The Ink-Pot and the Palette

My audiobook listening is exclusively fiction, and mostly YA novels.

With children's books especially, the dealbreaker is an Overly Bright And Interesting inflection that makes me feel that the narrator thinks I'm a bit dim, or that is trying to sell the book too much.

I don't have a discriminating ear for accents but I love to hear them. It can diminish my enjoyment if a British narrator makes American characters sound like weird cowboys, but I wouldn't quit a book over that unless it's a big portion of the narration. Overdone funny voices for characters to differentiate them annoy me, but sometimes I stick with it and become sort of fond of the narrator's efforts eventually.

There are books that feel girl-centric or woman-centric for which I would find a male narrator an odd choice. And I think I notice whether the narrator's gender matches the author's and/or protagonist's, when selecting audiobooks. I might also prefer female narrators in general because that's a voice that will be in my head for ten hours and there's Too Much Man already in much of my world. But gender considerations don't last past the first few minutes, and are overcome pretty easily by individual narrators I love.