Expired Listings (Unabridged‪)‬

an entertaining listening experience with an original plot.

A killer is targeting realtors. Dana Black, a realtor herself, has no alibis and suffers unexplained blackouts and soon finds herself a suspect in the murders. Combine that with the fact that Dana uses empty properties to meet up for sex games with her Dom, Dare, with whom she has been in an open relationship for years; add Aidan, a Scottish-born detective turned private investigator, who is no stranger to the BDSM scene either and you have a very promising and really novel idea for a sexy, suspenseful plot.

Expired Listings is impossible to classify, as a lot of genres and sub-genres are thrown into the pot. There is obviously the mystery aspect. It's almost like a cozy mystery, but then there's the BDSM setting. However, there are no explicit sex scenes. The author alludes, the scenes that are described are quite clinical rather than erotic. Some of sex games, e.g. the Bingo scene, were quite inventive, though. It is advertised as having satiric elements, and a couple of scenes did make me smile. The crazy cat lady was a nice touch. There are elements of a romantic suspense story, but I have to admit I didn't feel a lot of chemistry between the characters. There were even aspects of what I would call women's fiction with regards to the protagonist's relationship with her mother, sister, and grandmother. All of which covered quite a bit of family drama. While I felt rather disconnected from the characters and couldn't relate to any of them, I thought Dana was an intriguing protagonist with regards to her back-story and her issues. She believed she needed fear (hence the lifestyle) and was unable to have a fulfilling vanilla relationship. I thought it was quite interesting how the author connected Dana's past and her experiences to her current lifestyle and her thought processes. However, I felt Dana's issues were resolved too easily at the end. As far as the mystery element is concerned, I didn't work out who the culprit was until the reveal, so points for that. The why and how was stretching credibility a bit, though.

So overall, a bit of a mixed bag, but as a debut novel certainly not bad. It kept my attention throughout, as the pace was steady and there was a lot going on. There were frequent switches from the events in the present to providing flashbacks that revealed the protagonist's childhood and more recent past and rehashed her relationships with other characters. Apart from Aidan, nobody was really particularly likable. I would have preferred a bit more angst or suspense, and I needed to feel more emotions to rate this any higher.

Hollie Jackson's narration definitely enhanced the story for me. She was a very good fit for the protagonist's first-person perspective. I was also really impressed by her performance of voicing the male characters. Aidan's Scottish brogue was pretty good. She made all the characters sound authentic and gave them distinctive, suitable voices that made it very easy and pleasant to listen to this story. As far as the production quality is concerned, there were some instances where you could tell the recording had been stopped and restarted, but it was minor and didn't distract too badly.

Overall, an entertaining listening experience with an original plot.

Audiobook was provided for review by the author.

Please find this complete review and many others at my review blog

[If this review helped, please press YES. Thanks!]