Brandi Swingley

Questionable production and narration, excellent story.

Revisado: 06-25-24

Excellent third installment to the Seven Waters series, but the audio performance left a lot to be desired. The narrator gave it a lot of heart and for that I appreciate her, but the editing was choppy at best and there were a lot of mispronounced names and misplaced inflections. I've come to expect this from Audible Exclusive content. Very very low production quality that ultimately does both the story and the narrators telling them a disservice.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Familiar story in a remarkable setting.

Revisado: 01-21-23

I’ve deliberately avoided reading reviews for this book. I know what they’ll say.

Every adult survivor of childhood trauma burdened with the task of breaking generational cycles of pain, lest they be passed on to our own children, knows what they will say. Every parent trying hard to reparent ourselves before we hurt our children the way we were hurt knows what they will say.

“You’re airing too much dirty laundry.”
“You’re ungrateful.”
“You’re disrespectful.”
“Lower your expectations.”

We can talk all day about how the gilded setting of this man’s trauma makes it different from yours, or mine. About how the ability to take for granted things like food, an excellent education, and a sky-high platform are privileges that not all of us had. Those observations are true, there’s no doubt about it.

But what shines through to me is the hurts that are universal, that exist regardless of the decor or the status or the posh accents: the conditional nature of the love and support of narcissists, the lack of personal identity when one’s entire life has been built around one’s usefulness to their narcissistic family, the absolute assassination of character that comes with breaking away from the cycle of abuse, the loathing of the spouse of those who break away as if they caused the problem.

Despite the unfamiliar setting, despite alien concepts like “handing the rifle to the loader” or “popping over for a quick trip to another continent on a whim”, Harry’s story resonated deeply with me. I cried for him, and for all of us in this cycle breaking generation. Because in the end, there is no amount of money or power that can heal a broken family that doesn’t want to be healed, nor tend the wounds of the grown children left to find our way to peace without them.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Educational and unexpectedly emotional

Revisado: 12-01-22

A beautifully written and impeccably researched book. I learned more than I expected to, and the writing made what could have been very dry material incredibly compelling.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Thinly veiled anti-communist propaganda

Revisado: 04-28-21

I was incredibly excited by the science of this book, but once we arrived at discussing the contributions of the USSR, science went out the window for politics. We heard more about the poor quality of Soviet souvenirs than we did about their contributions to medical science, and what contributions WERE discussed were trivialized or framed as mad scientist insanity - even when it very closely mirrored what was being done in the US.

Moreover, the author's outright dismissal of the USA's history of experimentation on POC communities as Soviet propaganda beyond the days of slavery was disturbing and wildly inaccurate, while also someone trivializing experimentation on human beings as long as it was only on enslaved human beings.

I didn't just hate this book, I'm insulted by it. Shame on Brandy Schillace.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 2 personas