bethiboo

Almost 6hrs before worthwhile character developmnt

Revisado: 04-28-19

The narration is stellar -- characters had distinctive but natural-sounding varied voices with immersive emotional changes. She is an excellent actor and her emoting was mesmerizing. Unfortunately, it took 5 hours and 40 minutes (yes, I counted the hours) before significant motion in the plot. The first half of the book was repetitive: wife senses somethings wrong, husband abuses wife, wife thinks it's all her, then segue into flashback. Then repeat for over 5 hours. The actual writing is quite good, lyrical and descriptive and pleasant to listen to. And the plot twists were well-done, albeit slightly predictable but appropriately so. They did not come out of left field but slowly (very slowly) clued you in. But I had to speed up the playback to get through the "yes, we know all this already!" sections of the book. The character development is just so stinking slow I found myself rolling my eyes, and once something different finally starts to happen it gets exciting, but then disappointingly slips back into the same formula as the beginning. I didn't finish the story thinking that the protagonist grew much at all and wouldn't just fall back into the same behaviors as 10 hours earlier in the story if in a similar situation. There's talented prose here, just maybe too much of it saying the same thing over and over that the plot's advancement is diluted.

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Surprising!

Revisado: 10-07-17

I didn't expect this to be as good as it was. I hadn't come across this author and figured it was just another teen angst book. I couldn't be more wrong. Sure, it's dramatic and lonely, but the writing is so superb and descriptive. In the author's notes at the end she states while the character found solace in drawing, she herself would write. However I found her wordsmithing so picturesque that I would say there's almost no difference. Additionally, the narrator was fantastic and it was immersively easy to follow in conversations with multiple characters without being distracted by forced accents or pitches. Definitely recommended.

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Surprisingly engaging!

Revisado: 02-02-14

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Randomly bought this for myself, but the kids caught a few minutes of it and I ended up having to start again from the beginning. About as many cuss words as they'd hear in school, so didn't sweat it too much. And it was totally worth their reactions and inspiration for discussion that followed. A great story to listen to with kids about bullying, and so well-done and well-written that I feel they really experienced the intense emotions and pondered the difficult decisions that the main character faced. Much better tool to teach the consequences of decisions than any anti-bullying pamphlet or lecture at school. The author really made us feel as uncomfortable, angry and torn as her characters -- which is the best lesson possible.

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characters overacted to the detriment of the story

Revisado: 02-02-14

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The majority of the characters are so overacted that you can't even follow what they are saying. One sounded like he had a mouthful of crackers and he was half-spitting/half-choking on them -- never understood his dialogue. Inconsistent sound levels made it difficult for listening in the car: harsh, loud, piercing music followed by mumbled, indistinct dialogue followed by screeching treble-cracking voices. Kids enjoyed it, but felt we missed quite a bit of the cleverness of the writing and having to constantly manage the volume was annoying.

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