Hawaii Time

Cat Cozy Humor Mystery

By: Toby Neal

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

I’m Kat Smith, a Secret Service agent turned postmaster sleuth, assigned to cover a cozy small town on Maui, Hawaii, called Ohia.

Things have been nuts since I got here; I’ve been dealing with murder, mayhem, and a cozy little mystery since I moved into a shack near the beach and was adopted by a stray cat named Tiki who has a nose for dead bodies.

Now it’s “Hawaii time” to solve another murder mystery in paradise with new friends Opal, Artie, the Red Hat Society ladies, and a hot pilot named Mr. K. Assisting us are tech whiz Sophie Smithson and Detectives Lei and Pono of the Maui Police Department.

If we’re lucky, no one will get hurt solving this latest small town cat-astrophe—but I’ve never been particularly lucky.

"My new favorite cozy mystery series. A laugh on every page!" ~Reviewer

Virtual voice

I’m giving the virtual voice a mixed review. Overall, it’s okay, though rather flat. But there were places where it flubbed. In one paragraph, “open-ed” and “close-dee”. Also, “Fabio-ess” instead of “Fabio’s”. And actually saying “comma” mid-sentence!

Virtual voice doesn’t pronounce Hawaiian words correctly

I enjoyed the story and the characterization. Tiki the attack cat is a hoot.
However virtual voice does NOT pronounce Hawai’i names, place names and phrases correctly. It is disrespectful and misleading to have this feature. Otherwise Toby Neal has written an authentic Hawaiian story with the flora and fauna correctly described. As well as the use of Hawaiian language/pidgin. This should be corrected!!

The AI really didn’t do it on this one

Nine hundred eleven
H 20
On and on.
It was also annoying on this narration that when the book called for some sort of emotion or emphasis, there was none. Monotone all the way through. It was probably an OK story but, without any inflections, boring

Women rule the roost & it’s a good tale

I love that most of the characters are women, in the other books of the series too. Rich, poor, young, old, strong, weak, mystical, and programatic - they run the gamut of social and vocational types. There are a few men too, mostly in supporting roles. The story is very good. Classic mystery pitting good against bad with an unexpected twist. Kind of a cross between a cozy mystery and a detective mystery. Enjoy!

Great Story, Terrible Narrator

I am pushing through those series because I really like the author, but the virtual voice is a truly awful way to hear such great stories. The pronunciation of the Hawaiian words is so screwy that it’s painful. And there are errors that someone should have caught. The quality of the software is poor.