Leslie Ross

Horrible protagonist

Revisado: 04-23-25

I love Portia Macintosh because her books are light-hearted and her protagonists typically imperfect, likeable women trying to grow stronger and smarter in the modern world.

Sonny belongs on a different landscape. a whining, snyde, sarcastic person better fitted to be a nemesis than a heroine.

I rarely return a book, but I am returning this one, unfinished.

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The main character is unlikeable.

Revisado: 01-07-24

I got about 3 hours in and had to stop listening because the main character was such an awful, shortsighted, selfish person that I didn't want to hear another word more about her.

Also, although the narration was fine, the audio quality was inconsistent. Some characters speak so softly that it sounds like they are mumbling. I would turn up the volume, and then the other characters were too loud. And the ambient noise in the recording was a little static. i listened to the book through my Alexa, in my car, and through ear pods and all the devices had the same not-great sound engineerings.

If I had any respect for the protagonist, I would have shrugged and gone on listening. But I am returning this book because the character is so insufferable.

I understand about narrative arcs, and maybe by the end of the book she redeems herself. I just don't care enough to want to take that journey with her.

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I love this book.

Revisado: 08-16-19

I rarely re-listen to books, and yet I've listened to this one 3 times in 3 years, and I really wish there were more Helen Walsh mystery books.

This book is my favorite Walsh family book, and I love them all. But this one-- Helen is a flawed character, for sure, and yet I forgive her all her quirky brutality for her unexpected kindnesses and appreciation of other people's better selves, like her respect for Wayne's family's protectiveness of him, and her concern for the people in the small town of Docker's house. Even her concern for the broken window and open gate at Docker's house. She's a good person, even if she wouldn't want that information to get out.

Anyway. Love this book. I'll miss it, and will probably listen to it again next year.

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Marian Keyes is a genius. This book fails to show

Revisado: 07-16-15

As always, in a Marion Keyes book, the dialogue sounds realistic and the characters are well drawn. That said, for me, this book lacked warmth. Possibly because Stella struck me as someone I would never be friends with. I though she treated her boyfriend horribly, and when her life fell apart at the end, I feel guilty to admit I found myself rolling my eyes and thinking, "Well what did you EXPECT, Stella, when you couldn't even tell him you loved him and mb ade c a big deal about a one night stand he had before you were even together?"

I would love to hear what Helen Walsh would say about Stella. Helen has a backbone and real solid presence.

Marion, if you read this, I will always and forever buy anything you write, because I think you are the Jane Austen of time. This was just not my cup of tea. But then, neither was Northranger Abbey and that's survived the test of time, so what do I know?

My favorite character in the book (this one, not Northranger Abbey ) was the petulant yoga-loving teenage son. Hope to see more of him.

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esto le resultó útil a 9 personas

Really disappointing.

Revisado: 06-21-15

I love Sophie Kinsella's wit and originality. Neither made anything more than cameo appearances in this situational comedy that would have been better told in a half-hour episode of The King Of Queens or (insert name of really contrived sitcom TV show with characters so stupid thatyou want to throw your slippers at the television).

I say it would have been better told in that format because that is the level of entertainment available in the story, and also because then it would have been over faster. .

Excellent performances couldn't save it. Sorry, Sophie. This was not your finest hour.


If I can keep anyone from wasting an Audible credit on this, I will feel that the hours I invested in listening to this babble are slightly redeemed. (Couldn't finish it. Just too painful.)

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Not Du Maurier's Finest Hour.

Revisado: 06-18-10

The King's General seems distanced from itself.

Daphne Du Maurier's work usually sweeps me into its world. This one, however, didn't.

In fact, my sense was that Du Maurier herself never really sank into this book when she was writing it. Her use of language is as masterful as ever- but the "feel" of the book, the tone and emotion that giving subtext to her words, is somehow distracted and "off."

This perplexed me, so I did a little digging (thanks, Wikipedia) and gathered some information that might interest you, if you are considering purchasing The King's General.

The book was published in 1946. It was the book Du Maurier was writing when her husband, "Boy" Browning, was away serving in the war.

The King's General is told by a character named Honor Harris, who is in love with Sir Richard Grenville, a Royalist general in the Civil War. In any given chapter, Honor Harris describes waiting for news of the war, worrying about her lover, the brief bursts of happiness when the war permits them to spend time together, and the deprivation and Spartan provisions of life during war time. These are undoubtedly topics Daphne Du Maurier was experiencing and thinking of in war-time Britain.

Honor Harris also spends parts of the Civil War at the house, Menabilly, which three centuries later would be the Du Mauriers home. I imagine Daphne Du Maurier writing The King's General to pass the time, to detach from her own worries about World War II by researching and writing this story about a different war.

So that made me the book, a little.

But, frankly, it's not her best work. It's a book written by an excellent writer when her real thoughts were elsewhere.

So keep that in mind. It ain't a great book, but if you're interested in Cornish history, the Civil War, or if you're waiting for a loved one to return home from war, it may be just the right book.

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The problem is with Cellini himself.

Revisado: 06-07-10

If I am ever magically transported through time to the world of the Italian Renaissance, I hope I am never seated next to Benvenuto Cellini at a dinner party.

I bought this audiobook expecting a glimpse into that most interesting time in history. I found instead a narcissist's self-aggrandizing list of brags, some of them so ridiculous that I laughed out loud. (He describes himself as pretty much single-handedly defending Rome and the Pope against the invasion of the Holy Roman Emperor.)

After seemingly endlessly mentioning how he, such a devoted son, constantly sent money home to his "poor father"-- he then notes with remarkable unconcern, in half a sentence, that he went home after a short foray out of Florence and returned to discover that his father and sister were dead from plague. He then goes on with his story, rather blithely.

I just didn't like him very much. Okay, I really kind of disliked him a lot. One chapter, he could have skipped by simply saying "And then, in about thirty separate instances, the Pope told me that I was smarter, better-looking, more talented, and more honest than any other man he had ever met, I bowed and left the room, well satisfied that I had pleased him."

Instead, we have to suffer through each of the thirty instances.

I had to stop listening. So if you're considering this book because you think you might get a glimpse into the daily of life of great artists- skip it. He mentions rubbing elbows with Michelangelo, but the only thing we hear about Michelangelo from Cellini is that he was a great admirer of Cellini's wit, beauty, artistry, etc. Just like, apparently, every other person alive in those days.

But not me. Oh, not me.

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Atrocious reading of a silly book

Revisado: 05-22-10

Don't do it. Don't waste your time or money on this book. The story falters and the audio production is the worst casting I have encountered in a lifetime of listening to audiobooks.

At least once every 10 minutes I'd discover I wasn't listening to the story any more. Instead, my mind had drifted the recording studio when they were taping. Rather than envisioning the action of the novel, I was picturing the production team. Who's decision was it to cast an American reader for a book set in Victorian England? Both the time and location of the book seemed utterly lost on her. (In her defense...the author didn't seem to have much of a sense of the period, either.)

But what was the producer doing? --texting his girlfriend? working Sudoku? browsing ebay? - that he couldn't throw the reader a lifeline and find out the correct pronunciations of words she mangled? (My favorite was "Chancellor of the Exchequer.") She mispronounced something at least once every 15 minutes. I mean, c'mon, guys-- online dictionaries have pronunciation guides, even audio links to someone saying the word right.

Maybe they thought the suspense over what she would misprounce next would liven up the pace of an otherwise inane store. I will say this in the author's defense: she wove that combined elements I'd never encountered before (a deaf girl in the world of Victorian fashion? That's new, that's interesting...) and yet still she made the plot predictable and the characters stereotypical and utterly superficial.

I did listen to the entire thing, but it was simply that it was an Audible trainwreck and I couldn't seem to break away from it.

A lame book, made virtually unendurable by its reader. Save your money.

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esto le resultó útil a 4 personas