Stop doing accents, you're embarrassing yourself!
These audiobooks do accents so badly they'll give you second-hand embarrassment. Please let me know what books I should add to this list.
created by displacedcactus
last updated August, 2026
Comments
Wolf Worm by T Kingfisher has three characters in1899 NC, USA doing an astonishing rendition of actively melting away every line, a la wicked witch. It feels ambiently racist. Love the actual book tho
I did see a few complaints about that! I'm glad I read it with my eyes.
This is a hilarious list.
Pucking Strong by Emily Rath features the worst Swedish accent I have ever heard.
Added! Bad Swedish accents are so cringe.
Omg i totally agree it is so fucking bad 😂 fun book imo, so the bad accent was really a shame
You know it’s the same dude that does the terrible accents in the Game Changers series? That’s prob why it’s so bad. 😂
Omg lol he needs to be (politely) stopped
I know! Why can they get actors that can actually do accent?! There are so many good ones out there.
I’m doing the Jacksonville Rays series. But I’m doing them in order. I haven’t as yet done this book. Now I’m holding my breath anxiously awaiting to see how bad it will be. 😭
I guess he's your go-to guy if you want a bad accent in your hockey romance!
It must be. Cause I can see no other reason why. 😂
That man is a crime
Yes! And it’s not fair for the authors or the books. Cause how many times do readers DNF a book cause they can’t deal with the narrator of the audio? (Independent of the actual quality of the book)
I need to find a clip of this 🤭
You know what, I’m going to bite the bullet and say it. We’re all thinking it. The Australian accent situation in Three Holidays and a Wedding was not ideal
Australian accents are so cartoony when they're bad!
i personally thought that the danish accent in The Princess Trap was done badly and gave me second hand embarrassment
Makes me glad I read it with my eyes!
Seconding this
Unfortunately I must recommend Ten Tomatoes that Changed The World. We were doing so good but 58% in and he started doing bad accents 😭😭
Dangit! I was going to do audio for that.
it's still pretty good overall, but it is slightly cringe
This is heartbreaking to hear ugh
haven’t listened myself but i’ve heard that ilya’s russian accent is atrocious in the heated rivalry audiobook
I've heard that too! Gonna add it!
Also Game Changer, the first book in that series, I had to actually go buy the paperback the same day cos the attempt at a Brooklyn accept was so bizarre
Oh no!
I came here to say the same about Game Changer. The attempt at Kip’s Brooklyn accent is absolutely awful.
I want to say, I’m super loving my current Robin Hobb trilogy (starting with Fool’s Errand) but the audiobook narrator is rough. All his female characters are awful and I think maybe he can only do a a French and Scottish accent so those are what he defaults to constantly even when it makes not sense at all. Also he’s constantly mispronouncing simple words. Like crochet (cro-shay) is not pronounced crochit 😮💨
Crochit? shudder Added!
I did a full body shudder.
Dear audiobook narrators it’s okay to look up a word when you aren’t sure how to say it. It just takes a minute I swear.
Sometimes I'm like "Is it me? Have I been saying it wrong this whole time?" but I would be very confident I was right about that!
Yes. Exactly. It took me a minute to even figure out what he was trying to say 😅
If Heated Rivalry is on here, Game Changer should be too because Kip's accent is ten times worse 😂 but up to you of course 🫡
It got two nominations, it's added!
I literally cringe to think on this too much, but there’s this book called Coyote America by Dan Flores (non-fiction!), and in the audiobook the narrator tells Native American stories with a cartoon, racist Native American accent. It’s… really bad. It was hard to get through those stories. They should have stopped it in production. Atrocious.
OH NO! Off to remove that audiobook from my TBR. Thank you for saving me!
Yeah it’s a bummer because the book content is interesting! But the audiobook accent is just so bad.
I'll have to read it with my eyes instead.
Omg incredible concept. Literally yesterday my partner and I had friends over, and one of them treated us to the experience of Kip's accent in Game Changer. Cue bafflement and horror all around.
The narrator for The London Seance Society by Sarah Penner does a heinous French accent that starts out like a bad Indian accent, becomes a bad Russian accent, then finally settles into something French-like but also still kind of Russian and Indian. She also pronounced chemise like "sheh-mize" and psychic as "physic." That last one almost made me ragequit but it was in the afterword. The book overall I thought was astonishingly bad even aside from the narrator, but she really elevated the experience /derogatory.
I feel like I'm going to have to go looking for examples of these bad hockey boy accents, LOL! Everyone is bringing them up!
Accents that wander around the globe are so awkward. Definitely adding that one!
HAHAHAHA this is the funniest list 😂 Katabasis by R F Kuang - the narrator has a very nebulous and shifting American accent for the main character
Oh no, a bad accent for the main character means you're doomed to hear so much of it!
It's such a bad auditory experience overall hahaha 😂
Thank you to everyone who has given such great fiction suggestions! I mostly do non-fic with my ears so you are helping me round out my list :)
The Spanish accent in Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is certainly…something.
Also in Atlas Six, Gideon is meant to be Acadian and he sounds like vaguely Eastern European for some random reason it killed me. Istg the narrator probably asked “where is Acadia” and someone was like “idk somewhere in Europe” THEY WERE SO FAR OFF. This man has never heard of chiac
Added and added. If you don't know where someplace is, you definitely shouldn't do the accent 😅
I laughed so hard at this list title/description.
Bunny by Mona Awad needs to be here. There was a bizarre attempt at a Scottish accent. Possibly the worst I've ever heard!
Oof! Adding it!
This list is so good and so necessary! Unfortunately Ronan Farrow does a ton of bad accents in Catch and Kill as well.
Added!
I started listening to the audiobook for River of Teeth (American Hippo 1) and immediately stopped. Not great southern accent.
Oh no! I really enjoyed reading that one with my eyes but it sounds like a bad audio experience.
Tbh I'm not the best person to tell whether or not an accent it accurate but I do know that I turned around and checked out the eBook.
Sometimes an accent is so bad that even though you don't know quite what it should sound like, you know that ain't it.
Until the Melody Ends By Gillian Eliza West. I believe the audiobook recently released and maybe it's because it's not a duet, but the accent for the MMC is so bad (crying). I do believe he's a vampire and they went for a dracula kind of accent and it's just so cringe to me lol
Oh no, you can't take a character seriously if they have a dracula accent!
May I suggest The Vampire Lestat? That sure...was an accent! Yep!
Why yes you may!
A suggestion, Like Real People Do by E.L. Massey absolutely butchered a Russian accent in both the audiobook and the actual text. It was so horribly offensive that when it kept happening, that was the last drop for me to give up on the book.
Oof. I unfortunately could not read Guava Flavored Lies for this reason
Cute title though!
This is hilarious. I will have to go back and look through some of my old reads. I know there were some interesting takes.
I may low key read some of these for a wild swing.
If you know what you're in for, it might be funny!
all of the ROTE audiobooks switching the Fool’s accent and then pronunciation of different names i could hardly keep up 😭😭 this list is so funny
I've heard that's an issue with that series.
yes! the narrators change per series of books and it can really throw you for a loop 😩
What Moves The Dead by T. Kingfisher should absolutely be on here. That narrator was awful 😵💫
Oh no! Glad I read it with my eyes.
