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Slow start, but glad I kept with it.

Revisado: 01-05-22

A little bit of a snooze in the beginning, most likely because it is the first book and many things had to be established before even getting to the main story. Also, I had a little bit of trouble keeping the members of the club straight throughout. Worth it, though. Classic, old school British detective fiction. Interesting time period and interesting new detective. Very well written language and style wise. Looking forward to more in the series.

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Decent

Revisado: 08-07-18

A little slow and slightly frustrating (bad decision after bad decision), but well written with a decent storyline and interesting characters. Good summer read. Excellent narration, which is usually not the case when the author is the narrator.

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Should be YA

Revisado: 04-21-18

My 14-year-old self would have given this five stars. I would have loved the two young main characters and their stories of survival and growth in a world of harsh adults. I would have loved it the way I loved Anne of Green Gables and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. As an adult, I found the storylines fairly predictable and the actual writing just so-so. I did find the historical aspects very interesting. Learning about orphan trains and general child “welfare” in the early 1900’s was both fascinating and heartbreaking.

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Disappointed

Revisado: 04-13-18

I expected a lot more due to the “press” this title received on audible before it was even available. The story was frustrating and unsatisfying. The characters had potential to be really rich and interesting, but their development and back stories fell really flat.

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Meh.

Revisado: 09-15-17

Unrealistic characters and situations, lots of melodramatic inner dialogue, contrived and way-too-coincidental "red herrings", and predictable twists and conclusion. Glad I bought it on sale and didn't waste a credit on it.

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Often Found Myself Rolling My Eyes

Revisado: 05-13-17

Convoluted and completely far fetched. The "twist", although not surprising, was poorly set up and haphazardly executed. The writing was flat, mostly just a narration of events with some first-person inner dialogue which seemed designed mostly to set up or explain unlikely decisions, actions and scenarios.

I gave it two stars because despite it flaws, there was still something about it that compelled me to listen to the end, and the performance was top-notch. Great job by both narrators. They managed to add depth to characters and settings that would have otherwise hovered uninterestingly above the surface.

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Decent Info, So-So on Advice

Revisado: 11-08-16

Informative about the whats, whys, and hows of middle schoolers and their world. However, I think all the important stuff could have been presented in a long article rather than an eight hour book. Also, the advice and on how to deal with things was often just examples of really unrealistic conversations to have with your kids. I can just see my kids' eyes roll if I started a conversation with, "You know, when your dad and I started dating...", or "When I had a teacher in Middle School that I didn't like...". I also felt like he talked a bit too much about his own family, and although I understand that sharing his own experience is a valid part of a book like this, I found his descriptions to be a bit self-congratulatory and condescending, and therefore off-putting. I did gain some valuable insight into the mind and motives of my alien middle schooler, though, so the book is worth a quick read or listen.

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Great story if you can tolerate the narration.

Revisado: 03-22-15

Really enjoyable story--great characters, different and interesting premise, full of wit and dry humor. However, I just barely tolerated the narration. The sing-songy cadence and lilt of the narrator as she ends every sentence on a melodramatic up note is incredibly grating. I realized 5 minutes in that this book was being read by the same narrator who read Princess Elizabeth's Spy, an audiobook I may have enjoyed, but quit a couple hours in because I couldn't stand the narration one minute longer. I stuck it out this time (her actual voicing of characters was decent--it's the narration between speaking parts that's awful), and I'm ultimately glad I did because the story itself was so engaging, fun, clever, and interesting. Nonetheless, I will never choose another title narrated by Susan Duerden.

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Wow, What a Coincidence! (sarcasm)

Revisado: 10-08-13

First, if you listened to the first book in this series and couldn't stand the narrator, rest assured that this one is better, although she seems to think that every person south of the Mason-Dixon Line speaks with a grating, backwoodsy twang.

Second, if you're looking for Emily Deschanel's Tempe Brennan, you are not going to find her here. However, if you can let go of what you know from the TV show and just accept that this Tempe is different, you might end up liking her in a different way.

Now, what I think of the story:
It had an interesting and compelling premise (religious movement/cult stuff), and it had mostly interesting forensics, anthropology, and sociology background stuff and information, although sometimes this information was dry, and it was often inserted in awkward, unnatural sounding conversations between characters. The biggest problem I had with the story was the over-the-top, unlikely, wholly improbable coincidences and chance timings of certain events and connections that took place throughout the entire story. I certainly don't want to give anything away, but really, the way events and people from Texas to Montreal to SC to NC crossed paths and linked up was SO far-fetched, the entire work lost credibility. I often have to suspend my disbelief in crime/mystery/suspense books, but this pushed the limit. Also, I read (listened to) Book 1 and Book 2 in quick succession--both had a flighty woman whom Tempe cared about who went missing, and in both books, the climactic scenes took place during a weather event--seems trite and cliche in one book, let alone two ("It was a dark and stormy night...").

I do like Tempe's character, and I feel like her occupation lends some real potential to future story lines, but I'm not going to continue with this series for awhile.

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Be Prepared to REALLY Suspend Your Disbelief

Revisado: 05-22-13

This book has outstanding narration and is well-written in terms of vocabulary, descriptions, sentence structure, etc. However, the far-fetched premise of the story and the unlikely characters made it difficult to take the book seriously. I liked the character of Cassie enough from the first book to see this one through to the end, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it.

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