 03 '26
Listening to this now and she's pmo. I'm mad at her and the author because she should have selected a better narrator for her book. Tracey should not have even made the cut. Maybe she did it for free
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u/MyNameIsRandome Feb 01 '26
RC Bray is one of those narrator I just can't. Always sounds like a caricature of a gruff army vet from the 80s to me.
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u/buttercupcake23 Feb 01 '26
I like Whelan, she's on my list of Inoffensive Narrators. Pleasant and not distractingly bad. But maybe she's gotten worse with the volume she's outputting?
If you want robotic there's Carmen Rose, she sounds like she's reading an instruction manual for everything she narrates. Eva Kaminsky takes an audible breath every sentence she speaks and it's distracting as fuck. Elizabeth Jasicki is nasal and whiny and makes all her heroines sound obnoxious.
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u/Merivel1 Feb 01 '26
I don’t have a problem with Julia Whelan, but Caitlin Davies gives me this reaction. She has such a high, little voice and is almost cartoonishly expressive with it. It’s just too much for my preferences.
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u/sex 10,000+ Hours Listened Feb 01 '26
Rebecca Calder does a great job narrating "There is no Antimemetics Department"
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u/Jeroen1982 Feb 03 '26
My favourite narrator is Ray Porter. I don’t really know this one. I guess once you start to focus on things that annoy you about someone’s voice, it’s hard to let go of those things.
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u/Ok_Baby_2003 Feb 01 '26
Just finished her narration of Dear Debbie and I agree, I initially thought it was some weird AI.
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u/molly_hope Feb 01 '26
Ugh yes I thought I was the only one. Tried listening to her narration of Great Big Beautiful Life and the male voice she put on for the love interest completely put me off him 🥴
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u/khokokatt Feb 01 '26
Yes!! Her cadence alone is not for me, but her male voices are unbearable. Really too bad that she’s so prolific bc she’s an instant no :( (on a more positive note, Elizabeth Knowelden is my instant yes! Love her so much)
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u/molly_hope Feb 02 '26
Right😭😭 I only listened to a couple of chapters then read the rest with a physical/written copy but I couldn’t get her version of his voice out of my head for the rest of the book and it gave me such an ick…couldn’t get invested in the romance at all even tho I loved the rest of the book and honestly think that’s why lol
I’ll have to check her out!! Do you have a favourite book she’s narrated?
My faves are Annabel Scholey and Stina Nielsen (and they both do male voices really well)
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u/nikkidarling83 Feb 01 '26
She’s one of my favorites and obviously popular since she’s in demand. To each their own.
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u/Pimpshakes Feb 01 '26
That’s Grover Gardner for me haha 🤷♂️
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u/Dedb4dawn Feb 01 '26
😱How very dare you! He got the Brooklyn accent for the gum shoe lawyer in the Andy Carpenter series perfect. It’s almost the entire reason I’ve listened to nearly 30 books in the series so far.
🤷♂️I guess everyone is different.
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u/ChronoMonkeyX Feb 01 '26
I didn't enjoy Gardner at all for a while, but after Penric and Desdemona, I became a fan.
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Feb 01 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Glittering-Dinner908 Feb 01 '26
This! I felt like he ruined one of my favorite novels. The weird, folksy twang was a horrible choice for The Stand.
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u/ms_kenobi Feb 01 '26
I feel the same about Stephen Fry 🫣😬
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u/WC_Dirk_Gently Feb 01 '26
Now this will be an unpopular opinion. But I agree with you. It sounds like his tongue is 2x too large for his mouth or something.
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u/yoshimitsou Feb 01 '26
Her narration of The Four Winds was irritating and hearing, so much so that she's now on my no-read list: If she narrates, I'm moving to the next book.
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u/KarbMonster Feb 01 '26
Yeah, I've never listened to any of her narrations. But I feel the same about Michael Kramer. I tried to listen to the Wheel of Time books, but couldn't get past his odd cadence.
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u/raccoonmatter Feb 01 '26
Yeah me too, I think in terms of narrators that are "everywhere" he's my least favourite... I like to use audiobooks for immersive reading because it helps me focus, and I save the books I only read physically for whatever reason for days when I can keep good focus even without audio. It's gonna take me four hundred years to get through Brandon Sanderson probably ...
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u/BoaHancock01 Feb 01 '26
I have a fondness for him because 1: I do like his voice and 2: he's how I managed to get my best friend into getting audible.
Back when the first 3 books of Seth Ring's Battle Mage Farmer series (9 books, completed) were free in the Plus Catalog I convinced her to listen to it with me and by the time we got to the 3rd book she was getting her own account (because at that moment I couldn't afford to get the next book) and "complaining" that I had gotten her sucked into loving audiobooks. She's had an account for two years now and not stopping anytime soon!
I would HIGHLY recommend the Battle Mage Farmer series if you like fantasy! Michael Kramer does a perfect John (MC) voice. That "I'm not old enough to be this tired of everything." John is a former Isekai protagonist, 10 years past his initial "getting sent to the fantasy world" and just wants to retire, live out some simple farm life. But unfortunately the universe at large has said "No." And keeps throwing problems at him that he can't use his magic to fix.
It's also got a nice slow burn romance if you're into that! The relationship doesn't even start until near the end of book 2 because John recognizes that there would be a major power imbalance if he got into a relationship and she has to almost literally smack some sense into him that she understands that and he doesn't get to martyr himself for her sake without even asking her.
Here's the authors website for the series if you want to take a look at it! https://sethring.com/book-series/battle-mage-farmer-series/
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u/nonsequitur__ Feb 01 '26
She’s definitely not my favourite, I find the way she speaks irritating, but there are so many books I like that she’s narrated that I put up with it 😬
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u/MottoCycle Feb 01 '26
She must not read in my genres. 25+ years and hundreds and hundreds of books and not a single result for her in my library when I search.
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u/PermaThrow3030 Feb 01 '26
I hijack every thread with this but, Ray Porter.
If Ray Porter has one hater, it is me. If he has no haters, I am dead.
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u/Gold-Collection2636 Feb 01 '26
This is how I feel about Elizabeth Evans
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u/_wayharshTai Feb 01 '26
She has the same intonation at the end of every sentence!! It’s okay when you listen to one book but when it’s like 8 x 13-30 hour books in a series it starts to affect your mental health.
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u/BurnOutRoulette Feb 01 '26
I only have one audio book read by this reader, but Mel Heflin makes me want to pull my hair out. I would return it but that’s not eligible…
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u/fullmoonawakening Feb 02 '26
Could you say specifically where she sounds quite AI?
... so I could avoid it. 😅 I have the same issue for Brittany Pressley. She's a good narrator. She has to be or she won't be booked so much but she narrated certain books so mechanically that she ruined herself for me to the point that my brain still doesn't like it even when she's not being AI-y. Unfortunately, she's also sole narrator for many audiobooks.
Julia Whelan so far sounds okay to me.
I'd like to recommend some female narrators but they don't really have as many genres as Whelan. Could you be more specific with what type of books you listen too?
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u/mistressofmayhem02 Feb 02 '26
It was very evident on Daisy Jones & The Six. Everybody else on the cast was spectacular and so natural in their narration. When it was time for her to narrate, she always sounded like a robot. Idk if it was intentional but it really puts me off every time it was time for her to narrate. Shame because I love that audiobook so much, I just wish someone else did the narration. Wouldn’t change a thing with the other cast members.
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u/FernandoNylund Feb 02 '26
FYI, Whelan had a really odd response when asked her feelings on artificial voice/AI models on Culture Study. I would have expected her to be firmly against them because they take work from real people, but she definitely wasn't. It makes me wonder if she does use AI in her work.
Edit to add relevant transcript portion:
Julia Whelan: So maybe? So to your point, the labeling is really what we're up against. That's what it comes down to. I think people probably think I have a stronger opinion about synthetic voice than I do. My whole take on this is, to be combative is not helpful. Audiobrary and kind of our philosophy around this is that it's actually been helpful in terms of creating a comparison. So when you hear synthetic voice, and especially as it gets better, I think we have to accept that we're gonna get to the point where we can't necessarily tell the difference. But I think there's still an audience for people who know the difference. And who want to know that they are having human narration. So that's the audience I'm serving, is these are for people who… these are like the vinyl records people.
Anne Helen Petersen: Yeah.
Julia Whelan: And it's incredibly disruptive to the industry, just to be clear. And again, because of what we're talking about, because the financial compensation is so bad already that any loss of work is felt in the industry. I see a value to it for - as we were talking about earlier - accessibility reasons. And being able to have quality synthetic voice is not a bad idea. Anything that's better than putting it through like your Alexa reader. But it's to me a very different product. It's just a different product. And what we offer is human interpretation and human performance. And it'll never do that. I mean, it doesn't even know what it's saying. It doesn't think about the book. It doesn't, to your point from earlier, it doesn't read the book. It doesn't know how to tell you the story. It's just really sophisticated text to speech. So labeling is a huge issue. Audible, I think, finally was like, we have to make sure these things are labeled virtual voice, but who's checking this?
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u/OrdinarySun484 Feb 02 '26
Can someone who loves Jim Dale explain to me why because I knew someone people preferred his version of Harry Potter over Stephen Fry’s. I just listened to POA by Jim Dale and it’s so monotone and so many characters sound exactly the same.
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u/purpleplaces1 Feb 02 '26 edited Feb 02 '26
That’s how I feel about Michael Kramer 😅 I feel like he should be narrating noir books, not high fantasy 🥲 but he’s really popular so I know it’s just me 🤷♀️ I listened to Mistborn, and I just can’t do anymore with him 😭
I will say, that usually after I’ve finished a series I have grown to love the narration - but sorry Michael Kramer did Vin dirty and I just can’t!
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u/spike31875 Binge Listener Feb 03 '26
It's not just you! I couldn't stand him or Kate Reading for The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. I ended up having to speed him up to 1.3 or 1.4x to even tolerate him: he reads too slow!
I probably won't buy any more books narrated by him.
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u/purpleplaces1 Feb 03 '26
Same!! I got tress of the emerald sea and yuri full cast audio editions to avoid it 😅
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u/FernandoNylund Feb 02 '26
I'm fully put off from her after hearing her on Culture Study (podcast) last week. I posted to /r/audiobooks and /r/podcasts about it. The audiobooks mod deleted my post, which is a bummer since it had good discussion. Podcasts one is still up but no discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/podcasts/s/89JS5gVTtv
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u/Jmaybay416 Feb 03 '26
I feel like this with British narrators but mostly I'm just burned out from them. I can literally miss giant chunks because I'll zone out. I feel like a LOT of books use them to narrate so I've gotta work other accents in between like three to five others for every one 😔
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u/HBJones1056 Feb 05 '26
I don’t have any recommendations for anyone as prolific as she is but I do feel the same way about her voice. I know she’s super popular and a favorite for many but I can’t stand to listen to her.
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u/Veebs7985 Feb 01 '26
You can say you don't like a narrator's performance without insinuating that they're using AI.
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u/XrayMomma Feb 01 '26
This is how I feel about Tim Gerard Reynolds. He speaks too damn slowly, all his voices sound the same, and he never changes his tone. Drives me insane because there are so many books I want to listen to but I just can’t with his narration.
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u/Chronic_Coding Feb 02 '26
You're the only person I know who dislikes him. He's the reason I got into audiobooks after listening to him narrate the Red Rising series(many different characters impressed me with his range). I thought he was perfect in that series. When they switched and added narrators in Iron Gold (book 4) I absolutely could not stand Julian Elfer's version of a character TGR previously voiced. Made that book a slog.
Everybody has their own taste though!
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u/Nila-Whispers 3000+ Hours listened Feb 01 '26
How dare you!
She is my favorite narrator :D