Normally, if there’s an audiobook version of a novel available, especially when it’s a novel that I’m reading purely for the entertainment value, I’ll take it. I like having the narrator in my ear, helping to bring the author’s work alive. I enjoy the freedom of being able to sit back and just listen.

I picked the audiobook version of ‘Every Time I Go On Vacation, Someone Dies‘ because, as a light, witty Beach Read where the main character, Eleanor Dash, continuously breaches the Fourth Wall, it had the potential to be a fun audiobook. Elizabeth Evans, the narrator is well known, especially as a narrator of YA fantasy books. The audiobook sample sounded fine (Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear the sample yourself).

So, when I settled down this morning to listen to the audiobook, I didn’t expect to be abandoning it a short while later. I didn’t abandon the book, I just switched to the Kindle version because I couldn’t listen to the audiobook.

Elizabeth Evans’ narration was fine. To me, it felt a little slow and a little heavy-handed in signposting the humour at times, but these are style points that I would have adjusted to after an hour or so.

The first thing that got in the way of the auiobook was the footnotes. I like footnotes. I loved Terry Pratchett’s footnotes. Footnotes work brilliantly in an ebook but are challenging to integrate into an audiobook. The most recent recordings of Terry Pratchett’s books solve the problem by having a different narrator doing the footnotes so the listener always knows when they’re in a footnote. Elizabeth Evans read the footnotes in the same voice in which she read the rest of Eleanor Dash’s interior monologue. This meant that the footnotes were incorporated into the narrative, which sometimes lost pace or felt soggy as a consequence.

The second thing was the treatment of the bits of publishing background relating to Eleanor Dash’s books. In the ebook, these sit between chapters and punctuate the narrative. For example, there is a list ofEleanor Dash’s ‘Vacation Muder Series In Order‘, together with footnotes from Eleanor Dash giving her views on not being allowed to use her own titles. In the audiobook, Elizabeth Evans reads this material as if it was Eleanor Dash’s interior monologue, I found this confusing and felt that it blunted the impact of the material. Again, a second narrator would have been helpful.

The final thing, the thing that made me say, “I’m done with this.” was when the narrator inadvertently changed the text. It was an error that threw me out of the story and made me go and find a text version of the books so I could check out the author’s intent.

Catherine Mack wrote:

“I need to shake off the cognitive dissonance of the last five minutes.”

Elizabeth Evans read:

“I need to shake off the cognitive dissidents of the last five minutes.”

It was a distracting but entertaining error. I spent several minutes picturing what cognitive dissidents might look like. Were they a personification of a neurological disease? Or a political group opposed to all thought? (There seem to be a few of those around at the moment). Or deep thinkers who opposed… everything?

I could also see that it was an easy error to make. What bothered me was that no one caught it. Together with the treatment of footnotes and publishing material inserts, I took it as a sign that this audiobook hadn’t received enough attention from its editors. I knew that I’d spend the rest of the book waiting for the next error when what I wanted to do was lose myself in the story, so I sent the audiobook back and bought the ebook.

If you’re interested in reading ‘Every Time I Go On Vacation, Someone Dies‘, I recommend you pick a text version.