Murdaugh, She Wrote

A tale of High Crimes in the Lowcountry

By: Kathleen Hewtson

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

From the best selling author of 'Blood & Marriage' and 'The Night My Husband Killed Me,' this is a story of murder and money and power gone wrong.

(And Volume 2, 'Murdaugh, She Wrote: After the Trial' is out now.)

In June of 2021, following two brutal homicides in a prominent family, the rest of the world learned what people in a small Southern town called Hampton had long known …

… Anything is possible if your last name is Murdaugh.

‘Murdaugh, She Wrote’ is a southern gothic tale of one family and the people who served them. It’s an account, or better to say an accounting, of five murders that took place in a tiny area of the Lowcountry, South Carolina, which left a long blood trail that led always back to one family.

There are patriarchs, and a mad young man, and victims aplenty. Some are dead, some are ruined for life, but them’s the breaks in the Kingdom of Murdaugh,

Come on down, there are tales to be told.

Heavy on the sarcasm

This author tells this like she was personally almost killed by the Murdaughs. I have no love lost on the family nor do I have a dog in that fight but the author appears to be personally invested which takes a bit away from the telling when it's written with such vitriol. I'm not sure why the author sounds so bitter but that's the take I got from this book.

The narration was just meh.

Interesting details..

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this version of the Murdaugh mystery, I learned several details from this author that I might have missed from other podcasts or documentaries. I especially enjoyed the snippets of song lyrics at the beginning of each chapter. I would highly recommend listening to this audiobook, quite frankly I’m surprised it’s not rated higher!

Very informative and interesting

Well written story, a lot of things pointed out that never made the news. Very good

Surprisingly good

I am fascinated by this case but was hesitant to purchase because it is recorded with a digital voice and I thought that would be annoying. It wasn't. In fact, as I listened I forgot about that entirely.
As to the content, I found this book to be very well researched and contained some information that I had not come across before. I would recommend it.

the AI narrator

it was very annoying and had to stop listening. there was no emotions. live narrator would have been better

I discovered a few new details I had not heard before.

I enjoyed the reader’s voice and I learned new details about Alex Murdaugh’s family, that I had not heard before.

A Real Person Reading Would Have Made a Huge Difference in the Quality of this Book

The Murdaugh Family Murders is endlessly fascinating. There have been some excellent books and podcasts, and some that are less so. It is evident the writer of "Murdaugh, She Wrote, Volume 1" did her homework. She also compiled some facts that other writers may have missed.

Unfortunately, the decision to use AI for text to voice greatly reduced the impact of this book. While AI is developing rapidly, it was still developing when this audiobook was created. Words that are mispronounced repeatedly, words whose pronunciations change throughout the book, not recognizing the emergency service 911 from the number 911 are all examples of how obvious it is that AI is reading this book.

For me, I struggled to give a fair rating without my own dislike of AI tainting too much of my judgement. I am hoping Volume 2 shows improvement.

Hard NO on AI Voice

This is the fourth book I've listeed to on this particular topic. The AI voice mispronounced so many things and had a very robotic cadence. It was almost hard to follow the story at times. Have you ever read a paragraph 15 lines long with no punctuation? That's kind of what it sounded like.

As for the story itself, I can appreciate that the writer had an opinion on things, but it was written with such sarcasm. I'm not sure how to explain it. All I can say is that I love this topic so much, I suffered through this presentation to get to the end.

I would not recommend this book at all, and I wouldn't recommend any book that uses AI voice after having listened to this one.

Repetitive Account

Thie narration using automation is terrible. You could at least correct when it says nine hundred eleven instead of 9-1-1 i many many times. It seems the book could have been half as long because the same facts were repeated over and over.