In Brief
- Narration: One credit, Bridget Bordeaux, and the listing prints no cast, no sample note and no production credit.
- Themes: Fae politics and survival, love written as blessing and curse, escalating series stakes, cliffhanger endings.
- Mood: Relentless and emotionally battering.
- Verdict: Essential if the first four books are behind you, and close to unusable as an entry point.
One response here awards 4.5 stars in its headline, which is also the average printed at the top of the page, while the star field beside that same headline says four. The headline explains the gap in its own words: cliffhangers, and what they do to a reader's nerves. That is a useful first fact about this audiobook, because Cursed Fates is the fifth Zodiac Academy book, it runs twenty-six hours and seventeen minutes, and the entry that docked it a star still praises how easy the writing makes it to love or hate these characters.
What We Made of It
Easing anyone in is not what this description does. It opens after the devastating events at the academy, names Lionel as a threat, sets the nymphs against the entire fae race, and closes on a voice admitting that everything has already fallen apart. Nobody is introduced. Nothing is explained. Publisher copy this deep into a series is written for people who already own the first four books, and this copy makes no pretense otherwise.
A February 14, 2024 five-star describes the reading experience as being taken apart and reassembled on a loop, a whirlwind of heartbreak, passion and redemption, with star-crossed lovers and a recommendation to keep tissues within reach. That is a fair account of what this series has been selling since the academy setting started to darken. The same entry credits the writing to two people, which the byline on this page does not.
What the copy withholds is the shape of the volume. Twenty-six hours is a long stretch even by the standards of this series, and the description accounts for perhaps its opening situation. Anyone who has come this far already knows how the balance of siege, schooling and romance tends to fall. Anyone who has not will find nothing here to orient them, since the copy assumes the previous four books as background rather than summarizing them.
An April 2024 five-star puts the appeal plainly: a world where love works as both blessing and curse, and where the line between pain and passion keeps blurring. That entry also identifies the volume as Zodiac Academy number five and credits Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti together, which makes it the fullest identification of the book available anywhere on the page.
Length is the other argument. Twenty-six hours and seventeen minutes buys a great deal of accumulated consequence, and accumulation is what this series trades on: a betrayal lands in book five because you sat through books one to four. A February 2026 five-star filed from Australia calls this installment darker and heavier than what came before, with the characters fully developed and the twists arriving faster, which is roughly what a fifth volume is supposed to deliver.
Bridget Bordeaux is the only reader named on the record, and a single credit across twenty-six hours of a story told from inside its characters is a substantial piece of work. The description itself is written in a character's voice rather than a publisher's, moving from we to I within four sentences, so a listener is committing to that interior register for the length of a working week.
Things to Know Before Starting Cursed Fates
Zodiac Academy appears nowhere in the title line of this record. The series field carries it and the description mentions it once, so a buyer hunting for the fifth Zodiac Academy book by name is searching for words the title line does not contain. Three of the five written responses supply the series name themselves, which says something about how people actually refer to this book.
The byline is the other gap. Caroline Peckham holds the author field alone, while the publisher field reads Caroline Peckham, Susanne Valenti, one written response names both writers, and two more refer to the authors in the plural without naming them. Nothing is being concealed, but a co-author who survives only in a publisher credit is worth knowing about before you go looking for the rest of the pair's catalog.
The column under the recording repays reading for its dates as much as its opinions. This edition is dated December 21, 2021, and the five written responses span February 2024 to February 2026, two of them filed outside the United States. Eighty-one grades feed that 4.5, and five of the people behind them wrote something down; the rest recorded a number and moved on.
Genre placement is the last thing to check. The record sits under romance with a paranormal tag, and the description spends its four sentences on Lionel, the nymphs, the fae race and the business of surviving each day, with the romance implied rather than stated and no heat level indicated anywhere. The listing offers no content guidance of any kind either, so anyone who wants to know what these twenty-six hours actually contain has only the tone of the written column to go on, and that column is enthusiastic rather than descriptive.
Best Suited For
This one is for listeners already four books deep. If the earlier volumes are behind you, the case for continuing is straightforward, and one of the responses makes it in three words from the Netherlands in October 2024: love the series. That is the honest register of a fifth-volume audience, and it is not a bad reason to keep going into a twenty-six-hour installment.
Skip it if you want a self-contained paranormal romance, a resolved ending, or a shorter commitment inside a longer arc. Skip it too if sustained pressure on characters you have grown attached to is not what you listen for. The description's own closing line states that everything has already fallen apart, and the series field places this volume at number five rather than at the end.
It also suits a particular listening habit. Twenty-six hours is not a book you finish over a weekend; it is a runtime for people who stay inside one world for weeks and return to it in long stretches. Anyone who prefers a compressed story with a clean landing will find this built for the opposite effect, cumulative by design, with threads left open so that the volume after it has somewhere to begin. That is the trade this series has asked its listeners to accept since the first academy term.
Before You Listen
Can I start the series with this audiobook?
Not comfortably. The description opens after the events of the previous book, names Lionel and the nymphs without introducing either, and speaks in a character's voice that assumes you know whose voice it is. The series field places this at number five, and the copy behaves accordingly.
Does the Cursed Fates audiobook use more than one narrator?
The listing credits one reader, Bridget Bordeaux, for the full twenty-six hours and seventeen minutes. It names no second performer, no cast and no production team, which is worth checking against the sample if you have been listening to a different arrangement elsewhere in the series.
Does Cursed Fates end on a cliffhanger?
Everything on the page points that way. The description's closing line states that everything has already fallen apart, the series field places this at number five rather than at the end, and the copy introduces threats it plainly does not intend to settle inside this volume. Plan on starting the next book soon after.
Does the description spoil the earlier books?
It gives away the ending condition of book four rather than the plot of book five. Lionel is already a threat, the nymphs are already at war with the fae, and the voice narrating the copy states that the collapse has happened. Character names arrive with no introduction at all.
