Shadow Spell
The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy • Book 2
by Nora Roberts
Narrated by Alan Smyth
Why You'll Love This
There's something quietly devastating about watching two people circle each other for years — Alan Smyth makes every almost-moment land.
- Great if you want: slow-burn friends-to-lovers with real emotional history
- Listening experience: warm and atmospheric, darker edges underneath the romance
- Narration: Smyth's Irish accent is a natural fit for County Mayo
- Skip if: you haven't read book one — the payoff depends on it
About This Book
Shadow Spell, the second Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy novel, moves from Iona's story to her cousin Connor O'Dwyer, falconer and natural center of the group's social gravity. His childhood friend Meara is the most stubbornly resistant person in his life to the idea of letting something matter beyond its immediate pleasure, and the novel builds the romance around the question of what it takes to convince someone that safety and love are not opposites. The ancestral evil threatening the circle gives the romance genuine stakes.
Alan Smyth narrates the Irish atmospheric setting with the necessary cadence, and his performance of the ensemble cast — the larger circle of friends, the romantic leads — gives the production the sense of a community rather than a simple couple. At just over eleven hours the audiobook sustains the series' combination of Celtic mythology and contemporary romantic comedy.