Minusseven
- 8
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- 2
- helpful votes
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This Used to Be Us
- A Novel
- By: Renée Carlino
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro, Eileen Stevens
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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After twenty-two years together, Danielle and Alex are getting a divorce. Once fiercely in love, they can barely stand the sound of each other’s voice. Instead of shuttling the kids between two broken homes, Alex and Dani decide to share a nesting apartment while swapping days with their two teenage boys at the family home. In the apartment, Dani and Alex, on their own, begin to reflect on the last two decades—why they fell in love and why the marriage fell, spectacularly, apart.
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“We Made It”
- By Ciara on 12-04-24
- This Used to Be Us
- A Novel
- By: Renée Carlino
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro, Eileen Stevens
Good Story, Middling Prose
Reviewed: 07-17-24
I enjoyed this. The main characters were vivid, and their development was satisfying. i just wish the author would realize that people do not use each other's names every single time they speak. It really detracts from the naturalism of the dialogue. Also, the characters used (and sometimes misused) too many SAT words.
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The Cliffs: Reese's Book Club
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr, Tanis Parenteau, Emily Lawrence, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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On a secluded bluff overlooking the ocean sits a Victorian house, lavender with gingerbread trim, a home that contains a century’s worth of secrets. By the time Jane Flanagan discovers the house as a teenager, it has long been abandoned. The place is an irresistible mystery to Jane. There are still clothes in the closets, marbles rolling across the floors, and dishes in the cupboards, even though no one has set foot there in decades. The house becomes a hideaway for Jane, a place to escape her volatile mother.
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Reese Witherspoon choice
- By L. T. Gerhardt on 07-06-24
- The Cliffs: Reese's Book Club
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr, Tanis Parenteau, Emily Lawrence, Brittany Pressley, Cassandra Campbell
intermittently entertaining
Reviewed: 07-12-24
There's a lot of good stuff here, but the overall effect is inartful--the main character doesn't feel like a real person (and her husband even less so), there are too many long sections of dull backstory, and too many undigested chunks of history. I love history as much as I love fiction, but if you're going to combine the two, you shouldn't assume the reader knows less than you and wants to be lectured at. You should make it come alive through storytelling. Hilary Mantel set a very high bar, but it's worth aiming at.
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1 person found this helpful
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The Frozen River
- A Novel
- By: Ariel Lawhon
- Narrated by: Jane Oppenheimer, Ariel Lawhon
- Length: 15 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice.
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Oh dear
- By Barbara on 12-08-23
- The Frozen River
- A Novel
- By: Ariel Lawhon
- Narrated by: Jane Oppenheimer, Ariel Lawhon
Full of Anachronisms
Reviewed: 04-07-24
This book had major strengths and major weaknesses. The story was compelling enough and although the climactic confrontation and its aftermath were unlikely, I found them satisfying. The depictions of childbirth and women's health were also compelling. But the dialogue and the central relationship were utterly, distractingly anachronistic. It feels like the main couple wandered in from Outlander, where at least there's the excuse that the protagonist is a time traveler.
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1 person found this helpful
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Three Women
- By: Lisa Taddeo
- Narrated by: Tara Lynne Barr, Marin Ireland, Mena Suvari, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In suburban Indiana we meet Lina, the homemaker and mother of two whose marriage, after a decade, has lost its passion. Starved for affection, Lina battles daily panic attacks and, after reconnecting with an old flame through social media, embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming. In North Dakota we meet Maggie, the 17-year-old high school student who allegedly has a clandestine physical relationship with her handsome, married English teacher; the ensuing criminal trial will turn their quiet community upside down.
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Moving, literary nonfiction
- By Homer on 07-25-19
- Three Women
- By: Lisa Taddeo
- Narrated by: Tara Lynne Barr, Marin Ireland, Mena Suvari, Lisa Taddeo
An Extraordinary Book
Reviewed: 09-02-22
This was a challenging listen (more graphic descriptions of sex acts than I would seek out otherwise) but so well worth it. If you are a woman or care at all about women there is much food for thought. Granted it's probably especially relevant for white women/people since those were the only ones willing to engage with the author longterm, but I am a white woman and I got a lot out of it.
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The Death of Jane Lawrence
- A Novel
- By: Caitlin Starling
- Narrated by: Mandy Weston
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive Doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town. Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed.
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Promising but Messy
- By W.Oberlin on 02-14-22
- The Death of Jane Lawrence
- A Novel
- By: Caitlin Starling
- Narrated by: Mandy Weston
Weak prose
Reviewed: 01-07-22
I could not get past the first couple of chapters. If you are well grounded in pre-20th century English literature you will find this author's prose jarring. She seems to have set the book in some kind of steampunk alternative past in order to excuse anachronism and lack of research. Not at all what I expected from other reviews.
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The Last Thing He Told Me
- A Novel
- By: Laura Dave
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Before Owen Michaels disappears, he smuggles a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers—Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother. As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered, as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss, as a US marshal and federal agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was.
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The worst book I have ever heard
- By Amazon Customer on 05-14-21
- The Last Thing He Told Me
- A Novel
- By: Laura Dave
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
shaky prose, great story
Reviewed: 08-04-21
A good, taut, entertaining story. I did feel let down when the author used the narrative equivalent of a fast forward button right when things were at their most exciting (not moving forward in the main story, but dumping almost all the remaining secrets into one big flashback).
I found it forgivable since she's a good storyteller, but this author's command of language and idiom is not great. She used "inimitable" three times and I don't think she knows what it actually means.
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The Plot
- A Novel
- By: Jean Hanff Korelitz
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Jacob Finch Bonner was once a promising young novelist with a respectably published first book. Today, he’s teaching in a third-rate MFA program and struggling to maintain what’s left of his self-respect; he hasn’t written—let alone published—anything decent in years. When Evan Parker, his most arrogant student, announces he doesn’t need Jake’s help because the plot of his book in progress is a sure thing, Jake is prepared to dismiss the boast as typical amateur narcissism. But then...he hears the plot.
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Should be called "The Plod", not The Plot
- By SB on 05-11-21
- The Plot
- A Novel
- By: Jean Hanff Korelitz
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
too predictable
Reviewed: 05-23-21
The narration was fine. The book was sparse with its scene setting and characterization, so the story bears most of the weight. But, without spoiling it, the number and arrangement of characters was such that the central mystery was far too obvious, far too early, and knowing something the protagonist didn't know wasn't all that satisfying--I would rather have had him find out sooner and have more of the plot unfold under that circumstance.
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The Love Season
- By: Elin Hilderbrand
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Marguerite Beale, former chef of culinary hot spot Les Parapluies, has been out of the public eye for over a decade. This all changes with a phone call from Marguerite's goddaughter, Renata Knox. Marguerite has not seen Renata since the death of Renata's mother, Candace Harris Knox, fourteen years earlier. And now that Renata is on Nantucket visiting the family of her new fiancé, she takes the opportunity, against her father's wishes, to contact Marguerite in hopes of learning the story of her mother's life—and death.
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Good Listen, but Very Sad Story
- By Amazon Customer on 05-16-17
- The Love Season
- By: Elin Hilderbrand
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
Please, Find a French Speaker
Reviewed: 04-29-20
I enjoyed the story a lot, I'd rank it high among Hilderbrand's work. And the narrator has a good, lively way with dialogue, although she sometimes sounds like her nose is stuffed up. BUT this is a book with a lot of French words in it, and the narrator clearly has never studied French and doesn't understand French pronunciation. For someone with even a basic grasp of the language, it is agonizing to hear her mangle words she doesn't know. A flat, Anglicized pronunciation would have been far better than the gutteral, made-up "French" pronunciations here (or the narrator could have gone over the entire book with a French tutor to prepare for her performance, maybe), but bottom line, it was a bad call to assign this particular narrator to this particular book.
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