Tribute

I’ll admit, I rolled my eyes at the ‘woman inherits a haunted house’ setup—until Jennifer Van Dyck’s narration sold me on Cilla’s no-nonsense pragmatism. She doesn’t sound like a romance heroine; she sounds like a woman who’d rather wield a hammer than a love letter, and that grounding makes the supernatural undertones (yes, there’s a ghost) feel earned rather than cheesy. Van Dyck’s real triumph is the letters: she ages her voice just enough to evoke the 1940s without slipping into caricature, and the way she lingers on certain phrases—*‘he watched me from the trees’*—sent actual chills down my spine during my commute. The pacing is where *Tribute* stumbles slightly. Roberts takes her time building the romance between Cilla and Sheriff Ford Sawyer, and while their banter is sharp (their first meet-cute involves a traffic stop and a dead raccoon), the middle act sags under too many scenes of Cilla sanding floors or debating wallpaper. The killer’s identity isn’t hard to guess, but the *why* is where the story gets interesting—a twisted tribute to obsession that ties back to the letters. My other critique? The audio mixing occasionally drowns out Van Dyck’s softer lines during the letters; I found myself rewinding to catch key details. Still, the payoff—a climactic storm scene where past and present collide—is worth the build. If you love gothic-tinged mysteries where the house itself feels like a character, and don’t mind a romance that simmers on the back burner, this is a standout in Roberts’ bibliography. Just maybe don’t listen alone at night.