Defending Jacob by, William Landay Narrated by, Grover Gardner

Audio Book Week Review: One more for my New- to- Me Narrators Challenge

Defending Jacob by, William Landay Narrated by, Grover Gardner Published by, Blackstone Audio

This was a new to me author & narrator…I know I know how could I have gone this long without listening to Grover Gardner but there it is.

This book is a mystery/thriller, a legal drama and a family story. What would you do if your child was arrested for murdering his classmate, there really wasn’t much evidence and your son denies being involved how would you react? I think that is the question of this book what would you do in these parents shoes?

It kind of goes back and forth in time to the trial and the events leading up to it this did take some getting used to when all of a sudden it was like reading the trial transcript but once I got used to it , it was fine. This book kept me guessing in fact I am still guessing and the ending Wow what an ending in fact I went back and re-listened to the last 25 minutes twice.

It’s hard for me to figure out if the mother is being hard on Jacob or if the father is too soft and just sees what he wants to see. This is such a powerful story about being a parent, Jacob’s father Andy is the parent we get to know the most because he is telling the story and we get his inner dialogue about his son, Jacob’s mother we don’t get to see that, we only see Andy’s reactions to her behavior, which was odd in a sense because I feel like I never really got to know her and I would have liked to see inside her head for awhile.  There are times I don’t like the wife much but that may have been because we didn’t see her inner turmoil like we did Andy’s. Ugh this is really hard not to give any spoilers so I think I will stop now.

Well I can say I have finally listened to Grover Gardner, his narration was very well done, I think he sounded just right he brought this sharpness to Andy’s anger and a softness when he talked about his son, Gardner’s inflections were just right. I will definitely be listening to more from this narrator.

I thought this book was very well done and would highly recommend it to legal thriller fans and I also think this will become a great book club pick, because I think this will lead to some interesting discussions. I thought this was a debut novel but I now see William Landay has a few other books that I plan on reading.

I had a hard time putting this one down and wanted everyone to go away while I finished listening so I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

4 ½ stars