Booklog 6/2026: Zoe Chant: The Griffin’s Mate – Hideaway Cove #1 – Audiobook

Audiobook narrated ny Kat Riley and Ash Beverly

Lainie Eaves returns to Hideaway Cove after the death of her grandparents. She’s inherited the family house, but, being human, she knows nothing about shifters, which is a bit unfortunate as it turns out. She needs to see what's left of her inheritance, a crumbling house and a missing fortune in jewels. She doesn't know the cove and doesn't know that it's a sanctuary for shifters, having been sent away when it became obvious that she was 100% human. Then she meets Harrison Galway, a carpenter/builder when in human form - and also a griffin shifter. The premise is that shifters instantly recognise their one true mate - and Harrison sees Lanie and 'knows'. The rest plays out as you might expect with a spiteful member of the shifter community trying to eject Lanie from the town. These Hideaway Cove books guarantee a happy ending so I needn't outline the plot. It's lightweight, and at 4 hours 49 minutes, is a quick listen.  The readers make a decent job of it.

Booklog 7/2026: Margaret Couplet: A Prince Saved – Empire of Stardust #1 – Audiobook

Audiobook narrated by Jessie Van Hove

Both the title and the cover make this sound like fantasy, but it's firmly science fiction.  There are youngsters escaped from a super-soldier, DNA altering US government experiment, and aliens invading Earth, but not - it seems - in all out warfare. It was a bit vague as to what the aliens were doing and why, but an alien prince is attacked by members of his own squad and saved by a trio of super-soldier escapees, who are heading out of town to keep away from their own scientists (who are trying to recapture them), and ro ride out the alien invasion.  There's a kind of three-way love story going on and the aliens seem more decent than the humans, so I'm not sure where this series is heading. The main characters are reasonably well-drawn but the others are two dimensional. The narration is quite good except for one of the character voices which is too stretched out and drawly. If these super-soldier kids were grown in a lab and educated altogether why to they have different accents? Why does once sound as though he's from the deep south?