
The Bright Years
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Narrated by:
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Ferdelle Capistrano
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Joy Osmanski
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Lee Osorio
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By:
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Sarah Damoff
About this listen
One family. Four generations. A secret son. A devastating addiction. A Texas family is met with losses and surprises of inheritance, but they’re unable to shake the pull back toward each other in this big-hearted family saga perfect for fans of Mary Beth Keane and Claire Lombardo.
“A heartbreaker and heart-mender at once.” —Tayari Jones, New York Times bestselling author of An American Marriage
Ryan and Lillian Bright are deeply in love, recently married, and now parents to a baby girl, Georgette. But Lillian has a son she hasn’t told Ryan about, and Ryan has an alcohol addiction he hasn’t told Lillian about, so Georgette comes of age watching their marriage rise and fall.
When a shocking blow scatters their fragile trio, Georgette tries to distance herself from reminders of her parents. Years later, Lillian’s son comes searching for his birth family, so Georgette must return to her roots, unearth her family’s history, and decide whether she can open up to love for them—or herself—while there’s still time.
Told from three intimate points of view, The Bright Years is a tender, true-to-life novel that explores the impact of each generation in a family torn apart by tragedy but, over time, restored by the power of grace and love.
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Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.
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Brilliant
- By Bookworm on 05-07-25
By: Virginia Evans
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The Float Test
- A Novel
- By: Lynn Steger Strong
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The Kenner siblings are at odds. Jenn is a harried mom struggling under the weight of family obligations. Fred is a novelist who can’t write, maybe because she’s lost faith in storytelling itself. Jude is a recovering corporate lawyer with her own story to tell, and a grudge against her former favorite sister, Fred. George, the baby, is estranged from his wife and harboring both a secret about his former employer and an ill-advised crush on one of his sisters’ friends. Gathered after a major loss, each sibling needs the others more than ever—if only they could trust each other.
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The Family Recipe
- A Novel
- By: Carolyn Huynh
- Narrated by: Vyvy Nguyen, David Lee Huynh
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Duc Tran, the eccentric founder of the Vietnamese sandwich chain Duc’s Sandwiches, has decided to retire. No one has heard from his wife, Evelyn, in two decades. She abandoned the family without a trace, and clearly doesn’t want anything to do with Duc, the business, or their kids. But the money has to go to someone. With the help of the shady family lawyer, Duc informs his five estranged adult children that to receive their inheritance, his four daughters must revitalize run-down shops in old-school Little Saigon locations across America: Houston, San Jose, New Orleans, and Philadelphia.
By: Carolyn Huynh
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Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter
- By: Samantha Crewson
- Narrated by: Lindsey Dorcus
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Thirteen years ago, Providence Byrd threw the family car in reverse and ran over her mother. Even though her mother survived, that single instant of teenage madness made Providence a felon and irrevocably altered her life. When her mother disappears years later under suspicious circumstances, Providence tells herself that returning home is her chance to find closure after a prolonged estrangement from her family. Never mind that this is only half of the truth: she’s also returning to finally confront her abusive father, Tom Byrd.
By: Samantha Crewson
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The Names
- A Novel
- By: Florence Knapp
- Narrated by: Dervla Kirwan
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she'd like to call the child, Cora hesitates...
By: Florence Knapp
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The Road to Tender Hearts
- A Novel
- By: Annie Hartnett
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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At sixty-three years old, million-dollar lottery winner PJ Halliday would be the luckiest man in Pondville, Massachusetts, if it weren’t for the tragedies of his life: the sudden death of his eldest daughter and the way his marriage fell apart after that. Since then, PJ spends both his money and his time at the bar, and he probably doesn’t have much time left—he’s had three heart attacks already. But when PJ reads the obituary of his old romantic rival, he realizes his high school sweetheart, Michelle Cobb, is finally single again.
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quirky lovable dysfunctional family tales
- By Maryanne T. on 05-07-25
By: Annie Hartnett
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The Sirens
- A Novel
- By: Emilia Hart
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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2019: Lucy awakens from a dream to find her hands around her ex-lover’s throat. Horrified, she flees to her older sister’s house on the Australian coast, hoping she can help explain the strangely vivid nightmare that preceded the attack—but Jess is nowhere to be found. As Lucy awaits her return, the rumors surrounding Jess’s strange small town start to emerge. Numerous men have gone missing at sea, spread over decades. A tiny baby was found hidden in a cave. And sailors tell of hearing women’s voices on the waves.
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Unique story with a touch of historical fiction
- By Amy Y on 05-05-25
By: Emilia Hart
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Great Big Beautiful Life
- By: Emily Henry
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: To write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years—or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the 20th Century.
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Just, wow.
- By julia lee on 04-25-25
By: Emily Henry
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Shatter Me 3-Book Set 1
- Shatter Me/Unravel Me/Ignite Me
- By: Tahereh Mafi
- Narrated by: Kate Simses
- Length: 30 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Enter the explosive world of the blockbuster Shatter Me series by #1 New York Times bestselling author Tahereh Mafi!
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I Understand, But You Gotta Read
- By Marie on 10-04-23
By: Tahereh Mafi
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Atavists: Stories
- By: Lydia Millet
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber, Devon Sorvari, Patrick Zeller, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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From Lydia Millet—“the American writer with the funniest, wisest grasp on how we fool ourselves” (Chicago Tribune)—comes an inventive new collection of short fiction. Atavists follows a group of families, couples, and loners in their collisions, confessions, and conflicts in a post-pandemic America of artificially lush lawns, beauty salons, tech-bro mansions, assisted-living facilities, big-box stores, gastropubs, college campuses, and medieval role-playing festivals.
By: Lydia Millet
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The Staircase in the Woods
- By: Chuck Wendig
- Narrated by: Jay Myers, Amber Benson, Xe Sands
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Five high school friends are bonded by an oath to protect one another no matter what. Then, on a camping trip in the middle of the forest, they find something extraordinary: a mysterious staircase to nowhere. One friend walks up—and never comes back down. Then the staircase disappears. Twenty years later, the staircase has reappeared. Now the group returns to find the lost boy—and what lies beyond the staircase in the woods.
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I was finally actually afraid
- By Anonymous User on 05-02-25
By: Chuck Wendig
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All That Life Can Afford
- By: Emily Everett
- Narrated by: Alex Finke
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Anna first fell in love with London at her hometown library—its Jane Austen balls a far cry from her life of food stamps and hand-me-downs. But when she finally arrives after college, the real London is a moldy flat and the same paycheck-to-paycheck grind—that fairy-tale life still out of reach. Then Anna meets the Wilders, who fly her to Saint-Tropez to tutor their teenage daughter. Swept up by the sphinx-like elder sister, Anna soon finds herself plunged into a heady whirlpool of parties and excess, a place where confidence is a birthright.
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The narrator had a cold around chapter 15 or needs adenoid surgery the first 10 chapters were lovely
- By Czashka on 04-06-25
By: Emily Everett
What listeners say about The Bright Years
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 05-07-25
A Memoir That Shimmers with Truth: My Reflections on The Bright Years
As someone whose heart is tuned to stories of transformation, unity, and the deep, intricate humanity in us all, I approached The Bright Years with curiosity—and found myself completely absorbed. Okay, TBH, I initially decided to read it just because I wanted to impress my new friend and employee who had helped to edit the book (“Isn’t this magnanimous of me?”). But then once I got into it, it grabbed me and refused to let go. I had no idea I was delving into one of the most touching pieces of fiction I’ve ever read. What Sarah Damoff has created here is far more than a memoir. It’s a decades-spanning tapestry of memory and meaning, stitched with insight, cultural texture, and emotional honesty.
The narrative is multigenerational and stretches across eras—from the analog charm of the 1970s to the screen-lit chaos of the 2020s. With each passing chapter, it felt like walking through a memory museum—not just hers, but very much ours. Damoff masterfully captures the feel of each era, whether it’s the subtle grit of 1980s suburban Texas, complete with school field days and cassette tape heartbreaks, Y2K paranoia, and ten-cent texts (“Wait! We used to pay per text?!”). These weren’t throwaway references—they were contextual memory anchors that grounded her story in time and made it feel profoundly real. And don’t get me started about how she broke my heart with the Abbey Road/Revolver debate punctuated with a stab of “Here, There, and Everywhere”.💔😭
One of the deepest parts of my own reading experience was my longing—if I’m honest—for a Disney ending. Especially when it came to the painful, ever-present shadow of alcoholism. I found myself rooting for that clean arc of victory, the tidy bow, the triumphant last page, giving me hope that I might also end that way, fully victorious over all of my struggles. But Sarah doesn’t give us that. She gives us something far braver: the unfinished, often uncertain truth. She resists the temptation to paint recovery as a straight line, and instead offers a portrait that is more real than neat—layered, unresolved, and still sacred. I respected her immensely for that choice. Life rarely hands us clear finales; it hands us a series of challenges to love more deeply and live more honestly. Sarah gets that.
Her prose is luminous. Not flashy—eloquent. She doesn’t scream her brilliance; she unfolds it with poise and precision. I found myself re-reading lines like:
“Grief slipped into the room like a cat—unannounced, quiet, and suddenly everywhere.”
or
“We keep mementos like we keep scars—not because we want to relive the pain, but because proof of healing feels holy.”
That’s the kind of writing that stops you mid-sentence to breathe it in.
I always say my favorite thing about a slice of cake is its moistness. My favorite thing about a story? Its unpredictability. The Bright Years is rich in this way. It doesn’t follow the expected arc. It keeps you engaged, guessing, wondering—not just what will happen next, but why. Like the best conversations in life, it’s full of reveals and turns that make you want to go straight to your chiropractor to treat your whiplash. And Sarah delivers this—not like a first-time author feeling her way forward—but like a seasoned storyteller who knows that a life fully told doesn’t need embellishment, just honesty and craft.
Some were fascinating reveals, generating, “Oh, now I know who this character is!” or “Wow, I never saw that twist coming!“ or “Geesh, this part is hitting a little too close to home for me; I WAS that exact character myself for a while.” But more than once while I was listening to it while driving or running, I literally screamed out, “NOOOOO!!!!! Sarah, NOOOO!!” After finishing the book, I watched an interview where she shared that writing the book was also a process of discovery for her as she watched the characters unfold on the pages she was typing. Sarah, now I can only thank you for sharing with us your own pain and loss at those same sudden heartbreaking moments. I feel you.❤️🩹
What amazed me most, though, was Sarah’s profound understanding of human complexity. Every person in this book is layered. She gives us no villains, no saints—just people. Imperfect, luminous, struggling, courageous people. From childhood friends to aging parents to the ever-changing version of herself, Sarah holds each character with compassion and clarity. We walk with them in their heartbreak, their humor, their hesitant hope. She doesn’t flatten anyone. Instead, she reminds us what we too often forget: everyone you meet is living a story that would stop you in your tracks if you really heard it. (What is the term for that? Sonder?)
The Bright Years isn’t just a memoir. It’s a mirror, a meditation, a gift. It left me inspired, grateful, and more determined than ever to walk through my own bright years with open eyes and an open heart for all around me.
Highly, deeply, warmly recommended.
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-24-25
Engaging, Gut-wrenching, Beautiful
The author, Sarah Damoff, beautifully presents a family and its story through three different perspectives. Each raw, relatable, endearing and, at times, heartbreaking. The different voices in the audio enable the reader to easily transition. I was engrossed and captivated
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- Jenny
- 04-30-25
Deep connection to the characters
Truly moved by this story. As it neared the end I found myself wishing it wasn’t almost over because I was enjoying it so much.
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- Joan Marie Albrecht
- 04-24-25
Astonishingly beautiful!
This novel is beautifully threaded with love and loss and forgiveness—-a must-read that lingers on and on.
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- Joan M. McNamara
- 05-07-25
Quick read that was just ok for me
Short quick read that was just an ok book for me. Most people gave this book a five star read but it just didn’t move me the way it did others.
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