A good while back (in 2017, which is a horrifying nine years ago) I was pretty harsh on Nora Roberts, on the basis on The Next Always which I tried to read and then gave up on. I owe her an apology, because since then I've enjoyed plenty of her novels – but as audiobooks, not as paperbacks.
Roberts is a good example of the differences between an audiobook and a paper novel. Things you like listening to would not necessarily thrill you as reading matter, and vice versa. The typical Nora Roberts novel is, in my view, ideal for the audiobook medium. I had an especially good time with her latest Lost Bride trilogy: Inheritance, The Mirror and The Seven Rings. The plot in brief: Sonya, a feisty web designer who's just thrown out her cheating fiancé and quit her job, inherits a lovely Maine mansion from an unknown uncle. It is full of friendly ghosts, plus one hostile one. Sonya has to figure out how to break a curse in order to help the friendly ghosts to move on, as clues are conveniently drip-fed to her.
Plot-wise, the whole story could easily be condensed into one volume. But as an audiobook listener, I appreciated the hanging-out-with-characters scenes which annoyed me in The Next Always. I wallowed in the cosiness of it all while I did my chores and Sonya, her best friend Cleo and their respective love interests cooked and ate good food, went for outings, acquired charming pets, interacted with the friendly ghosts (that was my favourite part) and were successful at their jobs.
Would all this have bored me had I read it? Possibly. The Lost Bride trilogy did not try to interest me in the minutiae of renovating a hotel or helping a kid in the bathroom, so I think I would have liked it more than The Next Always even on paper. What I am sure of is that I got more enjoyment from the trilogy as listening matter than I would have got in book form.
When I read, I like the story to have some momentum and not get too stuck in one particular place, however appealing that place may be. In an audiobook, on the other hand, I don't mind dwelling for a little longer than necessary story-wise in a pleasant fictional world. So the attractive settings and friendly banter of Roberts's novels work very well. The sex scenes are a bit of a trial for me, as I don't much care for the Rugged Hero type that Roberts's heroines fancy, but that's a minor quibble.
Conversely, there are gripping reads that work less well as audiobooks. If a novel has a huge cast of characters, for instance, it's a disadvantage for an audiobook as you can't just flip back the pages to remind yourself who X was, then easily find where you were again. If an author has a certain style you're particularly partial to, it can fly by you too easily while you're distracted by making the bed or cleaning the kitchen. For this reason, I only occasionally listen to my downloaded audiobook version of A Tale of Two Cities, although it is very nicely read by Martin Jarvis. It would be interesting to find out if P.G. Wodehouse works in the audiobook medium or not: I suspect not, but I could be wrong.
So, sorry, Nora, for not finding the best way to enjoy your novels sooner. If I can find something equally feel-good in paper form as Blue Dahlia (the Roberts novel I'm currently listening to) to get me through January, I'll be very lucky.
