Gifted Connections

Book 1

By: SM Olivier

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

This book has been edited from previous version. ***warning possible triggers My name is Blake. Most girls my age are worrying about prom, senior pictures, and colleges. I'm not. I worry about taking care of my sister, dodging my stepmother's reprehensible boyfriends, and earning enough money to keep the roof over our heads, clothes on our backs, and food in our bellies. Sometimes when I'm angry or afraid, strange things happen. Things I can't explain. Recent events have thrust me into a new world. With the help of my connections I learn about my gift. Unfortunately there are others that covet my gift. There are others who want to make sure I don't make those connections. ***this is a reverse harem novel

AI ruined this great story!

I love this book and it's story, but read with AI made me want to return. I didn't but I wish the author would consider human reading with emotion.

Good story

This reminds me of the Evelyn Maynard series. I like this type of books so much. Would love to hear it again with a male and female narration.

Great book!!!

Kept me interested throughout the whole story!! Most of the time I get bored and DNF. Really good for a virtual voice.

The horrible narration

The narration was so awful it was distracting. There was no change in voices and half the words were spoken incorrectly. I kept having to go back and read listen to understand who was saying what. I really hope Audible is looking to do away with actual humans narrating because I will stop purchasing. I also hope they redo this series. It's a great series but the computer generated narration completely ruined it.

Decent story and plot, but the AI narration sounds so mechanical

First of all, I’m morally against the idea of replacing human narrators, which is an art form, with AI to cut costs, but as an English teacher and someone who reads to children on the regular, I’m disgusted by the sheer loss of joy in the listening experience when AI is used to narrate. There is no sense of tone. There’s no buildup of intensity at the right scenes. There’s no pausing in the right places. Words are mispronounce regularly. There will be a time when AI will likely be good enough to compete with human narrators, but this is not that time. The only thing that kept me reading this book was the fact that I had previously read it on my Kindle, otherwise I probably would’ve stopped listening after the first 15 to 30 minutes. Even then, I had to listen to it at 2.0 speed in order to handle the bad AI narration.