Beyond Reach

Grant County, Book 6

By: Karin Slaughter

Narrated by: Joyce Bean

In a stifling jail cell in a hardscrabble Georgia town, Detective Lena Adams sits in stubborn silence: bruised, angry, and the only suspect in a horrific murder that left a woman incinerated beyond recognition. One hundred miles away, Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver has gotten the call that his young detective has been arrested. Jeffrey's wife, pediatrician and medical examiner Sara Linton, has little patience for Lena or her dramas. Fighting a heartbreaking malpractice suit, struggling to pick up the pieces of a shattered career, the last thing Sara needs is to see Jeffrey playing Lena's knight in shining armor. Sara cannot guess that within days she herself will be at the center of a bizarre and murderous case.

Lena has fled back to the place where she grew up hard, careening back through the shadows of her past and into a shocking underground world of bigotry and rage. The man who raised her is slowly killing himself with drugs. The man who beguiled - and beat - her is reaching out from prison. And now only Jeffrey and Sara can free Lena from the web of lies, betrayal, and brutality that has trapped her - as this powerhouse of a novel races toward its shattering climax...and a final, unforgettable twist.

©2007 Karin Slaughter (P)2007 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Good book bad performance

Joyce Bean may as well be a digitally created voice. No emotion at all. Ruins the book

great author and story, awful narrator

the narrator was super monotone and made it difficult to distinguish which character was speaking. there was a lack of emotion in her voice and I only finished the audiobook because i have loved the grant series.

Excellent!

I thought this was excellent with only one small caveat....the way that it's read makes it a difficult to ascertain where on the timeline some things occur. I'd imagine the book has italics or something making it easier to know if it's past or present but that's not the case with the audio version. Aside from that I found this to be another home run in the Grant Series!! I thought it was better than Faithless!

Narration is a problem for this book

The narrator did a wonderful job with things like phone calls and making it sound like it might be a phone call but not a fan of her voices for the men in this book. The only one that sounded spot on was Hank when he was strung out and sick. Nick sounded like a little old lady and Jeffree sound like he was 70 years old (cry).

I know some people had a problem with the Southern accents. I'm not from the South so I didn't notice it. I'm disappointed that Sara/Jeffrey finally worked it out and this is the last book we get to remember Jeffrey by only to have him sounding like her grandfather. Somebody should have caught this along the way and made sure it was done right. I'm only about 1/3 of the way through the book now but I don't expect it to miraculously change further in :/

This review isn't meant to be a jab at the narrator. She did a respectable job with the rest of it, but men's voices are def not her thing - unless they're elderly men maybe.

Poor choice of narrators

The voices she gave Jeffrey and Lena were inexplicably terrible, considering most of her other characters were pretty good.
As for the writing, I see now why I like the Will Trent series better. Her writing improves as time goes on. Too much of this one was spent exploring how badly many of the characters treated others and provided little insight into them besides their capacity to hurl epithets.

Bad Narrator

Didn’t like the ending it the book or the series, the narrator had the male characters sound like old women. Back to the Will Trent series.

Last in this series

Not my favorite of this series. So dark. Flashbacks hard to follow sometimes. I read the Will Trent series first...didn't know about this series then. This book does fill in some missing information for the continuing Will Trent series.

What happened?

I love this series and Karin Slaughter's writing! However this was such a jumbled mess I'm about to have to go to Google for spoilers and try to figure out what happened with the main story. The only reason I stuck it out was because it was the final book in this series and I knew it would have important information for the Will Trent series. Very unsatisfying and so far this is the only one of her books I've said that about! I've read all of this series, Pretty Girls, and the first 2 Will Trent books.

Love the Grant County Series!

Karin slaughter's character development and twisting plot development are amazing. I cannot get enough of these characters, their personal stories and how they are woven in and out of each other's lives and plot line.

Bad performance

What did you love best about Beyond Reach?

I've enjoyed the story of Sarah and Jeffrey, although I knew what the outcome for this book because I'd listened to the Will Trent series.

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

The plot did keep me fully interested.

How could the performance have been better?

A different person. There are several other comments about this performance -- I've enjoyed the previous performances for the Grant County series, and was very disappointed to see someone different for this book. The male voices were awful. They all sounded like really old -- much older than the characters are.