Title: The Rocks
Author: Peter Nichols
Format: Audiobook
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Summary: Set against beautiful Mediterranean Sea views and lush olive groves, this book opens with a confrontation and a secret: what was the mysterious and catastrophic event that drove apart newlyweds Lulu and Gerald in 1948 and resulted in them never speaking again, despite living on the same small island for the next sixty years? And how did their history shape the friendship of their unrelated children decades later? The Rocks is a double love story that begins with a mystery then moves backward in time to unravel what really happened so many years ago. (Source: Amazon).
Review: To be fair this book should probably be given four stars but I don't recommend the audiobook format. This book starts in the present time and then continues to move back in time. I kept wanting to re-read the beginning once I became more familiar with the characters. I enjoyed the characters and the story, but the number of peripheral characters made it too hard for me to remember who they were without the luxury of being able to go back and read. Still, I would recommend this as a good beach read for the summer.
Time to write: 5:33
Showing posts with label audiobooks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label audiobooks. Show all posts
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Thursday, December 24, 2015
Book review: That night
Title: That Night
Author: Chevy Stevens
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Format: Audiobook
Summary: Toni Murphy is a typical teenager--she has a boyfriend that she's crazy about, her little sister annoys her and she fights with her parents. Toni's also bullied at school by a group of four girls. These four girls seem bent on ruining Toni's life.
Toni's life changes forever when Toni's sister is killed and Toni and her boyfriend are charged and convicted with her murder. After serving her time, Toni's back in her hometown. She wants to prove her innocence and find her sister's killer.
Review: I finished this book months ago and I'm just getting to writing the review. I initially gave this three stars but I'm going to bump it up to four. I really liked Toni and her toughness, as well as her drive to prove her innocence in a town where she was considered a bad seed. For obvious reasons not a lot of people (including her parents) trusted her when she came back to town. I suppose she really had nothing to lose. A good murder mystery if you're into those!
Time to write: 4:22
Author: Chevy Stevens
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Format: Audiobook
Summary: Toni Murphy is a typical teenager--she has a boyfriend that she's crazy about, her little sister annoys her and she fights with her parents. Toni's also bullied at school by a group of four girls. These four girls seem bent on ruining Toni's life.
Toni's life changes forever when Toni's sister is killed and Toni and her boyfriend are charged and convicted with her murder. After serving her time, Toni's back in her hometown. She wants to prove her innocence and find her sister's killer.
Review: I finished this book months ago and I'm just getting to writing the review. I initially gave this three stars but I'm going to bump it up to four. I really liked Toni and her toughness, as well as her drive to prove her innocence in a town where she was considered a bad seed. For obvious reasons not a lot of people (including her parents) trusted her when she came back to town. I suppose she really had nothing to lose. A good murder mystery if you're into those!
Time to write: 4:22
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Book review: All Joy and No Fun
Title: All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenting
Author: Jennifer Senior
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Summary: Parenting is tough. This book outlines in great detail and with a lot of supporting studies how tough parenting is no matter what age your children are.
Review: I couldn't finish this book. It was too stressful. In hindsight perhaps I thought this book would be funnier. I think I was looking for confirmation that I'm not the only one that gets overwhelmed with parenthood sometimes. And I got that confirmation. Ms. Senior does a fantastic job citing study after study of how parenting has changed. And there's certainly room for debate on the influences of those changes and if parenting has changed for the better or worse. But it wasn't very reassuring or comforting.
All it did was make me feel more incompetent than I already feel at times and dread adolescence even more than I already am. Not because it's going to be a difficult time, but because that's when they're going to start to distance themselves from me, and that makes me really sad. Because as much as they drive me crazy sometimes, the best part of my day is when they come running up to me when I get home with big hugs. Well, this has been an uplifting post. No worries, I have two more to write and post soon.
Author: Jennifer Senior
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Summary: Parenting is tough. This book outlines in great detail and with a lot of supporting studies how tough parenting is no matter what age your children are.
Review: I couldn't finish this book. It was too stressful. In hindsight perhaps I thought this book would be funnier. I think I was looking for confirmation that I'm not the only one that gets overwhelmed with parenthood sometimes. And I got that confirmation. Ms. Senior does a fantastic job citing study after study of how parenting has changed. And there's certainly room for debate on the influences of those changes and if parenting has changed for the better or worse. But it wasn't very reassuring or comforting.
All it did was make me feel more incompetent than I already feel at times and dread adolescence even more than I already am. Not because it's going to be a difficult time, but because that's when they're going to start to distance themselves from me, and that makes me really sad. Because as much as they drive me crazy sometimes, the best part of my day is when they come running up to me when I get home with big hugs. Well, this has been an uplifting post. No worries, I have two more to write and post soon.
Saturday, November 1, 2014
Book review: All Fall Down
Title: All Fall Down
Author: Jennifer Weiner
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Summary: Allison has it all--a beautiful house in the suburbs, a beautiful little girl, and a flourishing career as a blogger. Despite this "perfect" life, she's not as happy as things appear. For one, her marriage is struggling--her husband sleeps in the spare bedroom and Allison is starting to suspect he's having an affair, or close to having an affair. Also, her dad just got diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Holding it together for the perfect life is really stressful. Fortunately she has her friends Oxy, Vicodin, and Percocet to help her out.
Review: I listened to this book on CD in my car. This book is stressful at times, probably because this woman's life so closely resembled my own. Also, the daughter's voice was really whiny.
As many women out there know, life is overwhelming sometimes--kids, job, husband, and everything else--it can be a LOT to manage. As I listened to this story (and as I listen now to my own whiny children and can't they just give me 10 minutes to finish this long overdue post?), I couldn't help but think, "wow, this could be me". And if this is why people become addicted to pain killers, I can totally see why. There's so much to do in so little time, it's great to have something to take the edge off and relieve some of that stress so you don't have to worry so much. Unfortunately it can get expensive, especially when you have to seek out illegal ways to get it once you get cut off from your docs.
While this story hit close to home, I love a good addiction story. One of my favorite shows used to be Intervention. Once I had kids I had a hard time watching the ones with the younger addicts--those broke my heart--but it was fascinating to watch Allison's spiral into addiction and her subsequent attempt at recovery.
This was one of those books where as I went through each CD I got a little sad that I was one CD closer to the end of the book. Despite how stressful it was to feel like I was listening to my life, I didn't want this story to end. Highly recommended.
Author: Jennifer Weiner
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Summary: Allison has it all--a beautiful house in the suburbs, a beautiful little girl, and a flourishing career as a blogger. Despite this "perfect" life, she's not as happy as things appear. For one, her marriage is struggling--her husband sleeps in the spare bedroom and Allison is starting to suspect he's having an affair, or close to having an affair. Also, her dad just got diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Holding it together for the perfect life is really stressful. Fortunately she has her friends Oxy, Vicodin, and Percocet to help her out.
Review: I listened to this book on CD in my car. This book is stressful at times, probably because this woman's life so closely resembled my own. Also, the daughter's voice was really whiny.
As many women out there know, life is overwhelming sometimes--kids, job, husband, and everything else--it can be a LOT to manage. As I listened to this story (and as I listen now to my own whiny children and can't they just give me 10 minutes to finish this long overdue post?), I couldn't help but think, "wow, this could be me". And if this is why people become addicted to pain killers, I can totally see why. There's so much to do in so little time, it's great to have something to take the edge off and relieve some of that stress so you don't have to worry so much. Unfortunately it can get expensive, especially when you have to seek out illegal ways to get it once you get cut off from your docs.
While this story hit close to home, I love a good addiction story. One of my favorite shows used to be Intervention. Once I had kids I had a hard time watching the ones with the younger addicts--those broke my heart--but it was fascinating to watch Allison's spiral into addiction and her subsequent attempt at recovery.
This was one of those books where as I went through each CD I got a little sad that I was one CD closer to the end of the book. Despite how stressful it was to feel like I was listening to my life, I didn't want this story to end. Highly recommended.
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