OYENTE

Rebecca W.

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Daughter of Fire Audiolibro Por Sofia Robleda arte de portada

Beautiful book, beautiful narration

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 11-06-24

My niece is adopted and came to the US from Guatemala, and reading this was really interesting to learn more about the culture and history she came from. Sofia Robleda paints a beautiful and at times heart-wrenching story and her sister, Ana Lucia Robleda, narrates it with grace and heartfelt emotion. I definitely recommmend this book to anyone who is considering it. The audio is fantastic and adds to the magic of the writing.

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Relaxing Bedtime Stories for Stressed Out Adults with Insomnia Audiolibro Por Collins Miller arte de portada
  • Relaxing Bedtime Stories for Stressed Out Adults with Insomnia
  • 18 Original Soothing Tales (Vol 1 + Vol 2)
  • De: Collins Miller
  • Narrado por: Collins Miller

Negative 5 stars. Is this a joke? So depressing.

Total
1 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
1 out of 5 stars
Historia
1 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 06-21-21

Update: After seeing the other handful of reviews and that these stories helped people sleep, I just have one question - did we buy the same book?! Really. Can someone please leave a review - even if you liked it - and just acknowledge the stories are absolutely pessimistic? If that helps you sleep, great. But I just want to confirm that we heard the same words thx.

I’ll start by saying, if you do end up reading this start-finish, I listened to the first story, and most of the second because I didn’t realize the stories had changed. Then I sped up the audio, managed to sort of listen to the middle stories, and then skimmed through the 18th story a bit more thoroughly just to get more of the plot and how it plays out. SO. I probably got things wrong. I apologize (kinda not really?) if I get any pertinent details wrong, or came out of the two stories I chose to describe below with the wrong conclusions (not likely, I think, but who knows). It’s not my fault because they are so horrible I think the only way they’d put me to sleep is make me so catatonically depressed that I couldn’t get out of bed and eventually my body succumbed to sleep. That horrible, and then some.

SPOILERS BELOW. Also, mild trigger warning about a very brief mention of sexual assault. Just the phrase, no descriptions or details. Hopefully you didn’t buy this hot mess of a “book” and so spoilers won’t matter, but I figured I should give fair warning. Stop reading HERE if you don’t want spoilers!
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Tuck in and bear with me. This is probably going to be a long one. But I hope it’s worth it, because it’s certainly shorter than this trash of a book. And I didn’t really have to live up to high standards of writing, since the book is a bunch of garbled nonsense.

Okay. Story 1 starts right out with a couple on the verge of getting divorced because one of them stopped caring at some point, and eventually the divorce process begins and the one who “let themselves go” starts trying to change their entire personality to fit what the other person is looking for so they won’t leave them. (Super healthy behavior. I hope the piles of sarcasm come through in this.) I’m thinking, this is kind of a mess, but it could turn into a love story and insight on how some marriages can be fixed, etc. Let’s have them live happily ever after, having learned so much about love. NOPE. Life is absolutely miserable and the world might as well be a dystopia so what are we even doing with ourselves. (That might be made up or embellished. But I’m giving a garbage review for a garbage book, just to remind you what you’re in for. And some of the descriptions of life and marriage and the world gave me strong dystopian feelings.) We get flashbacks from one of them in their 20s (I honestly don’t know which spouse or what gender they were because the story line is confusing garbage, I think it’s a same-sex marriage between two women, but there were hints of a “him” existing somewhere so I really just don’t know) going to clubs, drinking ’til you black out, losing control, getting sexually assaulted, and from what I could tell basically not caring at all about what was happening, because…drinking? Parties, woohoo? IDK. Other flashbacks to being in grade school and having no friends, nobody liked them, they were made fun of and bullied, their family seemed pretty ambivalent, and life was miserable, etc etc etc.

I’m thinking, I am 100% being Punk’d right now. Where is Ashton Kutcher. Is this (a bad attempt at) satire? Is “The Onion” involved in this nonsense? Is this a cruel joke to give people with lifelong stress and insomnia issues the hope of help, only to stomp all over that hope until it’s crushed into a bajillion pieces and then puréed in a blender? Is the author somewhere laughing to herself that she’s probably giving people nightmares and possibly long-lasting emotional damage? I read through the publishers summary about 6,438 times to check, it’s short and nothing much there other than “totally take this book seriously and you’ll sleep like a baby” kind of stuff.

I guess the one positive thing I can say is she has a relatively nice voice. But since she doesn’t change it for different characters, I truly didn’t know who was talking to who about what most of the time because it all sounded like one character playing all the people in said story and never identifying themself. Just blending all together, somewhat monotonous, but in a way I can see sounding comforting if the stories were right. These stories are complete misery, doom, and gloom, and for me, I couldn’t differentiate characters in some of them, or had difficulty doing so.

I should note somewhere around this point, I looked at my phone and it said “Story 2” so I’m likely combining the first two of these super soothing bedtime stories (FOR ADULTS WITH STRESS AND INSOMNIA) and I just didn’t notice when the divorce one ended and the second one began. I stopped listening at that point, having given up on any hope of redemption.

I sped up the audio to get to the 18th story (last one) and see if it was any…better? I honestly don’t know what I was looking for. Maybe just confirmation that stories 2-17 are likely just as miserable as 1 and 18. I did not get the full stories of 2-17, because the audio speed was a little hard to keep up with.

Story 18 starts out with a guy and his brothers-in-law-to-be at a bar, I believe on the night before his wedding, or close to it, and they’re drinking and telling him he can totally blow off some dinner which I assumed was the rehearsal dinner. (Universe help me if my fiancé-now-husband hadn’t shown up to our own rehearsal dinner…we’d have had an ugly situation on our hands, to say the least, while refraining from using a plethora of expletives in this review.) Meanwhile, this groom-to-be thinks he sees his long lost love from High School (I think HS?) and starts to hyper-focus on making sure it’s actually her. Brothers-to-be leave, one of them actually nodding his head towards this woman, without knowing who she is, and reminding him it’s (one of?) his last night(s) of freedom. So a brother of the bride not-so-subtly suggests that the groom should cheat on HIS OWN SISTER before her wedding. Cool. Of course he stays, but really to figure out this mystery surrounding the long lost love that’s clearly been plaguing him his entire life because he never knew exactly what happened. He sees her sit down with some old guy and I honestly don’t remember the significance of this detail other than I think this ex-high school lover-boy is getting jealous or something. At some point, old dude is gone. Maybe he was just sitting at the wrong table. (He does say something to the woman or vice versa so this is unfortunately not true, but I think it’s a better story if they accidentally sit down next to each other and suffer in awkward silence, neither one acknowledging their mistake or moving.) The pining groom-to-be, who is supposed to be getting married tomorrow or within the next couple days, walks up to long lost lover-lady and they recognize each other and have a moment, and then have to start sorting through their old problems and why it didn’t work back then. And I forgot to mention, he MARRIED this woman when they were younger, likely making her a teenage bride which is, ya know, *illegal* in most situations. So he’s sitting with his ex-wife, sort of. (Spoiler: See annulment a little further ahead.) Oy vey. The marriage only lasted for “5 minutes” (I think it’s meant to be a literal 5 minutes, that’s what I got from what I listened to) before her parents find out, decide he’s a bad influence or not good enough for her, and force her to sign annulment papers. He magically gets them wherever he is (how and why are they not together 5 minutes after they got hitched? what do I have wrong with this timeline?) and has no idea what has happened, and if you’re wondering how this all took place in 5 minutes, message the author. I have LOTS of questions. Can we all settle on one version of how time works, please, at least for this book. Then, her parents FLY HER OFF TO LONDON so she can’t run back to him and they don’t tell him where she went or anything. *Poof*

Present day, they start to get their stories straight. This was similar to a Romeo and Juliet situation, without the poison and suicide. They tie the knot, and then their families rip them away from each other (I don’t remember anything about his family, tbh), and now he finds out she was sent away to London. (He gets a little sassy and asks her if there were any PHONES in London, and why she didn’t call…her parents didn’t allow it, of course - so many plot holes to poke through here - but darling, just grab the phone when they’re out or asleep; GET CRAFTY, GIRL) They then decide to go up to his hotel room to “talk” more, and I guess sort out this past timeline that they essentially weren’t aware of because her parents decision to move her to another country was apparently the best solution to keep them apart. I mean…I guess it worked. Ugh. She’s relieved he has a suite with chairs or a couch or beanbags for all I know, so they won’t have to sit on his bed to talk, because she feels that would be awkward and suggestive. Guess what! They get to the point where they’re realizing they never stopped loving each other and it was never resolved so they still want to be together - owning their consent this time (yay, adulthood!). I don’t even think he tells her he has a bride-to-be waiting for him, who is probably blissfully unaware of the tornado that’s about to wind through and destroy her entire life. It ends with him (OF COURSE) cheating on his bride-to-be (and at some point earlier at the bar, he was in his head all like, “I really DO love her, I swear” *insert 1,000 eye-rolls here*) and him and his long lost love start making out in his hotel room, and I believe at some point he was kissing her so passionately that he says something like, “my lips were just slipping across her face” or something just as ridiculous. EW. And cut, scene over, story ends. So now in my head I’m feeling terrible for his poor fiancé who has no clue about any of this because he never told her about this woman or their 5-minute marriage, and she’s totally going to get left at the altar because he’s in his hotel room (on the bed, one would assume, because now it’s not awkward at ALL) sleeping with his ex-teenage now adult bride.

Would I sleep well, with this story decreasing my stress and insomnia? A BIG CUP OF NOPE. Now I’m worried about this fictional bride who is about to be extremely embarrassed and likely heartbroken when Mr. Groom doesn’t show. Or even better, he could show up with the ex-teenage bride on his arm, declaring she’s his one true love.
^^THAT is where my thoughts wander to. Not happy sleepy thoughts. That’s not comforting, not pleasant in any way, and it’s hopeless, immoral, and recklessly pathetic. I am truly, absolutely without sarcasm or snark, curious how this managed to get published, as what I assume is classified as a “self-help” book, for people with sleep problems. Or any mental health problems, for that matter. Rolling back to the first story for just a second, one of the characters declares, “I hate people.” So very positive. I’m too lazy to try and fast-forward/rewind to find the rest of that statement, though it’s an absolute gem, but it basically went on to say, “Did you hear me say I HATE people?” And then I was lulled to sleep by…yeah, no. I was awake. Contemplating this book situation I just went through.

I don’t have much else to say. Feel free to correct anything if I’m wrong (gosh, please don’t read this book tho) but ultimately know I’m very aware that this review may be seen as terrible. Not just for being so negative about the book, but also simply a terrible review since I wasn’t thorough with the full book as much as I would be with a novel, for example.

On another note, if you read any of the stories 2-17 in their entirety, please let me know how that goes for you, or leave a review so I can learn from other viewpoints. And if you CAN find the positive, calming nature of these stories and understand how these could help someone sleep, PLEASE. EXPLAIN. Seriously. I won’t judge, I’m interested. I just want to know if this would actually help anyone sleep, and how and why.

I’m going to close this up and ask Audible for a refund. I gave it a chance, even when I was sure it wouldn’t get any better, just to be sure. My conclusion is, try not to even think about buying this audiobook. I’ve seen some others that are a similar idea by different authors, and maybe those are actually helpful. This one truly seems like it will just make things worse when trying to sleep. It turned out to be very much not worth the risk.

**Something helpful might be listening to the clips of the books if you’re looking for something like this to see if you can get a little idea of what it may be like and how the narrator sounds. I’ll admit I haven’t been an avid clip-listener before I buy an audiobook. I now think it’s a good idea with self help books.

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