Dominant — When the Dom sounds like a droid

I need to vent. Seriously. Pour a glass of something strong, because we need to talk about the difference between being "cold and commanding" and being a literal GPS navigation system.

I picked up Dominant because I have a weakness for the whole "stoic billionaire with a secret soft side" trope. It's my catnip. I was designing a typography layout for a local mezcal brand—lots of sharp lines, bold fonts—and I thought, "Perfect, let's get into Nathaniel West's head." This book is supposed to be the flip side of The Submissive, giving us the Dom's perspective. We're supposed to see the cracks in his armor, the fear behind the control.

But William Sharpe? Ay, dios mio.

Here's the thing about audio romance: The narrator is the chemistry. If the narrator is flat, the spark dies. Sharpe has a great voice in terms of pitch—it's deep, resonant, very "CEO of a multinational conglomerate." On paper, he's the right casting choice. But the delivery? So robotic I half-expected him to say "Recalculating" in the middle of a spicy scene.

It killed the vibe. Completely.

When Nathaniel is supposed to be struggling with his feelings for Abby—that moment where the trust is fragile and he's terrified of hurting her—Sharpe reads it with the emotional range of a grocery list. There's a scene where Nathaniel is internally panicking about his secrets destroying the relationship, and instead of feeling his angst, I felt like I was listening to a quarterly earnings call.

The writing itself (Tara Sue Me knows her lane) tries to pull you into this intense, chest-tightening exploration of trust and surrender. But the audio pushes you away. Creates this weird dissonance. You're reading words that scream "passion" and hearing a voice that says "data entry."

Credit where it's due—Sharpe is decent at character differentiation. You can tell when he's doing Abby versus Nathaniel. He doesn't struggle with the feminine pitch as much as some male narrators do. The narration in Night and Day has that same uneven quality—moments of real warmth sandwiched between passages that feel weirdly detached. But that staccato cadence... it just doesn't work for a romance that relies on emotional subtlety. A Dom needs to sound authoritative, yes, but there has to be heat under the ice. This was just ice.

To be fair, if you listen at 1.0x like I usually do, the pauses are painful. I actually broke my own rule and bumped this up to 1.3x just to smooth out the robotic rhythm. It helped a little, but it couldn't fix the lack of soul.

If you've read the physical book, you know Nathaniel is complicated. This audio version makes him seem indecisive and unfeeling, which is a disservice to the character. I wanted to swoon; instead, I was just checking my spreadsheet to see how many hours were left.

Skip the audio if: You're here for the emotional intensity, the push-pull tension, the heat. The narration will flatten everything you came for. Maybe try it if: You genuinely need background noise while cleaning and don't mind missing the emotional beats.

Frida (the cat) fell asleep on the keyboard, which pretty much sums up the energy here. Stick to the ebook for this one.