H. DeFilippis

Passable for newcomers

Revisado: 08-24-18

2.5 Stars

This is a *very* basic introduction into Harry Potter. Sadly, there's very little, if anything, that present fans of the series will find to enjoy in the listening.

The narrators at times sounded a bit stilted and lacked enthusiasm for the subject. As one was supposed to be a total newcomer to the world of Harry Potter that was alright, but I was surprised at the other who was supposedly a life long fan.

Also, despite saying that this is a spoiler free piece, there are more than a few instances where there are plot points discussed that should be considered spoilers. I shook my head at those as they kept happening.

For something celebrating the 20th anniversary of Harry, I think a lot more energy and excitement should've gone into this. It was such a letdown.

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A natural classic for dreamers and hopefuls alike

Revisado: 07-24-18

Rating: 3.5 Stars (Performance: 4 Stars; Story: 3 Stars)

Anne of Green Gables is a classic novel that I remember begging to purchase in a Waldenbooks years ago when I was a child. Sadly I cannot remember if I ever did read it; I think I did and I do have that copy on my shelf. Luckily, Jess at Audiobookwork Promotions gave me the opportunity to listen to an edition of this widely beloved tale as part of the Adopt-an-Audiobook Program, for which I'm very thankful.

Audiobook Review

Laurel Schroeder is the narrator of Spoken Realms's version of Anne. Before starting this book, I'd never heard her perform before, but now that I have, I would add her to the list of narrators or voice actors that I would be happy to listen to again. The pitch in her voice never reached a level that I found unpleasant, a point that I hold to be very important with audiobooks.

Laurel read very clearly and didn't mumble at all, also very important. I never strained to hear what was going on, even when it was implied that a character might be reserved in their speech. It was easy enough to tell the characters apart, as far as the adults went. I thought that the children, aside from Anne, tended to sound a bit too similar overall. 

The sound quality was excellent. There was no scratchiness in the background, no unnecessary musical elements between chapters or added nature sounds that tried to force a sense of setting. The writing and the voice actor did that just fine on their own. Letting these factors shine rather than adding in surplus bits was a smart decision on the part of the production company.

Anne of Green Gables translates very well to an audiobook format. If anything, I think it gains something in the transition because a lot of what makes Anne special is her energy and her fondness for stories, something which someone can imagine, but which can really be enhanced by a good narrator, which Laurel Schroeder was. All the enthusiasm that Anne had for life leaped right off the page and came to life in the air around me as I was listening. If you're going to listen to any audiobook presentation of Anne of Green Gables, I would recommend this one.

Text Review

The execution of bringing L.M. Montgomery's book to life was exceptional and got me to enjoy it quite a lot more than I think I would have if I were reading a physical edition. 

Montgomery's text, I had to remember, was written over a hundred years ago and there were some sentiments that were definitely of the time, especially regarding other nationalities.

The author also tended to wax poetical about nature, particularly flowers. Flowers in and of themselves are nice enough, but it felt like, after awhile, I was hearing about them far too often and I began to tire of the frequent occurrences and the time spent on said occurrences. 

Another thing about that I thought I noticed about the writing was that Montgomery tended to tell rather than show, particularly when there were large periods of time to be gotten past. As the reader we didn't get to experience these times with Anne or her fellows, we just got a passing mention of the months that had passed before the author got to the point she'd really wanted to write about. For example, Anne's time spent at Queen's school was hardly mentioned at all, even though it was extremely important to her as a character.

A branching off point to this is that because of the abundance of telling rather than showing, I felt like there wasn't as much heart to the overall novel as there could have been. Anne is a character that is ready to be in your heart forever and in the scenes where she's allowed to be herself, she truly exhibits this. As the novel progressed, though, and she spent more time among the people of Avonlea and more time was "told", it felt like she wasn't that girl anymore. Oh sure, we were told she was, that she had the old love of stories still, but it felt like her soul was being tramped down to make her respectable in the eyes of the people around her, like she wasn't really allowed to be herself after all.

Conclusion

The narration performance of Laurel Schroeder makes this book a much more pleasant performance than I think reading the page would have been. I'd recommend buying this Audible version if at all possible if you're thinking of reading Anne of Green Gables because your experience will be infinitely better. Here's hoping Laurel will do more in the series of Anne books.





I received this audiobook at no-cost from Audiobookworm Promotions. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.

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A Greek family saga about choices...

Revisado: 12-15-17

Rating: 3.5 Stars

I've come to realize that family sagas are one of the most interesting types of books that I read this year. There is, of course, my favorite: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith; too there was Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. As the year draws to a close, I was able to read/listen to Evanthia's Gift, a story of Greek immigrants and their family as they move back and forth between Greece and America and, finally, raise their children as Greek-Americans in a time when identity is something hard to pinpoint, particularly one that has dual countries contributing to who they are.

The book opens with betrayal, but even in that Anastacia, the first main character, finds some hope: her daughter, Sophia. As the story progresses there is still much doubt and pain. Anastacia struggles with what to tell Sophia about her father and, with her friends old and new, the lingering effects of World War II in their homeland, Greece.

The movement from her earliest feelings of betrayal to the slow effort of healing, delayed as it was by self-doubt and trouble from the past, was a tender experience for Anastacia and her readers. There were moments of beauty, such as when she is walking through her hometown and by the sea during her later honeymoon. There were almost moments of personal pain, such as recovering from a late-term miscarriage and hysterectomy. Anastacia was a strong character, even at rock bottom moments, and her and Alex were a wonderful couple to read about.

There were reminiscences throughout that were painful and saddening. Anastacia remembering rationing and the black market. Alex recalling trying to find a beloved merchant and searching the place he knew him most likely to be: boarding a train, guarded by Nazis. Not to compare the heartache to these previous examples, but even the love of the young, the desperation in the relationship between Sophia and Dean, was hard to bear because of their young age, the intensity of such feelings, and the knowledge that there is heartbreak in their past and probably their future as well.

I wasn't a fan when the story turned from Anastacia and Alex and their generation to that of their children because it felt like two separate stories that were only loosely connected. Sophia was a bit difficult to like half of the time because of her infatuation with Dean. Her determination was almost admirable in that she knew what she wanted and held on to that, but I think it hurt her in some ways because she was pinning so much hope and almost her entire future on this one guy when she was still so young. There's an entire future ahead of her, but from the age of twelve onward she's sure that she would go through anything, wait forever even, if only Dean could be hers.

Anastacia and Alex's relationship was much more emotionally rich than that of Sophia and Dean. When things go wrong between them, primarily Dean's fault through some lies with Sophia, much weight is loaded upon her. Her melancholy is exaggerated, too intense, and yet Dean puts the burden on her, refusing to accept responsibility for his part. A textbook teen romance, something of Lifetime movies, once Sophia and Dean started dating, their relationship and the dissolution of it, was a serious downswing in readability.

Sophia states at one point that she has grown as a dancer and as a person; while I might accept her dancing ability, her growth as a person is debatable because of her pining for Dean, her insistence that he will be the only man for her ever, despite their separation and the pain he's put her through by keeping their relationship a secret.

Dean continued to be a disgusting character that I disliked more and more as time went on. His possessiveness of Sophia, even years later, was creepy as hell, especially since he kept insisting he'd evolved and moved on with a woman named Elizabeth. Sophia wasn't much better, frustrating as she was clinging to Dean, to the past, almost as much as he was. The callbacks to Romeo & Juliet were cringe worthy in their accuracy.

The way the secondary female characters Irini (Anastacia's sister) and Elizabeth (Dean's wife) were treated as "developed" characters was disgusting. They were set up as shrewish if only to bolster the primary ladies in their generation. Loading them down in favor of other women felt extreme and a bit hostile. While Elizabeth admittedly had some traits, some snobbishness, that made her unlikable, I think I understood some of her aversion to Dean's family. Considering how they treated her, his parents because she wasn't Greek and his sister because she wasn't Sophia, I don't blame her for sticking to the people she knew and was comfortable with.

The second generation in this family saga was full of people that couldn't figure out their own minds and kept making bad decisions regarding personal relationships. The silent treatment doesn't work and as much as the reader is meant to like Sophia, I kept rolling my eyes at her childish behavior. From seventeen to the end of the book, she in particular felt immature; at 41, her voice, her presence in the book, doesn't feel like she's grown from where she started.

Emily Lawrence was a very good narrator. The quality of her voice made the epic story a pleasant experience and that's essential, particularly when the book was so long. Her accent for the first generation of the story was, as far as I could tell, accurate and it set them apart from their children, who know Greek but have grown up primarily in the United States and thus have more exposure to American sounding voices.

The beginning of this book was far superior to the later two-thirds and while I disliked Sophia, Dean, and others of that time period, Anastacia and Alex's story is worth the read. The interludes of Greek recipes and of excerpts from poems and philosophy texts, while not always making sense in context, were a nice way to break up the monotony of the drier moments. I would not count this among my favorite family sagas, but I think it might reach others that enjoy lighter novel atmospheres, wanting to branch out.



I received a copy of this book from the Audiobookworm Promotions in exchange for an honest review.

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A dark & stormy mystery

Revisado: 10-21-17

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Trigger warning: racism

Part Murder, She Wrote episode, part Clue, this full cast production audiobook of Catch Me If You Can begins as any good, classic mystery might: in a dark and stormy night. Lois, a young woman out "snorkeling", is caught in a category four hurricane and washed ashore, only to be rescued by a guest of the manor house where some sort of gathering is occurring. It isn't long before it is clear that Lois isn't the only one to be wary of; everyone is suspicious whether outwardly brash Bob or one of the more "innocent" seeming guests.

My first impressions were thus: 1. These guests and the story's circumstances reminded me of the movie Clue, what with everyone running about, and 2. Lois is not the innocent lead she seems, as evidenced by the first few scenes of chapter two.

The vocal cast was well chosen. Their voices were neither too grating nor too monotone. Ranging from, I'm guessing, 30-40's up to a few elderly guests, there was a wide variety of personalities. Each was well defined, which is a plus. There were two that were a bit exaggerated: Bob, the brash man that was around for most of the story and a supposed investigator of some sort; and Andy, a reporter who shows up near the end of the story, who sounds like a two-bit gangster from a twenties flick.

With an audiobook narrated by a single person your expectations may be limited, but those expectations rise when more people are brought into the mix. There's more drama, more ways to stretch the material. The expanded vocal cast combined with the sound effects, heavy handed as they were at times, made it easy to see them in my head, to picture them sniping at each other, moving about the rooms of the manor house, etc.

One of the difficulties I did encounter right from the start with sound quality were the noises from the storm. It was too loud in parts, obscuring parts of dialogue and making it difficult to understand what the characters were saying. The roaring of the wind, the lashing of the rain at the windows, it was too much.

The mystery of the story, the murders that take place within the manor house under the cover of the storm (Hurricane Brian, in fact), was moderately interesting. It was simple enough to follow along, even as more victims appeared. I was wondering at some points whether the point would be gotten to, but I believe that all questions were answered by the end. There were some twists that I starting guessing at, but I didn't guess the final ones at the end, which was nice. As much as I try to see the ending coming, it's fun to not see it coming 100% of the way.

There was a bit of a romance between Lois and one of the guests, which I was not really meshing with, for at least two reasons: 1. Instalove is very much not my thing and even if it was 2. it was not written believably. Lois and this person get together far too easily/quickly for much about their relationship, if you want to call it that, to be believable. I'd believe her adopting the dog in the book more than I'd believe her ending up with the guy.

Something that I think would have made the book a whole lot better would have been for the casual racism in the book to have been wiped out. Not that there's ever a need for it to be in a book, but if the characters had at least been called out on it, it would have been something. There were several examples that annoyed me because there was nothing added to the story by the author including them.

Early on, when Tia is introduced, there is a comment on how Lois can tell she's Asian because of her hair and such, but she can't tell the difference between Chinese, Japanese, and Taiwanese. 

Later, Victor makes a comment about Tia's reaction to Mike (note: Mite? I couldn't hear the name clearly) the dog, asking don't all Chinese like dogs and she replies "only on a menu". No one says anything about this and the only reaction we get, so to speak, is Lois wondering if Tia meant it as a joke, but not thinking so.

There's also a time when the group is waiting out the night in a room and most are sleeping while Lois, Tia, and Cookie are keeping watch. Under the guise of girl talk to keep boredom at bay, Cookie presses Tia to reveal her heritage, where her parents, her ancestors are from, and wondering why she's ashamed of revealing it. She even says she's not ashamed to say she's Irish and English: English because of her coloring, Irish because of her fiery temper. The racism toward Tia and defense of it with European stereotyping was irritating and unnecessary in the course of the story.

Jared, one of the other guests, tells Lois she should thank "their Asian friend" for saving her from an incident. Later, when files are recovered on the guests that managed to get to the manor, Tia's revealed that she arrived via a flight from Beijing and Cookie exclaims that at least they now know she's Chinese. This was annoying and arrogant; just because she came on a flight from one country doesn't mean she's of that country's ethnicity. 

Then there is Lois's suspicion of Rajah, a fellow guest, of one of the subsequent murders,  primarily because he's Iranian and aren't "they sworn enemies of Americans" rather than a simple fact like he had opportunity. His race/ethnicity had nothing to do with it. It's later revealed he isn't even Iranian (not that that excuses her hasty, racist judgement; he was judged by his appearance, lumping all Asians together.

The romance between Lois and Victor felt flimsy and forced. It wasn't necessary for the story and the places were it was shoehorned in felt quite awkward, especially when they were in the garage and we were getting an info dump of their theories about the murderer(s).

As far as a mystery goes, I liked it well enough and I would recommend it for fans of the genre, but I would caution that it would be best listened to in as short a time as possible so as to keep characters, motives, and what not straight, and also that there are racist comments that really have no place in the story.













I received a copy of this book from the Audiobookworm Promotions in exchange for an honest review.

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Sore disappointment would be an understatement

Revisado: 06-03-17

This is the book that did it, the one that made me want to invent a negative star rating system because I hated it so much that it was the audio version of watching a train wreck that only seemed to get worse by jumping the track and going down Main Street, taking out little old ladies and puppies along the way.

I'll be quite frank with you, I hated this book. If it were possible to give a negative star rating, something I've never hoped for before, even in the case of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, this would be the book. Therefore, things might get a little rant-like at times. I encourage you to bear with me because I have reasons for hating it as much as I do and I'll explain them.

First, let me start with some not quite so horrible things.

Cover

This book is a lesson in not judging a book by its cover. It's a good cover in general, but for this particular book it was all wrong. Going by what I saw, I thought that it might be a murder mystery of some kind. Why you might ask? There's the titular to-do list with "Kill Cal" on it, a cleaver on the table, and blood dripping from the "t" in "List". It's the perfect cover for one of those "lite" mysteries that I imagined it to be. For the book it ended up being? It fails at conveying almost anything in relation to the book.

Narration (Sara K. Sheckells)

The sound quality of the narration was good. There was no static like quality to it and I could hear the narrator's enunciation well.

The narrator herself was something of a 50/50 situation. Her narration when not dealing with character voices was good. It was neither too high pitched nor too low. However, when she tackled the different characters, the male voices sounded quite fake. A good narrator should be able to, even with a different gendered character, present a decent front in their act, but I didn't get that in the portrayal of either Cal or Luke. Clark's stutter sounded accurate, but when his diction got better, his voice blended with the narrator's natural voice and faded into the background.

The women's voices were slightly better. They were each unique, at least, but the life behind them didn't feel special or particularly vivacious. Ginny's voice had a bit of a nasal, speaking-to-a-child-like quality to it that didn't make sense and probably added to the reasons why I didn't like her.

This is the first time I've heard this narrator and I might be willing to give her a chance again, but I think that I'd prefer it if it were a non-fiction book or one with no conversation, as that seems to be her weakness.

The Book - Plot

This part is going to be long. There will be SPOILERS and a Trigger Warning (sexual assault) within because I wrote notes as I was listening to this story and expounded upon the parts that bothered me, so fair warning. Also, I will make notes as to what percent I noted some things at, which pertain to the Audible version of this book, in case you decide to listen to this yourself.

Starting very early on in the story (7%), it was evident that the people in Ginny’s life were awful. I was still on her side in the beginning mostly because she only seemed to have one decent person around: her co-worker, Clark. Margie, her only other co-worker and one that she insinuates has the job because of her connections to the mother of Ginny’s boss, makes comments behind Ginny’s back that we overhear and is “subtly” rude to her face.

Ginny herself was a confusing character here too because she had issues with flip-flopping emotions regarding people and things, making it difficult to get a grasp on what she really felt about them or thought: i.e. first she says Margie is cold/distant, then she’s personable and able to get the children at the library they work in to listen; also Ginny’s comments about her leather shoes being unforgiving, then breaking in wonderfully, then horribly tight again. The inconsistencies in her observations of things made her a conundrum to me.

Things got worse because it became evident, once we met Ginny’s husband Cal (10-14%), that she was being emotionally abused. The problem with the handling of this subject in the book was that it wavered between possibly being severe underappreciation and downright emotional abuse. It takes so long for anyone to even hint at anything being wrong, let alone address the actual issue, that I couldn’t be sure if that was what the author was intending, for Ginny to be an emotionally abused character.

Noticing it before the characters did, though, made it easy to spot the parts in her life where it was affecting her (17%). It made it difficult for her to complete her job, for her to work with anyone at the library, including Margie and her boss, Owen.

At (24%), while Ginny is blind to her own situation, I am glad that she sees and tries to intervene for her daughter. It's heartbreaking to see her not realize that she's ​in the same position she's warning Kelly away from, which Kelly is smart enough to finally confront her on. Ginny's kids have grown up seeing her abused and thinking it's ok, which is why Kelly's in this pickle. After the night when this occurs, though, it gets dropped again and not really talked about, which seemed like an odd moment of clarity before getting swept under the rug again.

I was painfully aware of how done with this book I was at (28%), but little did I know that things would get worse. At (42%), the book took a turn from the unlikeable and boring to the downright disgusting. We’ve already established that Ginny is an abused character and given the visual marketing for this book, I would never have suspected that there was this kind of content within, but I have to include a TRIGGER WARNING for instances of sexual assault.

Cal rapes his wife and all Ginny is worried about is soothing his ego. If she hadn’t been set up as so damn unlikable earlier in the book, before the emotional abuse even took place, this might have had a different effect other than disgust. The fact that it happens and is never mentioned again, not even to Ginny’s divorce attorney later in the book, feels like a slap in the face. Such a traumatic event shouldn’t be used for shock value.

Ginny, at some point, thought that it would be interesting and fun to sign up for a trial subscription to a dating site. Okay, fine, but then she starts to lead one of the men on (44%). Doing so is a despicable action. She knows that he’s a real person and yet she pretends to be a real person, someone that can be with him for something like a date for coffee, when she is not. This is prior to her separation, so no, it’s no okay. It definitely would’ve been cheating, even with the sorry excuse for a husband she has. To make matters worse, she used a fake name and a fake picture, so right then she was cat fishing and I hated her for it. While I did feel sorry for Luke initially, once he does find out about her deception, he completely forgives her for it and they start moving towards dating. That is either completely unbelievable or the moment when I gave up on Luke as a serious person. How could he trust a thing she said when she admitted that everything they’d shared until that point was a lie, even her name?

To further why I don't like Ginny, despite her being a pitiable character at this stage in the book, she’s started constantly makes snide little remarks about people. Like Jackie, the receptionist at Curves and old friend (remakes about her "prepubescent" body). Like Margie, an elderly woman who, while admittedly not a great person, has hearing problems and can't cope as well these days.

Moving on in the book, once she’s separated from Cal and she’s thinking of dating Luke, she has this interaction with Jackie, her friend, that begins something in the narrative I felt was disturbing.

When Ginny is talking to Jackie about meeting Luke, she wonders if she’s racist because she reveals that Luke is black (which, to my memory, is the first time his race is ever mentioned) and she’s nervous. Jackie comments that she doesn’t think Ginny is racist, merely cautious because all women need to be cautious these days, especially if you’re meeting someone from online. That was said, I was done, moving on.

HOWEVER, then Ginny is waiting in the car prior to her date with Luke and is having second thoughts and, rather than thinking she’d made a mistake meeting a man from the Internet, she specifically states a black man from the Internet. While she’s not a vile racist spewing slurs all over the place, that statement right there is evidence there’s at least a little racism going on in that head of hers and excusing it under the guise of caution annoyed me. The author could’ve left Ginny’s thoughts at a man from the Internet, but by adding that note she added another layer of meaning and not a good one, rather a potentially harmful one that wasn’t necessary.

And while we’re on the subject, once she does meet Luke for the date, while I’m saying caution is good, Ginny throws what little she had, laced as it was with the aforementioned bad feeling, to the wind because she assumes that based on Luke’s appearance he couldn’t possibly be a rapist or a murderer. This has nothing to do with skin color, just his clean cut appearance. Dear God, woman, ANYONE can be a serial killer or rapist, have you not seen American Psycho? I don’t understand how Ginny could flip between these two extremes so quickly.

(87%) really highlighted something a genuinely foolish act on Ginny’s part that felt like the cherry on top of the hate I’d gathered for this character. She and Cal are moving on with the divorce. He has, at some point, found out about her trial dating service, and threatens to use that as leverage in the divorce (yet another thing that is mentioned once and never again). So, when Ginny finally does read the divorce contract that was served to her, she reads it carefully, apparently…and then signs it without showing it to her lawyer.

That was the single STUPIDEST thing I think she did in the entire book. She had no history with law, other than reading a couple of books in preparation for getting divorced, she knows nothing about the intricacies of a contract, but because she thinks it sounds fair after a couple of reads she decides to just go ahead and sign it without showing her lawyer. I was really hoping for something to back to bite her in the ass at that point because she would’ve deserved it for being so quick to sign and careless. She only thought about how foolish it was after she’d dropped the contract off in the mailbox.

After that horrible incident, things were starting to wrap up and I was coming to the conclusion that, while I felt sorry for Ginny because of the emotional abuse and disliked her for a great deal of other things, there was no way the author could make me hate her more. I was wrong. She holds a barbecue at her house, inviting some friends, and while that was nice, one of the people she invites is her old co-worker, Clark (he was downsized early on in the story) and his girlfriend Maya. Her treatment of Maya demonstrated that she puts down other people to, ostensibly, make herself feel better about being plus size (which is NOT a bad thing, but it’s her issue here).

(95%) When Clark shows up with his girlfriend, Maya, Ginny describes her as bland. Seeing as Ginny doesn’t know her very well and doesn’t have the slightest idea what the relationship is like, this was insulting. When she accepts the tulips that Maya brought and is out of the room, she was internally gleeful that Maya was bland. This haughty and bitchy reaction was due, in part, to Ginny believing that Clark had had, and might still have, a crush on her, which she enjoyed even though she hadn’t been in a position to act upon it.

Maya was among strangers and it never occurred to Ginny that maybe she’s uncomfortable around them. Ginny never had any interest in Clark as a love interest until he was taken by someone else. That was infuriating because, again, she has NO idea what Clark and Maya’s relationship is like outside of this one time she’s meeting her.

At the end, the very end, Ginny has decided to go to law school and start a practice to help abused women and their families. That was the best move she probably made the entire book.

The Book - Pacing

The book lagged so badly through the majority of the story. I would check the finished percentage fairly infrequently and still be astonished at how little progress was being made. The littlest things were dragged out, like Ginny's obsession with Arby's or her engaging with her dog; the trouble with Kelly that never really amounted to anything. She was never really punished, not in a meaningful way, nor did she have to see a counselor of any kind for her acting out behavior (pot smoking, excessive lying, etc). The only time a counselor was brought up was after the divorce papers were signed, when Kelly's whole demeanor had changed. It's like a light switch flipped and I still don't know why.

I think that a lot of the excess material from this book could have been removed, turning it into a novella, and maybe, MAYBE, it would have been salvageable. As it is, there's no way I'll consider picking up another book by this author. This was too bad of an experience to warrant trying again.







I received this audiobook at no-cost from Audiobookworm Promotions. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.

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A M/M steampunk romance with adventure & intrigue

Revisado: 03-15-17

I haven't read a good steampunk novel in awhile and this was a beautiful introduction back into that intricate, amazing world. It was also a relatively new experience because I rarely review audiobooks and was given this chance by Jess from Audiobookworm Promotions and Forever Young Audiobooks. I am very thankful to both individual and group because it was a fun, grand, wild ride.

I really liked not only the time period that the story of Timekeeper was set in, but the characters that made up the world I as a reader was introduced to. The romance was beautiful and yet tragic, but not in a cheesy or comical way, which can be a problem at times. Oftentimes I find books that try for a tragic romance overdo it and make a mockery of the characters. Danny and Colton were a strange couple, what with one being a human and one being a clock spirit. Their relationship never felt forced nor instantaneous. It felt cultivated from a friendly beginning, challenged by their circumstance, and concluding with an ending that, if not a fairy tale happily-ever-after one, is at least happily-for-the-foreseeable-future.

The embrace of steampunk technology in this book was very well done. It wasn't used as an accessory or simple set dressing. The gears and cog-work in a Victorian setting had a true purpose and an extraordinarily important one, considering the way that the author set up how time and the clock towers support human life in individual towns.

Tara Sim had an unique way of presenting the concept of time and how it can be controlled and manipulated. The very fact that a town can be dependent upon its clock tower for its very life was aw inspiring. That wasn't the only part that got me to thinking, though. I was a bit confused by Danny's use of the very fibers of time toward the end of the novel. There were hints about it throughout the novel, but when he actually got around to using the threads of time to stop and start time in order to stop a villain, I wasn't 100% sure how he was doing it. It sounds a complicated process that Danny will have to explore more; hopefully he will do so in a future book, if only so that we can understand his abilities rather than leaving them a bit of a mystery.

Gary Furlong was a very good choice for the narrator. His voice had a mellow, easy quality to it that melded well with the flow of the story. If I were to say something were "wrong" with it, then I might say that he didn't place much emphasis on different characters. There wasn't much of a difference in pitch or tone between a male or female character, though he did manage to get the emotion of the characters right when they were on the verge of tears or anger, for example.

This easily could have been a standalone novel, but it looks like there are to be at least two more novels in the Timekeeper series: Chainbreaker (November 2017) and Untitled (2018). Considering the letter than is shoved into Danny's letterbox at the end of the book, seemingly out of nowhere, I'm not sure where the story is going to go from here. It felt rather out of the blue, but it may all make sense in the next book. Time will tell, it seems, and for all the drama and heavy emotion packed into the first book, one can only imagine what the characters will face in the future.



I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by Forever Young Audiobooks. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.

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