Diane H

Narrator makes this gothic tale!

Revisado: 09-04-19

Rowan finds her dream nanny job on a remote Scottish estate updated with all the modern smart home fixtures in the Turn of the Key.

The book is a series of letters to Rowan’s prospective attorney while she is in jail awaiting her murder charge to be adjudicated. It explains her side of what happened at the estate.

I listened to this book on Audible. It was a fantastic and compelling listen. I live near Los Angeles. I face start and stop traffic driving to and from work but this book made the hours fly by. This book is a modern gothic tale where you want to scream at the heroine, “Don’t go into that room!” just like those old fashioned gothics like Rebecca and anything by Mary Stewart. The less you know of the plot, the better to appreciate the frequent twists and turns interspersed freely within the story. I do have to commend the narrator, Imogen Church. Never once was I confused who was talking thanks to her work with varying the characters’ speech patterns and accents.

Overall, highly recommended to mystery, but not thriller, fans. If you like gothic-style mysteries, so much the better. 4.5 stars rounded up to 5 stars!

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First-rate Romance with a Ghost Story Bonus

Revisado: 06-22-15

Phantom Traces is an excellent love story with a ghost story twist. A young, Goth librarian named Abby gets a job at an old private library after a tragedy occurs during her college days. The library is haunted. The ghost has scared off at least a couple of the previous librarians. The mystery of who the ghost is and why he is haunting the library was compelling. I also liked that Abby’s aunt was Wiccan (and that her name was Diane like mine). The dialog and voice acting seemed so real that sometimes I felt like I was listening to a friend on my phone rather than to an audiobook in my car. Overall, an first-rate audiobook!

I received this audiobook from the author in exchange for an honest review.

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Great New Mystery Series

Revisado: 06-05-15

I love this new series! It's set on a Hawaiian public college campus. The main characters, Molly and Emma, are sarcastic and laugh-out-loud funny.

Molly has a PhD in literature but is trying to get tenure as a College of Commerce instructor. There are many thought-provoking discussions about word choice. For example, is it decapitated head or disembodied head? There are asides about how the human body tastes like pork and which way you should squeeze through a crowded theater to your seats--facing forward or backwards--which I pondered long after the topic has passed. The school administrators act as crazy as you would think they would to retain students.

The denouement is both surprising and fair when you think back to the clues among the many red herrings. This book is similar to the Murder with Peacocks series of books in both humor and having really relatable characters that feel like old friends.

The narrator has no other books on Audible at the time of this review, which is too bad as I would like to listen to her again. She has the excellent ability to change her voice for each character making it easy to listen while doing other things. She even does male voices that you would swear were being voiced by a man.

I liked this book so much that I went to the author's blog, you can just Google it, and was happy to see she has several more books in this series written that are just waiting for release. I'll be sure to pick them up when they come out so I can keep up with the adventures of Molly and Emma.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Hilarious Time Traveling Romance

Revisado: 05-01-15

Extremely funny sci-fi book. If you liked Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or John Dies at the End, this book is equally zany. It also has some romance. I really loved the ending and, of course, Bobo. The description of the villain is hilarious.

I received this audiobook for free on Goodreads but that has in no way impacted my review.

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esto le resultó útil a 6 personas

Hot romance novella!

Revisado: 06-22-14

This book is a spicy contempory new adult romance that is about the difficulty of moving from the friend zone into the romance zone. The entire novella is set during one twenty-four hour period. Ellie is a girl with some curves and some insecurities who is moving to Chicago the next day. Jake is a firefighter who has been her best friend since high school. The book is well written and the characters' actions are very believable. The only issue that I had with the book is that it was over too quickly. I wanted to spend more time with Ellie and Jake. Since this novella is labelled 'Book 1', hopefully I will get that chance later. I would recommend this book to anyone that wants to escape their own life for 90 minutes and likes spicy romances.

I received this audiobook for free in return for my honest review.

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Strong Plot and Good Narration

Revisado: 06-11-14

Sharecropper Hell was originally titled Cropper’s Cabin when it was published in 1952. The author, Jim Thompson, also published his arguably best novel, The Killer Inside Me, that year.

This novel, while publicized as a noir, was much more than just that genre. It has parts that could be individual categorized as dysfunctional family drama, historical novel, mystery, romance, erotica, courtroom drama, and revenge tale. The problem with having so many different sub-genres is that it would be difficult to find someone that likes them all so the reviews of this novel are all over the place. In my case, I found the dysfunctional family part rather boring. Unfortunately, for me, that part lasted for the first nine chapters. Normally, I quit listening to a book well before chapter ten if it’s dull on the assumption that it won’t get better. I didn’t in this case because I received this audio book for free in exchange for my honest review. I am so glad I didn’t stop. Beginning with chapter ten, the action doesn’t stop. All the loose ends are tied up nicely, but not predictably, by the end. To say more about the plot would be a spoiler but take my word for it—the plot is very good.

The narrator has the exact voice, deep and gravelly, that would be expected during the time period of the novel. He portrayed each character differently so you could immediately tell who was speaking, which made it easier to enjoy during a long commute with frequent distractions.

Overall, I would recommend this audiobook and not just to noir lovers but to anyone who enjoys a good story.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Good Novel for Middle and High School Students

Revisado: 06-10-14

I received this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

I liked this book but didn't love it because I don't feel like I was the target audience. Just as reading Seventeen magazine as an adult doesn't seem as good as reading it at age 14, the topics in this book seemed better suited to someone in middle or high school. [Since this is a Young Adult novel, that makes sense. I started reading YA when the Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games and Divergent series came out. Because those books were equally good for adults, I think I had a higher expectation for this YA novel, which probably isn't fair.]

The plot is about an extremely dysfunctional family with a 17 year old daughter as its protagonist and her baby brother's death as the inciting incident that propels the plot. All the family members appear unrelenting evil and to some extent out to get the protagonist. There is a twist but it wasn't hard to guess.

Other reviewers on Goodreads mentioned they didn't like the cadence of the narrator but I thought she accurately portrayed the cadence of a 17 year old girl. If you ever talk to a middle or high school girl, that is exactly how they sound. I was curious if the narrator was a teenager but it appears not as she has a Bachelor degree and is a professional actress according to her website.

Overall, the narration was superb and the book would be good for a middle or high school student that was okay with some mature content (cutting, pregnancy, rape accusation).

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