Audio Book Review: Finders Keepers

Finders Keepers

By:  J.J. Debenedetto

Publish Date:  March 4, 2015, Audiobook April 15, 2016

Format:  Audiobook - 6 hrs 27 mins
Narrated By:  Cait Frizzell

Genre:  Thriller

Series:  1st in The Jane Barnaby Adventures series

Impression:  A college girl on the go, and someone wants what she has.

Synopsis:
It should have been a simple job. All archaeology student Jane Barnaby had to do was pick up a box her professor needed and deliver it to him at his dig site, along with his new car. Yes, his office was in Oxfordshire, and his dig site was in Spain, a trip of 1,400 miles across three countries and two bodies of water. Still, it should have been simple. And it was, until Jane discovered she picked up the wrong box by mistake. Not the one with boring pottery samples, but instead the one with priceless ancient Egyptian artifacts. The one that a team of international art thieves is after. Now she's chasing - and being chased by - the thieves. And she's picked up a pair of passengers who claim they can help her outwit them, get her professor's pottery back and return the artifacts to their rightful owner. If only she could figure out which one of them is working with the thieves and which one she can trust in this high-stakes game of finders keepers.

First Sentence:
August 30, 1990
Dear Daddy,
I'm sorry it's taken me so long to write, but I've been incredibly busy.

Purchase At:
Amazon  /  Barnes & Nobles  

Audible


My Thoughts and Summary:
*This audiobook was provided by the author, narrator, or publisher at no cost in exchange for an unbiased review courtesy of AudiobookBoom dot com, at my request.

Jane is given an offer to drive her professors car to his archaeological dig site, and bring pottery with her. She can't pass it up! But along the way she learns that the locked box she carries doesn't carry the pottery shards found at the site but priceless artifacts. And there are people who will stop at nothing along the way to retrieve them from her.

Cait is a new voice for me in audio books. There are times where k's, p's, and b's feel to pop when speaking. It's not terribly bad, but I could hear it and got caught on it at times. I don't know if she uses a filter to speak through, it might help with the microphone that picks up so clearly. Cait does a lovely job of accents for the characters to differentiate them and fit to the accent each is to have. The background was clear and I didn't come across any repeated words through the story. Cait did a lovely job or reading along with Jane's adventures.

I listened to this book, so I don't know how the editing is through the written book. In reading through the first few chapters on Amazon, I did notice that the number 1 was different in many cases. The number 1 was an I, like a capital "i" instead of the numeral 1. Then I saw it was a numeral 1 in other places. It is something tiny and would bother me for a bit but I'd get use to it.

We spend time with Jane as she drives her professors car. Much of this travelling time to get to Mallorca was boring in her driving. So boring I almost clicked the 30 sec fast forward button.

I thought the attraction for Jane to Alex when she meets him on the ferry was to fast. Like trying to hard at first meeting to create a connection. She's attracted to him, and thinks about things she could do in the backseat of the car. Seems a bit fast and jumpy in the attraction arena for me. We get the drive of hormones, but no other senses with it, smell, touch and feel of skin, something more to connect rather than drive of lust.

Jane felt as though she jumped to conclusions without details which made her feel a bit paranoid for no reason to me. She questions everything in her mind, like when Jane sees a black Mercedes, meets Alex for the first time, or when checking on the car on the ferry. She has no reason to feel paranoid about everything. I know she's on her own but the questions she's asking felt as though the author was trying to drop hints and lead us to the story that's to come. But I didn't feel a connection to why she was thinking these thoughts. She doesn't know anything is wrong or wanted, so why think this way? It felt as foreshadowing was trying to be done to heavily with lack of suspicious reasoning. It just needed something more in the beginning to draw it together.

I'm sorry, I just couldn't see the reasoning behind actions. The characters background and current person didn't blend enough and feel to give backing for following along as she does. There felt like missing pieces to strengthen character and reasoning.

Jane does a lot of "reflecting" on past events instead of living now. The author uses these as the fashion to back why Jane does as she does, but she still doesn't seem to fit for me. I didn't want to live in the past, I wanted to see the story that was evolving now.

I really wanted to like this story. It sounds like a thrilling ride that I'd enjoy, but I just could not get into this story. I felt like I had to many hang-ups with Jane and the events happening. Also, I found the story a bit bland. I know if I would have read it, I would not have finished this one. But, what I find boring, others may enjoy.