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Moira Quirk

Narrator

moiraquirk.com

I finished reading The Last Hour Between Worlds back in March. I had every intention, at the time, of writing a full on gushing review of the book but it was such a raw and emotional experience for me – finishing it – that I wanted to give it some time before I wrote something about it.

Books that tick all of my boxes are rare and books that give me such great feelings after finishing them are equally as rare. I don’t like a lot of stuff. My tastes are very specific, my aphantasia still gets in the way of me being able to completely enjoy the written word (even with really great narrators), and many books start great and then devolve into kind of a mess. When I find a book that ticks all of my boxes and is something that lingers with me even months after reading it, I want to take time to express my thoughts once I have collected them.

So much has happened in the world since March and life has gotten in the way of me being in a position to mentally be creative so a lot of my work ended up getting delayed. I saw this morning that the second book, The Last Soul Among Wolves, has dropped and while I was so excited to be able to start listening to it tonight, I realized that I never got around to writing about the first one that I loved so much.

It’s hard to know where to begin with this write up. Boxes being ticked for me is sometimes hard to explain to other people who don’t have the same boxes but I’ll try.

✅ The first box is narration. Quality narration and “performance” is very important for me to be able to experience the written word in the best way since I can’t create the visual input necessary to really make things come through in the way they might for someone else. Hearing someone perform the words is very similar to when, back in college, I used to watch BBC Shakespeare plays on TVs at the library while reading the written Shakespeare to help me fully understand the idea of what was happening in the scenes. A great narrator that can bring real life to the characters and mood of the scenes and that helps me enjoy the story so much more.

Moira Quirk is one of the best narrators in the business. She’s an amazing actress and she knows how to infuse whatever story she is reading with incredible energy and passion. Her background in working in the videogame industry and also in theater sets her narration apart from those who just “read lines” but don’t do “line reads”. It’s just a whole different world when actors narrate books; it’s voice, style, cadence, presence, and actual acting.

✅ The second box is characters – especially women. Melissa Caruso has created such an intriguing and wonderful world and filled it with the kind of characters I love to read about and get to know; absolutely phenomenal women. If you have been reading any of my audiobook experiences you know that I’m not a fan of men at all and really don’t want to read about them. I grew up reading books about men, watching movies about men, reading comics about men, playing video games AS men, and honestly now all I want is something other than that perspective … ESPECIALLY in the reality we live in now in 2025 in this country. I want to read women authors, I want to enjoy women characters, and – most importantly – I want to read about those women kicking ass, taking names, and being the driving force in their stories.

Kembral Thorne, Rika Nonesuch, Jaycel Morningray, and Dona Marjorie are all absolutely epic women and they are 99.9% of the story focus; those two factors alone are usually enough for me to declare a book “a win”. I adore Kembral, especially as a new mother trying to figure out the balance between her exciting and dangerous career and what that means now that she has a child. It makes her feel realistic as she juggles who she is outside of her career and her duty and what it means to be a mother. I especially love how she navigates that debate – and everything else – while she’s literally saving the whole damn world.

✅ The third box is sex and romance content. I’m not big on romance, any romance really. I am demi/gyne/ace-aro–aego and I don’t really enjoy reading highly sexual/erotic stories or stories where romance and sexuality play a huge or focal role. That is not to say that I can’t enjoy listening to Abby Craden read some raunchy, steamy situation – The Headmistress was epic – but there has to be something other than that to keep me interested like good characters, good writing (even well written erotic writing interests me), or a unique setting.

I genuinely enjoyed the sapphic aspect of this story. I think the relationship between Kembral and Rika is wonderful and sweet and I love the way it grows throughout. I don’t like reading tragic stories about relationships. I don’t like reading stories about people who hate each other. I don’t like reading stories about toxic and abusive relationships. I like reading about relationships that work towards maintaining themselves in positive ways. I like reading about relationships that are about communication, understanding, selfness, and empathy. The Last Hour Between Worlds has a great relationship at it’s center. The entire story is a vehicle for the relationship. Everything that happens, especially as it goes on, is literally in service to the development and evolution of the relationship and while it is very obvious and sometimes heavy-handed, it is wonderfully written, lovely, dramatic, and it FEELS GOOD. More importantly it leaves YOU feeling good at the end.

When a book checks all three of those boxes I mentioned, it automatically shifts to AUTOWIN category with everything else that goes into a good book – writing style, dialog, setting, pacing, side characters, world-building etc – being just added bonuses to the book’s epicness. There are so many things that go into what makes a book perfect – FOR ME – and it’s rare that all of those things converge between the front and back cover … with The Last Hour Between Worlds, though, they do.

For me, it was the perfect book at the perfect time and I can’t wait to read the next book in the series.