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unbelievable character development

Reviewed: 03-24-25

how can someone develop such complex characters in such a short period of time? the story lines are almost secondary in every one of these stories. you can tell that King knows so much more about these characters than what is on paper, they are truly fully developed in his mind. there's a lot of Stephen King that I like and some that I can't really listen to, but these stories are awesome. I think my favorite was one of the shortest, about a boy who is obsessed with death and his grandfather.

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Books 1 & 2 Good - Lost it at 3

Reviewed: 01-15-25

I had to give up on this series on chapter 5 of book 3. Books one and two were fun to listen to. it's interesting see a post apocalyptic story written by someone who was involved in government and has a different perspective since almost all of this stuff is hardcore right wing anti-establishment whereas this author has some level of faith that the government would at least try to help people, yet fully recognizes that they would fail in almost every way. Somehow from the very opening of the third book it's almost like you're listening to a cartoon. I don't want to give any spoiler alerts but the arch villain and the hero both say so many dramatic things with the word damn it used so many times and so much internal expostulation about the plates they have suffered and are about to suffer that it's worse than a soap opera. I stopped and listened to two episodes of dateline and came back to it to see if I could get it to resonate, in a sense clearing my head. that didn't work so I watched five episodes of friends... came back to it again, I still can't listen to it.

Honestly it's probably still worth the credit for the first two books and if you don't mind really overly dramatic writing or the drama gets thicker and the plot gets thinner as you go, the whole thing could be for you. It could possibly be more about the narrator, who has a great voice and cadence. I almost feel like maybe the third book was directed by a different director who wanted way too much emphasis placed on certain things.

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So damn good

Reviewed: 07-31-24

if you gave me the description of the plot of this book I positively never would have listened to it. however this is my third novel in a row from the author, it's her second effort but the first one to be available on audible. I wish I could give the performance six stars. The narrator who plays the older Arthur is amazing. his voice or the primary character is absolutely spot-on but the comic relief he brings when he voices Yolanda is just as fulfilling. The amount of empathy that this author must have to write two characters who are so different from each other and from herself so well is essentially incalculable. I have a very easy time relating to the heavy set gentleman having wait almost 400 lb in the past myself, having had food as my primary salve and addiction it's very easy to understand how you have to make a choice at some point to go down or keep going up there is no maintaining 400 lb unless you're a football player. Even at that weight you struggle with just going up and down the stairs in your own home. heavy set people are more often caricatures than characters especially at that weight. there were so many potential directions for these relationships to go I feel like the situation that occurred was absolutely perfect and well the ending probably upset and disappointed a lot of people it's the one I hoped for. I hope for your sake that you will download this very value priced audiobook and enjoy it, it's a peace of modern literature not just another throw away reading experience. pick up God of the Woods while you're at it. I'm on to listen to her next work and then I'm going to read her first novel since there doesn't appear to be an audio book of it.

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Too real!

Reviewed: 07-29-24

Not nearly as interesting to listen to as God of the Woods which led me to it but equally well written. I hope to God that the author had to do a lot of research to get this level of detail and that it's not that personal to her. as someone who is surrounded by addicts of all types, although certainly in a more suburban unless underprivileged environment, this hit really close to home. I would not call it and enjoyable listen in any way but extremely heartfelt, extremely real, beautifully crafted. The narrator is wonderful, she doesn't excellent job voicing the male characters without making them sound all the same or like caricatures which is sometimes an issue with female narrators (as is the inverse with male narrators). The voice of the sister compared to the voice of the narrator is really my favorite part and I'm guessing she put a lot of care into crafting those presentations.

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Narrator not Hap!

Reviewed: 07-19-24

i have been listening to this entire series in order. First off, I understand something very distasteful happened with Phil Gigante who narrated the series up to this point and if the author is anything like his characters he doesn't want him involved, I understand that. However, this narrator, who has a great voice, reads Hap absolutely nothing like the voice of the prior novels and with no appreciable cadence...I'm assuming he read Hap in his natural voice. I think maybe he was selected since he sounds a lot like Leonard, but frankly you can barely tell Hap and Leonard apart, and the soft sarcasm so perfectly expressed is absent in Leonard. I had to speed it up to 1.5 and just get through it. Lansdale should have just read it himself...I'm listening to Veil's Visit now and he sounds great.

The story was interesting but hard to follow because I was so distracted by the narration. Read this one instead of Listening, hopefully the next narrator understands the character better

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A Surreal Experience

Reviewed: 06-23-24

First off, the narration is great. I can only imagine that she is related to the author or something. I don't think there was any direction provided or that anyone listened to the audio, there were if you words that most people would know very well they were completely mispronounced many times throughout the book like Eczema, and there were also instances that may have been typos in the original book or may have been the narrator misreading the word that normally would have been re-recorded and dubbed in. however the actual performance is extraordinary.

That being said the content of this book is ridiculous. it's not that the plot is particularly unlikely although frankly it's really not that interesting but rather that the author clearly has no understanding of real life and did no research whatsoever into anything she wrote about. The way the quote unquote twists and turns are presented would have worked better for a horror story where disbelief has already been completely suspended. there were so many things that are common knowledge which you don't even need to research which were stated in such a strange way, Like there are people that are transferring millions of dollars around the world but can't make their house payment, there's a building that was hard to see which was 100 ft by 100 ft square, which is a 10,000 SF footprint. There's a giant storm so massive that it stops ferry service and knocks out all the power on the island and someone is riding a motorcycle around in it.

In addition to all that the point of view jumps constantly and even changes in the middle of storylines. You're basically just spoon fed whatever the author wants you to have whenever she wants you to have it and nothing develops naturally at all.

I don't normally write reviews on self-published stuff and I don't know much about this author but I was told she had two other major audible hits so I guess my expectations were a little higher... there's an Australian out there who writes stories with the same basic level of plot they're even about Islands most of the time and sure some of the things in them are a little bit far-fetched however they read completely differently from this.

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a word on the edits

Reviewed: 04-20-24

I think what happens when the weird edits is that this was originally released on CDs or cassettes in 2004 and would have taken several CDs, for high quality it could have been 6 to 8 CDs. The repeats that appear to be mistakes are always at the end of a chapter or the beginning of another, it's where you would have changed the CDs, which we would have appreciated back then. The story is great the characters are awesome even if they do spend a lot of time waxing philosophical I don't that that's out of line with their backgrounds and professions, especially that main character and her father,and her love interest, they are all people who would be deep thinkers by nature. This book definitely stands the test of time despite technology changes it feelss current, probably one of the last few books to be written before cell phones were ubiquitous and before Google was a household name.

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Get inside a privileged woman's head

Reviewed: 03-25-24

I have listened to both the audible titles currently available from Holly Craig. They were free. I am a 45 year old American upper middle class white male, The protagonist is a 40ish year old rich (by heritage and hard work) Australian female with 2 young children and one on the way. The plot is solid but it isn't really the driving force of this novel...the protagonists mixed emotions at her wealth and privilege, her terrible marriage and her desire for close female friendships which she has never had are the meat of the thing, set against a beautiful and exotic (to me) backdrop. I have always said to anyone who cares to listen and many who don't that Australian culture is the closest to the U.S. of any other country besides maybe Canada and that really holds true of this novel can be believed. I would love to know if the author gained this insight through her own life or by peering into the lives of others. I highly recommend both of her novels but if you read them for the right reasons they are not light reading. 4 stars rather than 5 only because like so many other books in the age of rapid publication and self publication about 25% of it is repetitious internal monologue simply restating things that were just covered. It could have been shorter or had more actual content...it is possible that this is a device that is actually sought after by the target audience (which I am clearly not a member of) or it could be publishers pushing for length or word count.

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1 person found this helpful

Different, Fun and (possibly accidentally) inciteful

Reviewed: 01-21-24

Only the intro was corny and even that eventually made me laugh, when he says, "pause, play, murdah" in a hilarious movie announcer parody. I haven't listed to any scripted podcasts out of India before. As a yoga practitioner and general fan of world culture I know quite a bit about traditional Indian practices, Hinduism, ayurvedic practice, etc but I know very little about modern India, especially the middle class (I think everyone is aware of the extreme poverty and the luxury in which the ultra rich are know to live, which this certainly addresses). The plot is far fetched but certainly not impossible. If I could sit down with the writer I would mainly ask why he anglicized the last names of both main characters, I have many customers of asian decent and I have never met an Abraham nor a Merchant, a English or American last name would generally be by marriage (in my own experience). In any case, fun story, great voice acting and recording. Kudos.

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excellent and enlightening

Reviewed: 01-20-24

Interesting story. One person shows are an amazing way to present things. Explores and area I never really considered, the idea of classes within the black community. I definitely look forward to other works by this playwright.

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