The Ravine

A Seattle Ghost Story

De: Nick DiMartino

Narrado por: Cameron Beierle

Ever since a mysterious, fatal accident in the ravine, university student Pepper Merlino's world has become a place of fear. Her artist neighbor, Joe Strozza, is tormented by nightmares. Eleven-year old Billy Beck, who witnessed the accident, has run from his world of fantasy into the dread horror of an unknown stalker.

Pepper tries to concentrate on her studies, but her mother's grief is slowly tearing them apart. The entire neighborhood of Ravenna Springs is tense with suspicion and dread; now, secrets from the past are about to sweep Pepper, Billy, and Joe across the very boundary between life and death.

©1998 Nick DiMartino (P)2002 Books in Motion

author should never have approved this narrator

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Glad I finished it. Interesting twist on what otherwise might be a predictable story line. But Heaven help me, that narrator was just flat out terrible. I don't know if he isn't a native speaker of English;was trying to mimicking regional US accents with which he is completely unfamiliar ; or if part of the narration was an experiment in electronic voice synthesizing. At first I thought it was a computer voice. Then the character's accents got weirder and more and more forced. They also morphed from character to character as book progressed. A character's accent at end wasn't same as when book started.
Also irritating was the narrator's pronunciation. Sometimes he would over enunciate words like "a" and "the" etc. when colloquial speech was called for. Other times, when such a manner of speaking might be appropriate, he would colloquialize words and phrases. Annoying and inappropriate.
This poor irritating narration prompted me to stop listening more than once. But the story called me back.

How could the performance have been better?

Change narrators.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No! But only because of narrator.

Any additional comments?

Liked the story and nice mix of characters. A bit of the dialogue seemed trite and forced but was an interesting "ghost" story.

Another Good One

If you like spooky, weird stories give this one a try. Not a scare your socks off kind of story but the kind that keeps you thinking.

Not worth it!

Struggled to get through it. Doesn't hold your interest at all. Very slow and poorly written add story.