Missing You by Harlan Coben narrated by, January LaVoy

Missing You  by Harlan Coben narrated by, January LaVoy

Harlan Coben has written another non-stop thriller that will leave you on the edge of your seat, and make you never want to stop reading!  This book grabbed me immediately and never let go till the very end. I really like the character of Kat and would read more books with her in them.

What would you do if you found your ex (the one who got away) on a dating site well you find his picture but the name isn’t the same and when you message him he at first doesn’t seem to remember you. As if that isn’t bad enough some kid (Brandon) shows up at your door saying that same man went away with his mother and he thinks she is in trouble. Throw in a mystery about who really killed Kat’s father and away we go on this rollercoaster ride of a story. Be ready for twists and turns and red herrings, which will keep you guessing all the way to the end.

I love Harlan Coben’s books he always writes a good solid story with a mystery that keeps you on your toes, there was one part of the story I had figured out but my theory was not what Coben ended up writing so I still wasn’t 100% right and I love that in a mystery. I liked the fact that there weren’t any cardboard cutout characters in this book each character had their own identity and back story, which made me care about them even the ones that didn’t last long.

January LaVoy’s narration was very well done I liked that you always knew who was talking and that everyone had a voice, I must mention though there are times some of her male characters sound like cartoons but that was only a couple people so it was easy to overlook. This is my second narration by January and I really enjoyed both so I will seek out books where she is the narrator. Very well done narration.

If you can’t already tell I loved this book, so the only thing I can say to you is, what are you waiting for get to listening!

5 Stars

Unfit by, Lara Cleveland Torgesen

Unfit by Lara Cleveland Torgesen

Wow this is something I never knew about and it breaks my heart, this book was fascinating it felt like a true story but was a fictionalized amalgamation of different people, and it worked well, I really came to care about Chrissy.

 I never knew anything about the eugenics program before and was horrified that this happened in our country and how long North Carolina held on to this antiquated practice. If you don’t know what I am talking about eugenics is- forcing sterilization procedures on thousands of people deemed “unfit” to reproduce. And who decided this? People with fancy degrees who thought they knew better than anyone else. Kids who were sent to juvenile hall were sterilized, and girls like Chrissy whose mother was on welfare were threatened if she didn’t have the surgery they would lose their benefits, Chrissy’s mother worked a job but it wasn’t enough to raise all of her children. And yes before you think it Chrissy’s parents were married and had children then her father was killed in a car accident that is when they ended up on welfare.

That Chrissy was ever able to love & marry and have a happy life was a credit to her strength even when she felt she had Unfit tattooed across her forehead most of her life. How awful would that be to be told at the age of 14 that you are unfit?? Especially when Chrissy’s mother dies too and she loses all her brothers and sisters and feels the guilt of being mean to her mother after the surgery and what really bothered me they didn’t sterilize her mother and how could Chrissy not feel anger towards her mother who had signed the papers before Chrissy was even told what would happen to her.

This book grabbed me right away and was hard to put down, it is a fascinating read and well written. My only qualm was I so wanted Chrissy to find her siblings, I wanted them all to be okay and had been raised by loving happy parents but with a book like this the reality is she probably never could find them especially the little ones, but I wanted a happy ending for Chrissy, I wanted to hug her and tell her everything would be okay, so the author did a great job at making me care about the characters in this book. This book is a must read , about an embarrassing and heartbreaking time in North Carolina history.

5 Stars

Full disclosure: I received this book from Netgalley and publisher for a fair and honest review

Night Broken by, Patricia Briggs

Night Broken (Mercy Thompson #8) by,  Patricia Briggs

Loved it!! As always Patricia Briggs writes a fantastic book!

Mercy is again chased a big baddy but this time it is because of Adam’s ex- Christy, and what an awful piece of work this woman is! She plays people off each other and makes them feel sorry for her, but I thought Mercy handled it beautifully. I felt so sorry for Jessie being in the middle I thought she handled it very maturely and always made sure Mercy knew she didn’t feel the same as her mother, she has matured into a very impressive young lady.

We also got a reappearance of Coyote and one of the Grey Lords but our big bad in this book is a volcano God Guayota and if you do some research as Patty did you’ll find that this is an actual myth the big dogs and Tibicenas all come from a real myth which is so neat. We also meet Mercy’s “brother”  Gary Laughingdog another child of Coyote I look forward to seeing where this relationship goes.

We also found out some new things about Tad and I sure hope everything works out for him, but maybe we will get to have Zee back in the next book, I have a feeling from some hints at the end that we may have a trip into “fairyland”(the fae rez) in the next book.

I felt the ending was very abrupt , and really wanted more, of course these books could be a thousand pages and I would probably still want more! I wish I didn’t have so long to wait for the next one!

Some other random thoughts:

I was hoping Guayota would burn down Adam's house so they could start over with house that is his and Mercy's alone, not one that was decorated & lived in by Christy when she and Adam were married!

Wish Bran would have made an appearance guess we have to wait for the next  Anna & Charles book for that.

I love Adam & Mercy and was happy with how she handled Christy especially the ending that made me laugh out loud! And I am so glad Adam is such a good man and that his and Mercy’s mate bond is so strong that it didn't turn into an idiotic triangle.

Loved Honey in this book she's really coming into her own since Peter died and I think Mercy has a potential friend in Honey.

Will be curious to see how the Joel thing plays out.

So much good stuff in this book, and so much more to look forward to in future books. I love this series it just gets better and better.

5 Stars

The Ghost Writer by John Harwood Narrated by, Simon Vance

The Ghost Writer  by John Harwood Narrated by, Simon Vance

I so enjoyed John Harwood’s book The Asylum it kept me interested all the way through, but with The Ghost Writer it was very easy to get distracted and the back and forth between Viola’s story and Gerard’s was at times very confusing especially on audio. And the ending was rushed and very abrupt, I thought there was one more chapter but no it just ended and was very unsatisfying.

Simon Vance’s narration was very well done and he added a good degree of spookiness to the reading however even he couldn’t save me from the dragginess of this book. ( I don’t care if that is not a word I think it fits well!) Maybe this would have worked better with 2 narrators one for Viola and one for Gerard, but I don’t think even that could have saved this one.

I didn’t hate this book but I sure didn’t love it, it was just an okay read for me. I also think the title gives a lot away I mean it is obvious very quickly just who the ghost writer is so it kind of takes away the mystery of that, leaving no feeling of mystery or urgency.

In the last month or so I have read some really great ghost stories and maybe that is one of the reasons this one fell short for me is because the other ghost stories were so much better.

2 ½ Stars

I received this book from the Audiobookjukebox.com Solid Gold Reviewer program and the Publisher Blackstone Audio for a fair and honest review.

The Book of Obeah by Sandra Carrington-Smith Narrated by, Dave Fennoy~Armchair Audies

I am once again participating in the ArmchairAudies this is my first post with many more to come as I am listening to the Thiller/Suspense category and Mystery. and Honestly this one will be a hard one to beat I am in love with this man's voice!

The Book of Obeah (Crossroads #1) by Sandra Carrington-Smith Narrated by, Dave Fennoy

Thriller/Suspense Audie Nominee

Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher: Cherry Hill Publishing

I really liked this book; however I am not sure I would have liked it as much if I had read it in print. But since I did listen I really enjoyed it, it was suspenseful and kept me on the edge of my seat. This is paranormal suspense about Voodoo and Hoodoo.

Melody’s grandmother dies and asks that Melody take her ashes back to the Louisiana Bayou, but what her grandmother doesn’t tell her is the inheritance of “The Sight” that she also passed on and that there is an old book that she needs to take care of as there are many willing to kill for. Melody didn’t know anything about Voodoo or Hoodoo but soon finds out her grandmother did which comes as a shock to Melody. When she gets to Louisiana things get even weirder plus she is threatened by a man who says the book her grandmother stole is his and he will get it back no matter what. So we have a mystery a family story with some ghosts and hoodoo going on!

This isn’t a story I would have been drawn to but since it is up for an Audie Award I listened to it and am glad I did, it had just the right amount of suspense and the paranormal add a little Catholic Church baddies to the mix and this made for a good story. I was glad a certain someone didn’t end up being a bad guy (you’ll know if you read it) and I am curious if that relationship will go on to the next book (which there is not an audio  and that needs to be remedied!). I am curious if certain characters will carry over and which ones that will be. I liked Melody I thought she took everything in stride and it was a lot to take in and I’d love to see how she goes forward and what becomes of ‘the Sight’. This book grabbed me enough to want to continue on with the series.

 Even though our heroine is female it didn’t bother me at all that this one was narrated by a man because he was amazing and added to the spookiness of this book. Dave Fennoy has this voice it’s the voice of every scary Voodoo witch doctor that’s ever been heard or read he was perfect for this book. His voice is a cross between Barry White & Dion Graham and I really liked it and was very surprised to find out this was his only audiobook on audible so did some digging and found out he is a voice over actor and has some impressive credits to his name in commercials, animations, games and documentaries. I for one hope he narrates the second book in this series because it won’t be the same without him! I also hope he will narrate more books because I could listen to him all day! There were times the music between chapters was annoying and times it felt like it fit in so just a warning to those of you who don’t like music in your audiobooks. 

4 Stars

5 Star narration

To learn more about Dave Fennoy HERE is his website

Guests on Earth by Lee Smith Narrated by, Emily Woo Zeller

Guests on Earth by Lee Smith Narrated by, Emily Woo Zeller

I enjoyed parts of this book and thought other parts (the ending especially) weren’t as good. I like the character of Evalina and my second favorite was Dixie, I felt these two were the most fleshed out of all the characters. However Evalina’s love life was confusing to me and I didn’t really understand her attraction to Pan and didn’t really understand why she was leading these men on. Also it was never fully explained how she ended up back at the hospital and what really happened to her in Paris and after she went to her father’s house again which is part of the "more" I mention later!

There were times the story jumps and it was jarring and made me feel like I missed something I went back on the audio a couple times thinking I zoned out and missed something but that wasn’t the case.  This book starts out with the news report about the fire at the Ashland Hospital but when the time came for the fire it was rushed and very anti-climatic the story of the fire was in the last 9 minutes of the book, it was pretty much there was a fire and these people died, the end.

This book mixed real and fictional people including Zelda Fitzgerald, I am not a big F.Scott Fitzgerald fan so the inclusion of Zelda was just another famous person to me, I actually wanted to know more about Mrs.Carroll tutoring Nina Simone in music but that was just talked about in passing.

I guess what I wanted in the book was more, more info about the characters, more about the hospital which actually seemed like a very good institution especially for this time period.  Of course the insulin shots and shock treatments were awful, but they mentioned that they were not doing lobotomies which is something, and these women do seem to have been treated well and not abused, plus given arty things to do singing, art, playing music etc. so this was a different look at institutions in this time period then I’d read before.

I recently re-read Maggie O’Farrell’s The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox and now after reading this one I really wanted to know the various reasons women were institutionalized so I have now checked out the book ‘The Female Malady’ which explores some of the reasons women have been institutionalized throughout history. So in that aspect the book did its job it made me curious about why a lot of these women were put away.

Emily Woo Zeller was a good narrator although our lead character didn’t have a southern accent (and I thought she should) the only one that did was Dixie which was overdone but it did fit with Dixie’s personality she was very over the top herself. But overall she did a decent job and I would listen to her again.

At times this story bogged down and at other times I enjoyed the story so for me this is a 3 Star book barely 3 but 3 nonetheless.

3 stars

The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon narrated by, Cassandra Campbell & Kathe Mazur

The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon narrated by, Cassandra Campbell & Kathe Mazur

This book had me on the edge of my seat the entire time and I don’t think I took a breath for the last hour or so. I did not want to put this book down, I needed to know what exactly was going on with everyone in the book!

This is a great story, atmospheric, haunting, and addictive. I loved how all the stories came together and all the timelines were very well written and flowed beautifully with each other. The past & present stories were both great. I also really liked the characters especially Sara because I think she went through the most emotionally.

This is a hard book to review because the way the story wraps around it would be so easy to spoil it for someone and I wouldn’t want anyone to not get the full effect of how this story plays out. So much of the story leaves you guessing and wondering what is real and what is not and I enjoyed the parts of Sara’s diary that gives so many clues as to what is really going on but also leaves much unsaid or lost. The craziness of the first big reveal caught me totally off-guard it wasn’t something I expected at all and that makes for a great book!

Cassandra Campbell & Kathe Mazur were the narrators and I thought they did a wonderful job even if their voices are very similar you still knew who was telling the story. I thought they were able to bring a softness to the tale when warranted and creeped me out just enough!(which is a good thing)

This is so much more than a ghost story it is also a story  of family and what that means and how you treat people may come back to haunt you (heehee see what I did there?).  But the ending OMG the ending in reference to Katherine did she?? Didn’t she??? And poor Ruthie I feel bad for her. Sorry, but just had to have my say on that and make it spoiler free, when you read the book you will understand and Yes you really do need to read this book!

Lesson #1 from this book let the dead stay dead!

5 stars