I hate graphic audio with a passion. I tried but I just can't tolerate graphic audio narration. Well, it's not so much the narration itself. That part is usually well done but the music and sound effects are so bad and unnecessary. They make even the most genuine and well-written emotional scene into a sappy soap opera and even the best-paced action scene into a bad b-movie.
You can imagine it like this:
Someone drops a scoop of ice cream and immediately a heart-breaking violin solo starts to play. It's just WAAAY too much.

I have listened to well-done audio dramas before but graphic audio just doesn't do a good job.

Lula Doyle and Brogan Gauge met in the 1930s. They seemed unsuitable for each other but fell in love and planned to marry - until the day when vampires attacked them and left them near dead. Lula survived - she did not turn into a vampire but did not remain human either; Brogan mostly died. Their souls somehow connected, pieces of each ended up in the other and here they are more than 80 years later, traveling up and down Route 66 - Lu Gauge (as she styles herself now) driving; Brogan staying by her side. Did I forget to mention that Brogan is also invisible and they can really see each other only for a minute at a time, and rarely, with the help of an old clock? The magic that tied them together seems to be connected to the Route - so they stay on it and keep traveling up and down - while the world moved away and runs on the new highways. And in all of these years, they never gave up - they will find a way to get back among the living or they will find whoever cursed them that way and make sure they are very dead. In the meantime, Lu uses her talent to see magical objects and tracks them down for a man who pays her well for any object she finds.

In the first novel of the series, Lu and Brogan get stranded in a small town alongside Route 66 after she buys a truck that had seen better days (despite Brogan's attempt to stop her - being invisible makes things a bit harder). Except that it may not have been incidental - a ghost gives them a link to an object that may help them (although they don't seem to be the only ones who want it) and Lu cannot stop herself of playing Cupid while she is in the area anyway - her long lasting love had makes her try to give the same to everyone (not always working very well but... she still tries). She does not have any special powers in that regard - except 80 years on the road, with the man she loves, without being able to be with the man she loves.

The novel can be almost cloyingly sweet in some places, cliched in others but the premise works. I cared about Lu and Brogan (even if I wonder if they would have survived if they were able to be together - Brogan talks to Lu all the time, she senses some of it (sometimes via her dog, sometimes in a less normal way) but they also had been together for so long that sometimes she knows what he will say). The budding romance she was trying to assist was as cliched as it was sweet - in a good way. The end of the novel finally sets the series up - this first book is really an introduction (I do wonder if it would not have worked better as a novella really - there is enough that could be cut without losing the story).

Urban fantasy tends to be set in cities (thus the genre name) and pulling it out of them and tying it to Route 66 makes this one different. Making Brogan not exactly a ghost (we even get an explanation of titled realities and what's not) and Lu not exactly human adds to that difference. Add vampires, gods and other supernatural beings and other supernatural beings (although we meet just a few and only hear of others) and the world has a lot to be explored. And it works. It may not have been an award winning series and it may have issues but I liked it enough to stay with the series (and to even look at other books by the author). Some online reviews mention that this novel has some connections to a previous series By the author - if that is so, it was unobtrusive and one can start reading with this book. ( )