Bid for a Bride

By: Ruth Ann Nordin

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

After Loving Eliza, John and Eliza adopt a blind boy named Brian who was abandoned by his father. Bid for a Bride is Brian’s romance. The story begins in the quiet South Dakota town where Brian lives. Lucy finds out the man she just married already has a wife, and what’s worse is that he’s trying to sell her to the highest bidder. The preacher intervenes and helps her annul her marriage, but he’s aware that Lucy’s week with her bigamist husband might have resulted in a pregnancy. To protect her reputation, he asks Brian Evans to marry her. Brian jumps at the chance and proposes to her. Seeing no other option, Lucy agrees. But will Brian have the marriage based on love that he longs for or will he always be Lucy’s convenient husband? *Bid for a Bride won the 2012 Global Ebook Award for Historical Romance. Books in the South Dakota Series Book 1: Loving Eliza Book 2: Bid for a Bride Book 3: Bride of Second Chances

Virtual Voice was distracting

I already own this book and enjoy the story so looked forward to having an audio version, but the Virtual Voice was distracting.
The voice itself sounded more like a person than a robot, but frequently stressed the wrong words or used the wrong interpretation of words like read. ("In the future I will <past tense read> this book.") There was definitely more intonation than I have heard from other AI voices, especially differences between narrative and when people spoke. Unfortunately, it used the same tones for all of the characters so was confusing sometimes when characters had a conversation without specifically stating who said which line.
The end result sounded like a real person who doesn't have experience reading aloud. A real narrator would have been worth the extra cost.