What I Had Before I Had You
A Novel
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What I Had Before I Had You
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Narrated by:
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Karen White
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By:
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Sarah Cornwell
About this listen
Written in radiant prose and with stunning psychological acuity, award-winning author Sarah Cornwell's What I Had Before I Had You is a deeply poignant story that captures the joys and sorrows of growing up and learning to let go.
Olivia Reed was fifteen when she left her hometown of Ocean Vista on the Jersey Shore. Two decades later, divorced and unstrung, she returns with her teenage daughter, Carrie, and nine-year-old son, Daniel, recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Distracted by thoughts of the past, Olivia fails to notice when Daniel disappears from her side. Her frantic search for him sparks memories of the summer of 1987, when she exploded out of the cocoon of her mother's fierce, smothering love and into a sudden, full-throttle adolescence, complete with dangerous new friends, first love, and a rebellion so intense that it utterly recharted the course of her life.
Olivia's mother, Myla, was a practicing psychic whose powers waxed and waned along with her mercurial moods. Myla raised Olivia to be a guarded child, and also to believe in the ever-present infant ghosts of her twin sisters, whom Myla took care of as if they were alive - diapers, baby food, an empty nursery kept like a shrine. At fifteen, Olivia saw her sisters for the first time, not as ghostly infants but as teenagers on the beach. But when Myla denied her vision, Olivia set out to learn the truth - a journey that led to shattering discoveries about herself and her family.
Sarah Cornwell seamlessly weaves together the past and the present in this riveting debut novel, as she examines the relationships between mothers and daughters, and the powerful forces of loss, family history, and magical thinking.
©2014 Sarah Cornwell (P)2014 HarperCollinsPublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 549
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 490
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 489
Margo is not like other girls. She lives in a derelict neighborhood called the Bone, in a cursed house, with her cursed mother, who hasn't spoken to her in over two years. She lives her days feeling invisible. It's not until she develops a friendship with her wheelchair-bound neighbor, Judah Grant, that things begin to change. When a neighborhood girl, seven-year-old Neveah Anthony, goes missing, Judah sets out to help Margo uncover what happened to her. What Margo finds changes her, and with a new perspective on life she's determined to find evil and punish it.
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4 out of 5 stars
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HUH?? I'm so confused LOL
- By ❤️Cyndi Marie❤️🎧Audiobook Addicts🎧 on 09-15-16
By: Tarryn Fisher
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Our Little Secret
- By: Roz Nay
- Narrated by: Erin Moon
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 103
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 95
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Story4 out of 5 stars 95
Angela is being held in a police interrogation room. Her ex's wife has gone missing, and Detective Novak is sure Angela knows something, despite her claim that she's not involved. At Novak's prodding, Angela tells a story going back 10 years, explaining how she met and fell in love with her high school friend HP. But as her past unfolds, she reveals a disconcerting love triangle and a dark, tangled web of betrayals. Is Angela a scorned ex-lover with criminal intent? Or a pawn in someone else's revenge scheme?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing
- By lisa on 12-31-19
By: Roz Nay
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The Lost Girls
- A Novel
- By: Heather Young
- Narrated by: Alice Rosengard, Laurel Schroeder
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 718
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 653
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Story4 out of 5 stars 651
In 1935, six-year-old Emily Evans vanishes from her family's vacation home on a remote Minnesota lake. Her disappearance destroys the family - her father commits suicide, and her mother and two older sisters spend the rest of their lives at the lake house, keeping a decades-long vigil for the lost child. Sixty years later, Lucy, the quiet and watchful middle sister, lives in the lake house alone. Before her death, she writes the story of that devastating summer in a notebook that she leaves, along with the house, to the only person who might care: her grandniece, Justine.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Engaging story spanning three generations.
- By LilMissMolly on 09-23-16
By: Heather Young
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The Good Goodbye
- By: Carla Buckley
- Narrated by: Ali Ahn, Suzy Jackson, Eva Kaminsky
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,310
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,093
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,087
Two cousins, Rory and Arden, lie unconscious in a hospital burn unit. The fire, which broke out in their shared college dorm room, killed another student, and the police want answers. Tension between Rory and Arden's parents was already at an all-time high before the fire, owing to a recent financial crisis and the decline of the family business. As the parents huddle anxiously in the waiting room, carefully avoiding the subject of their own unraveling relationships, disturbing truths come to light.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I could not stop listening.
- By Amy Davis on 05-29-16
By: Carla Buckley
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Speak No Evil
- A Novel
- By: Uzodinma Iweala
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi, Julia Whelan
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 758
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 691
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 691
On the surface, Niru leads a charmed life. Raised by two attentive parents in Washington, DC, he's a top student and a track star at his prestigious private high school. Bound for Harvard in the fall, his prospects are bright. But Niru has a painful secret: He is queer - an abominable sin to his conservative Nigerian parents. No one knows except Meredith, his best friend, the daughter of prominent Washington insiders - and the one person who seems not to judge him.
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5 out of 5 stars
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So incredibly sad
- By Amazon Kunde on 02-08-20
By: Uzodinma Iweala
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The Invisible Circus
- By: Jennifer Egan
- Narrated by: Madeleine Lambert
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 395
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 351
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Story4 out of 5 stars 351
In Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Egan's highly acclaimed first novel, set in 1978, the political drama and familial tensions of the 1960s form a backdrop for the world of Phoebe O'Connor, age eighteen. Phoebe is obsessed with the memory and death of her sister Faith, a beautiful idealistic hippie who died in Italy in 1970. In order to find out the truth about Faith's life and death, Phoebe retraces her steps from San Francisco across Europe, a quest which yields both complex and disturbing revelations about family, love, and Faith's lost generation.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Too bad zero was not a choice...
- By IVAL on 04-28-13
By: Jennifer Egan
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Fruit of the Drunken Tree
- A Novel
- By: Ingrid Rojas Contreras
- Narrated by: Marisol Ramirez, Almarie Guerra, Ingrid Rojas Contreras
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 638
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 570
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 568
Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister, Cassandra, enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation. When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Maybe better to read this book than listen???
- By Amazon Customer on 12-12-18
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The Lost Family
- A Novel
- By: Jenna Blum
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 102
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 94
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Story4 out of 5 stars 93
In 1965 Manhattan, patrons flock to Masha’s to savor its brisket bourguignon and impeccable service and to admire its dashing owner and head chef Peter Rashkin, the most eligible bachelor in town. But Peter does not care for the parade of eligible women who come to the restaurant hoping to catch his eye. Running Masha’s consumes him, as does his terrible guilt over surviving the horrors of the Nazi death camp while his wife, Masha - the restaurant’s namesake - and two young daughters perished. Then exquisitely beautiful June Bouquet, an up-and-coming young model, appears at the restaurant, piercing Peter’s guard.
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5 out of 5 stars
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STIMULATES THE HEART, MIND AND IMAGINATION
- By Miss Manners on 07-01-18
By: Jenna Blum
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Darling Days
- A Memoir
- By: iO Tillett Wright
- Narrated by: iO Tillett Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 409
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 377
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Story5 out of 5 stars 373
Born into the beautiful bedlam of downtown New York in the eighties, iO Tillett Wright came of age at the intersection of punk, poverty, heroin, and art. This was a world of self-invented characters, glamorous superstars, and strung-out sufferers, ground zero of drag and performance art. Still, no personality was more vibrant and formidable than iO's mother's. Rhonna, a showgirl and young widow, was a mercurial, erratic glamazon. She was iO's fiercest defender and only authority in a world with few boundaries and even fewer indicators of normal life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Can’t wait for more from this Author!
- By Team Hobson on 07-24-19
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Marlena
- A Novel
- By: Julie Buntin
- Narrated by: Emma Galvin
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 609
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 554
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Story4 out of 5 stars 557
Everything about 15-year-old Cat's new town in rural Michigan is lonely and off-kilter until she meets her neighbor, the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Cat, inexperienced and desperate for connection, is quickly lured into Marlena's orbit by little more than an arched eyebrow and a shake of white-blond hair. As the two girls turn the untamed landscape of their desolate small town into a kind of playground, Cat catalogues a litany of firsts - first drink, first cigarette, first kiss - while Marlena's habits harden and calcify.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Brilliant, Agonizing Portrait of a Young Woman
- By Sudi on 06-06-17
By: Julie Buntin
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Bleeding Violet
- By: Dia Reeves
- Narrated by: Suzy Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
With a head plagued by hallucinations, a medicine cabinet full of pills, and a closet stuffed with frilly, violet dresses, Hanna's tired of being the outcast, the weird girl, the freak. So she runs away to Portero, Texas, in search of a new home. But Portero is a stranger town than Hanna expects. She discovers secrets that would terrify any normal soul. Good thing for Hanna, she's far from normal. As this crazy girl meets an even crazier town, only two things are certain: Anything can happen, and no one is safe.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Didn't like it. Sorry, not sorry
- By Cii'Em on 02-15-16
By: Dia Reeves
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Like Water
- By: Rebecca Podos
- Narrated by: Kyla Garcia
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story4 out of 5 stars 32
In Savannah Espinoza's small New Mexico hometown, kids either flee after graduation or they're trapped there forever. Vanni never planned to get stuck - but that was before her father was diagnosed with Huntington's disease, leaving her and her mother to care for him. Now she doesn't have much of a plan at all: living at home, working as a performing mermaid at a second-rate water park, distracting herself with one boy after another. That changes the day she meets Leigh.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Does she have HD or not?
- By Jennifer Greenlees on 11-20-17
By: Rebecca Podos
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The Beach Trees
- By: Karen White
- Narrated by: Ki Gottberg, Gin Hammond
- Length: 15 hrs and 6 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 617
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 555
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 555
For Julie Holt, travelling to the beautiful but ravaged coast of Biloxi, Mississippi, is a journey into a secret past, and a life she never expected.... Julie first knew loss at the age of 12, when her sister disappeared, never to be found. As her once close-knit family grew apart, Julie's mother obsessively searched for the girl, and when her mother died, Julie took up the search, never letting go of the hope. Then, at an art exhibition in New York, she meets Monica....
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4 out of 5 stars
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The ending was very weak
- By Missi Boyd on 10-31-16
By: Karen White
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Nothing but Trouble
- By: Susan May Warren
- Narrated by: Anne Pepperidge
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 48
In this lively tale by RITA and Christy Award finalist Susan May Warren, 28-year-old PJ Sugar wants to shed her reputation for being nothing but trouble. But her efforts to be the favorite daughter, best friend, perfect aunt, fetching beauty, and hometown hero - all at once - trigger both laughter and tears.
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5 out of 5 stars
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There has to be more!!
- By Sally D Busekist on 03-27-19
By: Susan May Warren
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Like Family
- Growing Up in Other People's Houses, a Memoir
- By: Paula McLain
- Narrated by: Wendy Tremont King
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 78
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 71
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Story4 out of 5 stars 72
This powerful and haunting memoir details the years Paula McLain and her two sisters spent as foster children after being abandoned by both parents in California in the early 1970s. As wards of the State, the sisters spent the next 14 years moving from foster home to foster home. The dislocations, confusions, and odd pleasures of an unrooted life form the basis of one of the most compelling memoirs in recent years - a book in the tradition of Jo Ann Beard's The Boys of My Youth and Mary Karr's The Liars' Club.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A famous writer describes her life growing up in foster care
- By Nancy C. on 12-21-18
By: Paula McLain
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All We Ever Wanted Was Everything
- By: Janelle Brown
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 786
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 683
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Story4 out of 5 stars 680
A smart, comic pause-resister about a Silicon Valley family in free fall over the course of one eventful summer from the author of Watch Me Disappear and Pretty Things. When Paul Miller’s pharmaceutical company goes public, making his family IPO millionaires, his wife, Janice, is sure this is the windfall she’s been waiting years for - until she learns, via messengered letter, that her husband is divorcing her (for her tennis partner!) and cutting her out of the new fortune.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The Perfect Life Ain't So Perfect
- By Theresa on 12-28-08
By: Janelle Brown
What listeners say about What I Had Before I Had You
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Jennifer Umipeg
- 01-08-18
Just a strange story.
The story rambled along and finally pulled together, but it was a tedious experience. Not the best use of my time.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Coolbreeze
- 05-07-16
Perfectly Scandalous
What made the experience of listening to What I Had Before I Had You the most enjoyable?
Narrator was wonderful, loved when she did the kids voices. Loved the unraveling of family secrets.
What was one of the most memorable moments of What I Had Before I Had You?
Most memorable moment was realizing what the "true" family dynamic/secret was.
Which character – as performed by Karen White – was your favorite?
The son
Any additional comments?
Really enjoyed this book. Demonstrates that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, even for those with a miserable childhood where they feel isolated.
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