Practicing Normal

By: Cara Sue Achterberg

Narrated by: Andi Arndt, Charles Constant, Xe Sands

The houses in Pine Estates are beautiful McMansions filled with high-achieving parents, children on the fast track to top colleges, all of the comforts of modern living, and the best security systems money can buy. Welcome to normal upper-middle-class suburbia.

The Turners know in their hearts that they're anything but normal. Jenna is a high schooler dressed in black who is fascinated with breaking into her neighbors' homes, security systems be damned. Everett genuinely believes he loves his wife...he just loves having a continuing stream of mistresses more. JT is a genius kid with Asperger's who moves from one obsession to the next. And Kate tries to manage her family, manage her mother (who lives down the street), and avoid wondering why her life is passing her by.

And now everything is changing for them. Jenna suddenly finds herself in a boy-next-door romance she never could have predicted. Everett's secrets are beginning to unravel on him. JT is getting his first taste of success at navigating the world. And Kate is facing truths about her husband, her mother, and her father that she might have preferred not to face.

©2016 Cara Sue Achterberg (P)2017 Tantor

ANOTHER 5 STAR HIT NARRATED BY XE SANDS!

I loved this storyline. So realistic. A story about real life, with real everyday problems. So relatable. And I admit, it brought me to tears more than once. And of course Xe Sands knocks it out of the park AGAIN with her impeccable narration. Andy Arndt as well. I'm looking forward to reading more by this Author! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Relatable story

I related to Kate and her mom. The narrators were great. Story was not predictable and kept my interest to the end.

Great book

I have only recently discovered this author, but I love her work! And Xe Sands is fast becoming one of my favorite narrators. Her voice is so calming and wonderful to listen to. I love the plot of this book. The end was nothing what I imagined it would be, definitely kept my interest thru out.

The narrator is fantastic

I was thankful for the outstanding narrator to help get through a lot of repetitive text and storyline drag. I was also thankful for the daughter, Jenna, character; she was most believable and interesting one.

UUGH! The mother..

As always, the narration was great, but the mother in this story is ridiculous! She’s a total pushover. She lets everybody run rough shot over her. Super annoying. It was hard for me to listen to her. The rest of the story was OK – good enough to pass the time but I seriously wanted to slap that mother in the face! Terrible character.

this was a great story

this was really a great story and just suspenseful enough to make me listen to the entire book in one day. I cried I sympathized and I loved these characters

Xe Sands is the best narrator! I’ll listen to anything she is narrating!

I disliked the ending of the story. Too many finalities were wrapped up in a short amount of time.

I was so happy to find this!

A great read from an urn or that I’ve never read before. I chose it simply because I love XE Sands!

Excellent narration, story encompasses spectrum of emotions

I chose this bok from the plus catalog based a review that positively featured one of the Book narrators. great choice. the narrator(s) captured happiness, bubbling joy, sadness & so many emotions in this story of family, friends and community. had never heard of this book or author before. hooked from first chapter. the story includes single people, married people, teenagers, autistic people. very thoughtfully and lovingly told story of everyday decisions, problems, static personalities and characters who change. glad I listened to it. the narrators were compelling.