Quinn Audio is a paid app that offers immersive erotic short stories that, IMO, are organized by trope and archetype in a way that will appeal to romance readers (enemy to lover, forbidden work relationship, etc). You can pay by month or by year.
One of the draws to Quinn is that some of the narrators are famous actors that listeners might be familiar with, like Jamie Campbell, Hudson Williams, and Connor Storrie.
I started with Yes, Chef narrated by Shawn Hatosy from The Pitt. It took a minute for me to get the hang of things because I’m used to listening to audio books. This is different: the narrator reads a story (in this case released in chapters) from their point of view. There’s no dialogue or voice from a second party. In the scenes where the narrator is supposed to be talking to another party we gauge what is said based on their responses.
For example, the narrator might say, “What do you mean I didn’t follow you back on instagram? (pause) Oh, I didn’t know I was supposed to do that.”
We never actually hear the other character say anything like “Hey why didn’t you follow me back on Instagram?” We inuit that from the response.
It’s kind of weird, listening to half the conversation and while I think some listeners will adapt like I did, others might hate it.
The story was also told as if the narrator, in this case Grant Reilly, is recounting the story of meeting “you,” a sous chef named Iris Adams. It’s kind of like a [Y/N] fanfic where the listener occupies the space of the second character.
This achieves a lot of intimacy in the narrative because it sounds like another person is speaking directly to you about events that have occurred. It’s an intimacy that could absolutely sell the app to some listeners, while turning off others completely.
This is not something I want to listen to in public spaces. I’m not comfortable listening to something this intimate while at work. I could absolutely see myself accidentally connecting to some bluetooth device while Jamie Campbell Bower purrs “Good girl” throughout the office forcing me to fake my own death and move to another country.
That said, it does work for me in cases where I want an immersive story, but I don’t have the attention span for more than a short story. Because the stories are brief and the plot is relatively simple, there isn’t a lot of room to get lost.
It’s also extremely immersive. Behind the narration is background noise appropriate to the scene. For example, a scene narrated by a chef working in a restaurant had all the appropriate kitchen sounds like clinking dishes. As the scene progressed to the restaurant being closed with the narrator cleaning up, you could hear the spritz of squirt bottles and the soft sound of sweeping. That background noise really pulled me into the audio and made me feel like I was present in the story.
This feeling of immersion can flip the opposite direction depending on how you feel about “moist” sounds. I don’t know if I have misophonia or what but the wet sounds of people kissing make me gaggy (see my Bachelor recaps) so I Did Not Like the kissing sounds that show up in the erotic scenes. There are other moist sounds, too, associated with thrusting or oral sex, so just beware. These stories are very explicit.
I listened to a couple of the multi chapter Quinn Originals. The Trials narrated by Jamie Campbell Bower is very Dramione coded.
The one-shot offerings were less my thing. It’s a single chapter offering that’s basically just a sex scene. There’s no real background or story to get into. The one I listened to was an aftercare and tender sex scene taking place after a rough sex session. You don’t need to know anything to jump into it, but it also felt less transportive because of that lack of background.
Overall, this app isn’t for me. There aren’t that many multi chapter originals, which is the offering I enjoy, and I can’t listen to it everywhere. That means I’m not really getting my money’s worth. I can see this working really well for other listeners though, so I’m giving it a middle of the road grade.
