Audio Review: Clean Sweep by Ilona Andrews

Clean Sweep by Ilona Andrews
Narrator: Alejandro Ruiz, Christopher Walker, Holly Adams, James Lewis, Karen Novack, Ken Jackson, Nora Achrati, Peter Holdway, Elias Khalil, Ryan Reid, Alex Hill-Knight
Series: Innkeeper Chronicles #1
Published by Graphic Audio LLC, NYLA on 2013-12-02
Length: 250 pages
Length: 6 hours and 2 minutes
Listening Speed: 1.5x
Reviewing Audiobook, Kindle from Audible, Library
Rating:
Reading Challenges: 2025 Audiobook Challenge, 2025 Beat the Backlist, 2025 Library Love

On the outside, Dina Demille is the epitome of normal. She runs a quaint Victorian Bed and Breakfast in a small Texas town, owns a Shih Tzu named Beast, and is a perfect neighbor, whose biggest problem should be what to serve her guests for breakfast. But Dina is...different: Her broom is a deadly weapon; her Inn is magic and thinks for itself. Meant to be a lodging for otherworldly visitors, the only permanent guest is a retired Galactic aristocrat who can’t leave the grounds because she’s responsible for the deaths of millions and someone might shoot her on sight. Under the circumstances, "normal" is a bit of a stretch for Dina.

And now, something with wicked claws and deepwater teeth has begun to hunt at night...Feeling responsible for her neighbors, Dina decides to get involved. Before long, she has to juggle dealing with the annoyingly attractive, ex-military, new neighbor, Sean Evans—an alpha-strain werewolf—and the equally arresting cosmic vampire soldier, Arland, while trying to keep her inn and its guests safe. But the enemy she’s facing is unlike anything she’s ever encountered before. It’s smart, vicious, and lethal, and putting herself between this creature and her neighbors might just cost her everything.

Clean Sweep by Ilona Andrews is the first book in the Innkeeper Chronicles, an urban sci-fantasy with connections to the Edge series. Here we meet Dina Demille, an innkeeper, and her out of this world guests. Exciting and unputdownable, this one will keep you on the edge of your seat right to the end.

Dina is an ordinary person living an ordinary life in a suburban Texas town. Except she is anything but ordinary. Dina is an Innkeeper, her broom is magical, and her inn is sentient. Her job is simply to welcome any who knock on her door and keep the rest of the humans unaware of her otherworldly guests. She currently only has one guest, an aristocrat from another planet wanted for war crimes….she’s a permanent resident, living out her prison sentence at the inn. Dina is a no-nonsense kind of girl, and I like that.

When dogs in the area start turning up brutally murdered, she at first blames her new neighbor, a werewolf, but it turns out he isn’t the culprit. Dina’s encounter with the creature that is hunting and killing at night quickly escalates. As an Innkeeper, she is to remain neutral unless it affects her guests. With the killings happening close to home and police circling her bed and breakfast, Dina accepts help from Sean, the werewolf, and the two quickly begin hunting the predator.

The plot here focuses on what is happening to the dogs and quickly becomes more. I love the world-building. It is immersive and pulls on both fantasy and sci-fi genres. We have aliens, vampires, werewolves, and many other creatures. The banter is spot on. I loved Dina’s quick wit against Sean’s concrete, animalistic thinking.

Overall, I really enjoyed Clean Sweep. While this is the first book of the series, it is shorter than Andrews other books, reading more like a prequel or novella to the series. Because of its short length, I read it in just three days and wanted more. If you are a fan of sci-fi and urban fantasy, I highly recommend it.

Audiobook Note: I opted to listen to this and follow along. However, I couldn’t find the original narration anywhere. I stumbled upon the graphic audio. This is my first time ever listening to graphic audio, and I’m sad that I’ve waited so long to try one. It was such a fun book to listen to. I’ll admit I did get distracted with the background music, but still really enjoyed it overall. Hoping to listen to the entire series via graphic audio. Highly recommend!

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