Throwing Shade

Magic After Midlife, Book 1

By: Deborah Wilde

Narrated by: Croix Provence

Middle-aged. Divorced. Hormonally imbalanced. Then she got magic. Underestimate her. That’ll be fun. Miriam Feldman is ditching her shapewear and finally letting her magic fly free.

When Miri was a teen, her parents were murdered by magic assassins. These days, her aggressively normal job as a law librarian suits her just fine. Normal keeps her daughter safe. Normal means no one notices the dangerous power she’s spent years pretending she doesn’t have.
That ends when her ride-or-die best friend vanishes after tangling with vampires.

To get her back, Miri unleashes the rare shadow magic she’s kept buried for decades. It’s intoxicatingly empowering—and impossible to ignore.
Plunged into a hidden supernatural world where not knowing the rules is a fast-track to a painful end, Miri's audacity is both her greatest weapon and her biggest risk. She enlists help the only way she can: by blackmailing a grumpy French wolf shifter into her rescue mission. He has the infuriating habit of disagreeing with her every move… and a baffling drive to protect her, even though she doesn’t need it.

Then there’s their chemistry. Sharp, undeniable, and very much not on her To-Do list.

As threats multiply and secrets unravel, Miri discovers that magic doesn’t just change the rules—it changes her. But will claiming this second act cost her the people she loves… or finally give her the life she thought she’d missed her chance at?

Featuring a smart older heroine with zero effs left to give, laugh-out-loud banter, and a swoony shifter romance, this clever mix of urban fantasy and mystery will have you bingeing 'just one more chapter.'

Listen now.

©2021 Deborah Wilde (P)2021 Te Da Media Inc.

Interesting premise for the story.

The narrator is very hard to listen to. She seems to be yelling and her inflections are weird. Sometimes it hard to focus on the story because of the narrator. She is better than AI narrated books but that’s about it. I actually looked ahead to see if she narrated all the books and it looks like she has. I won’t be buying more of the series at the current price. If it goes significantly on sale then maybe but it’s hard to pay so much to feel like I am listening to a novice voice actor yell at me. Sorry.

Cute story-awful narrator

Suspend your disbelief as this 40-something stumbles through mystery & magic. The story moves at a fairly fast pace and the author doesn't leave you hanging waiting for the next event. It's a really cute story and reading it instead of listening would probably get it an extra star.

Though it's set in Canada with people who are supposed to have come from the west coast of British Columbia, the characters voice accents come from the Bronx, deep south and Texas. One character has voiced all three. The narrator is so bad, I thought she was AI with the over-emoting and weird pacing. I should have realized she was human sooner with the accents slipping all over the place.

I wish the narrator would stop yelling

The story was ok. I enjoyed the humor, but my overall enjoyment of the book was ruined by the narrator. Her style was annoying in that she just couldn't tone it down. It was like the main character was hopped up on energy drinks or something... just too much energy behind her words when energy wasn't called for. I'd return it, but I did actually listen to the entire thing so I won't,

Funny, but...

Very funny and I definitely laughed out loud several times. However...The "slow burn" is too slow for me. And the narrator is very...emphatic. I felt out of breath listening to her! I don't know, I may try these as ebooks, but the audio just didn't do it for me.

Entertaining story.

Overall felt like a nice easy story. Found the performance a little irritating. Didn’t match the voice I would have of a middle he woman in my head. Decent magic system. Felt slightly original with several tropes. Made for an easy car ride.