
The Girls
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Cady McClain
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By:
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Emma Cline
About this listen
The instant best seller
An indelible portrait of girls, the women they become, and that moment in life when everything can go horribly wrong
Named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post • NPR • The Guardian • Entertainment Weekly • San Francisco Chronicle • Financial Times • Esquire • Newsweek • Vogue • Glamour • People • The Huffington Post • Elle • Harper’s Bazaar • Time Out • BookPage • Publishers Weekly • Slate
Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous aura of abandon. Soon Evie is in thrall to Suzanne, a mesmerizing older girl, and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who is its charismatic leader. Hidden in the hills, their sprawling ranch is eerie and run down, but to Evie it is exotic, thrilling, charged - a place where she feels desperate to be accepted. As she spends more time away from her mother and the rhythms of her daily life, and as her obsession with Suzanne intensifies, Evie does not realize she is coming closer and closer to unthinkable violence.
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award
Shortlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
Emma Cline - One of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists
Praise for The Girls
“Spellbinding...a seductive and arresting coming-of-age story.” (The New York Times Book Review)
“Extraordinary... Debut novels like this are rare, indeed.” (The Washington Post)
“Hypnotic.” (The Wall Street Journal)
“Gorgeous.” (Los Angeles Times)
“Savage.” (The Guardian)
“Astonishing.” (The Boston Globe)
“Superbly written.” (James Wood, The New Yorker)
“Intensely consuming.” (Richard Ford)
“A spectacular achievement.” (Lucy Atkins, The Times)
“Thrilling.” (Jennifer Egan)
“Compelling and startling.” (The Economist)
©2016 Emma Cline (P)2016 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“[The Girls reimagines] the American novel... Like Mary Gaitskill’s Veronica or Lorrie Moore’s Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, The Girls captures a defining friendship in its full humanity with a touch of rock-memoir, tell-it-like-it-really-was attitude.” (Vogue)
“Debut novels like this are rare, indeed.... The most remarkable quality of this novel is Cline’s ability to articulate the anxieties of adolescence in language that’s gorgeously poetic without mangling the authenticity of a teenager’s consciousness. The adult’s melancholy reflection and the girl’s swelling impetuousness are flawlessly braided together.... For a story that traffics in the lurid notoriety of the Manson murders, The Girls is an extraordinary act of restraint. With the maturity of a writer twice her age, Cline has written a wise novel that’s never showy: a quiet, seething confession of yearning and terror.” (The Washington Post)
“Outstanding... Cline’s novel is an astonishing work of imagination - remarkably atmospheric, preternaturally intelligent, and brutally feminist.... Cline painstakingly destroys the separation between art and faithful representation to create something new, wonderful, and disorienting.” (The Boston Globe)
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Alternating between the two women’s perspectives, Fruit of the Dead incorporates its mythic inspiration with a light touch and devastating precision. The result is a tale that explores love, control, obliteration, and America’s late-capitalist mythos. Lyon’s reinvention of Persephone and Demeter’s story makes for a haunting, electric novel that readers will not soon forget.
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Imaginative and Beautiful Reimagining
- By Kenneth Skipper on 04-26-24
By: Rachel Lyon
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A Children's Bible
- By: Lydia Millet
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 5 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Contemptuous of their parents, who pass their days in a stupor of liquor, drugs, and sex, the children feel neglected and suffocated at the same time. When a destructive storm descends on the summer estate, the group's ringleaders - including Eve, who narrates the story - decide to run away, leading the younger ones on a dangerous foray into the apocalyptic chaos outside.
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Not sure what to make of this
- By CCC on 10-20-20
By: Lydia Millet
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Luster
- A Novel
- By: Raven Leilani
- Narrated by: Ariel Blake
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Edie is stumbling her way through her 20s - sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage - with rules.
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Spellbinding
- By Nana on 08-07-20
By: Raven Leilani
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Daddy
- Stories
- By: Emma Cline
- Narrated by: Natasha Soudek
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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An absentee father collects his son from boarding school after a shocking act of violence. A nanny to a celebrity family hides out in Laurel Canyon in the aftermath of a tabloid scandal. A young woman sells her underwear to strangers. A notorious guest arrives at a placid, not-quite rehab in the Southwest. In 10 remarkable stories, Emma Cline portrays moments when the ordinary is disturbed, when daily life buckles, revealing the perversity and violence pulsing under the surface.
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BRILLIANT Writing, BRILLIANT narration
- By Annie Armstrong on 09-28-20
By: Emma Cline
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Beta Vulgaris
- A Novel
- By: Margie Sarsfield
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Elise and her boyfriend, Tom, set off for Minnesota, hoping the paycheck from the sugar beet harvest will cover the rent on their Brooklyn apartment. Amidst the grueling work and familiar anxieties about her finances, Elise starts noticing strange things: threatening phone calls, a mysterious rash, and snatches of an ominous voice coming from the beet pile. When Tom and other coworkers begin to vanish, Elise is left alone to confront the weight of her past, the horrors of her uncertain future, and the menacing but enticing siren song of the beets.
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The awful personality of the main character.
- By Gina Q. on 02-16-25
By: Margie Sarsfield
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Death in Her Hands
- A Novel
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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While on her daily walk with her dog in a secluded woods, a woman comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground by stones. "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body." But there is no dead body. Our narrator is deeply shaken; she has no idea what to make of this. She is new to this area, alone after the death of her husband, and she knows no one. Becoming obsessed with solving this mystery, our narrator imagines who Magda was and how she met her fate.
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Omg get ON with it
- By Nicole Dreyfus on 06-24-20
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
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In Memoriam
- A Novel
- By: Alice Winn
- Narrated by: Christian Coulson
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s 1914, and World War I is ceaselessly churning through thousands of young men on both sides of the fight. The violence of the front feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. News of the heroic deaths of their friends only makes the war more exciting. Gaunt, half German, is busy fighting his own private battle—an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, the glamorous, charming Ellwood—without a clue that Ellwood is pining for him in return
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Amazing
- By Henry on 03-21-23
By: Alice Winn
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Social Creature
- A Novel
- By: Tara Isabella Burton
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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They go through both bottles of champagne right there on the High Line, with nothing but the stars over them.... They drink, and Lavinia tells Louise about all the places they will go together when they finish their stories, when they are both great writers - to Paris and to Rome and to Trieste.... Lavinia will never go. She is going to die soon. Louise has nothing. Lavinia has everything. After a chance encounter, the two spiral into an intimate, intense, and possibly toxic friendship.
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Something Rotten in the Selfie Set
- By Dain Quentin Gore on 06-15-18
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All-Night Pharmacy
- A Novel
- By: Ruth Madievsky
- Narrated by: Moniqua Plante
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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On the night of her high school graduation, a young woman follows her older sister Debbie to Salvation, a Los Angeles bar patronized by energy healers, aspiring actors, and all-around misfits. After the two share a bag of unidentified pills, the evening turns into a haze of sensual and risky interactions—nothing unusual for two sisters bound in an incredibly toxic relationship. Our unnamed narrator has always been under the spell of the alluring and rebellious Debbie and, despite her own hesitations, she has always said yes to nights like these. That is, until Debbie disappears.
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Good enough listen but not quite there
- By Caroline on 09-02-23
By: Ruth Madievsky
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All We Ever Wanted Was Everything
- By: Janelle Brown
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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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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The Perfect Life Ain't So Perfect
- By Theresa on 12-28-08
By: Janelle Brown
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Penance
- A Novel
- By: Eliza Clark
- Narrated by: Hollie-Jay Bowes, Anna Gilthorpe, Emily Goldie, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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On a beach in a run-down seaside town on the Yorkshire coastline, sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson is set on fire by three other schoolgirls. Nearly a decade after the horrifying murder, journalist Alec Z. Carelli has written the definitive account of the crime, drawn from hours of interviews with witnesses and family members, painstaking historical research, and most notably, correspondence with the killers themselves. The result is a riveting snapshot of lives rocked by tragedy, and a town left in turmoil.
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she did it again!
- By mina on 10-04-23
By: Eliza Clark
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Arcadia
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Lauren Groff’s acclaimed debut novel The Monsters of Templeton was short-listed for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, Arcadia opens in the late 1960s with a group of young idealists forming a commune in western New York State. Into this group is born Bit, who grows into a quiet, distant man. Over the course of 50 years, Bit witnesses the utopia crumble and the world change in unimaginable ways.
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Luscious prose, intimate and realistic
- By Kathleen on 03-22-12
By: Lauren Groff
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Cursed Bread
- A Novel
- By: Sophie Mackintosh
- Narrated by: Genevieve Gaunt
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Still reeling in the aftermath of the deadliest war the world had ever seen, the small town of Pont-Saint-Esprit collectively lost its mind. Some historians believe the mysterious illness and violent hallucinations were caused by spoiled bread; others claim it was the result of covert government testing on the local population.
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boring
- By Anonymous User on 02-23-25
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youthjuice
- By: E.K. Sathue
- Narrated by: Suzy Jackson
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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From Sophia Bannion’s first day on the Storytelling team at HEBE, a luxury skincare/wellness company based in New York’s trendy SoHo neighborhood, it’s clear something is deeply amiss. But Sophia, pushing thirty, has plenty of skeletons in her closet next to the designer knockoffs and doesn’t care. Though she leads an outwardly charmed life, she aches for a deeper meaning to her flat existence—and a cure for her brutal nail-biting habit. She finds it all and more at HEBE, and with Tree Whitestone, HEBE’s charismatic founder and CEO.
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Beauty is Possible
- By Norine on 01-14-25
By: E.K. Sathue
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The Secret History
- A Novel
- By: Donna Tartt
- Narrated by: Donna Tartt
- Length: 22 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.
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Horrible narration
- By M. Cardoso on 07-23-23
By: Donna Tartt
What listeners say about The Girls
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Susan Worley
- 06-29-16
So disappointed
I kept waiting for more - the words were written beautifully but the story just never got there. The ending was nothing.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Jeana
- 07-27-16
Memorizing
Loved this book. Takes place in the counterculture era and so entertaining and a good laid back "read"
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2 people found this helpful
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- digeon
- 11-14-16
excellent
an excellent book that you can't stop. loved it. A must read and we'll read
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2 people found this helpful
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- stacey b
- 07-22-16
Fictionalization version of real events?
I need to preface this by saying that I was a criminology major and ingested every bit of material about Charles Manson I could get my hands on. This book is kind of a rip off in my mind of what happened in the Manson family right down to the cult living on a ranch, and a murder in the fancy part of town. I might have enjoyed it more had I not known so much about that story. The narrator is kind of a peripheral member of the cult so that did provide an interesting perspective. I felt that the Author may have gone back and added more flowery descriptors than necessary, but it was an entertaining
listen just the same.
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- beth
- 08-02-16
Meh
Wasn't that interesting to me. Not what I expected and didn't keep my attention well.
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- Lis
- 08-09-16
Moody, psychological, but a familiar story
Would you recommend The Girls to your friends? Why or why not?
Maybe. It's an easy read, but can drag a bit at times. Depends on what they are looking for.
Have you listened to any of Cady McClain’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
This was my first time listening to a Cady McClain performance. I feel like it fit the mood and time period of the book well, especially when told through a 14 year old perspective for most of it. Very dreamy. It was a bit exaggerated, and that drew me out of the story at times, but overall it was fine.
Any additional comments?
I found this book moderately intriguing, and enjoyed how it made me question "What are the waves of thought that suck me in, for the sake of being liked or accepted? Do I get entranced by any ideas so much that I lose sight of the full picture, that may actually be ugly?" I like stories that make me question, and I liked this one because of that. I enjoyed Emma Cline's poetic style of writing, but I can see it being irritating if that isn't your taste. I thought she did a fine job for a debut novel. The whole book I felt like I was reading something familiar, but contrary to other reviews saying it was copying the Charles Manson story, I almost wonder if that was the point. That's why it felt familiar the whole time, because the plot is that story, but regardless, I enjoyed it because it gave me insight as to what it may have felt like to get sucked into a scenario such as that. If the plot resembling the Charles Manson family wasn't intentional, then that is weird for sure and not that cool haha.
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- Maureen McDaniel
- 10-17-16
Hated the characters and story, loved the writing
Where does The Girls rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Mixed emotions: the writing is stunning, amazing and so vivid. I kept wanting to care about the main character, but she was so shallow, spineless and void of personality. Most of the characters, in fact, came across to me as cardboard stereotypes. But, I kept listening because the writing was so fabulous.
Has The Girls turned you off from other books in this genre?
No. I grew up in the era -- and I live in the area, and I was glad to see the topic in a well-reviewed book.
What about Cady McClain’s performance did you like?
Her voice is cool but vivid and emotional. Very believable in all of the characters' voices.
Any additional comments?
Spoiler! The fact that the main character, in the end, says nothing of what she knows about the crime seems incredible, but looking back, one sees little sign of any nascent character arising within her. She is utterly dull and unadmirable, really.
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- Lauren
- 09-15-16
Book was just OK
What did you like best about The Girls? What did you like least?
The whole story builds for something to happen, yet, nothing ever happens.
What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?
The last hour of the book was the only interesting part.
Would you listen to another book narrated by Cady McClain?
Yes
Could you see The Girls being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?
Maybe a movie.
Any additional comments?
I'm a tad bit disappointed.
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- Dana
- 08-16-16
Predictable & Disappointing
Nothing really happens and when it does the narrator isn't there to tell us about it.
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- W Perry Hall
- 06-18-16
Woe Be, the Male-volent, Male-ficent Male-factors
"Snuffed-out Story of the ... Fugitive Without a Crime, Half Hoping and Half Terrified that No One was Ever Coming for Me" E. Cline, The Girl, p. 361.
If a novel maintains verisimilitude to the human condition, I do not have a problem if it negatively depicts a certain religion, race, gender or disability. It is art reflecting life so I hesitate to criticize painting good and evil into it. I say this to preface my thoughts, as a guy, on the underlying theme.
There's no doubt the protagonist Evie Boyd, at a very impressionable age of 14, had negative experiences with men and the only love of her life was a 19-year-old girl. I can understand her hatred of men. But, Geez Louise, every male that appears in the book, either in her long ago past, recent past or currently is portrayed as either evil or amoral. I do not recall a book so negative toward ALL men other than A Handmaid's Tale, with which I of course had no problem given its dystopian setting of a world ruled by despotic sexist men; yet even there Offred's husband was shown in a kind light. Not so in The Girls, not one man or boy is not wicked or weak, even the baby boy is bad.
I'll quote one passage in which it all became clear to me:
"The hatred she must have felt to do what she’d done, to slam the knife over and over again like she was trying to rid herself of a frenzied sickness: hatred like that was not unfamiliar to me. Hatred was easy. The permutations constant over the years: a stranger at a fair who palmed my crotch through my shorts. A man on the sidewalk who lunged at me, then laughed when I flinched. The night an older man took me to a fancy restaurant ... a famous filmmaker ... [joined our table]. The men fell into a heated discussion with no entry point for me: I fidgeted with my heavy cloth napkin, drank water. Staring at the wall. “Eat your vegetables,” the filmmaker suddenly snapped at me. “You’re a growing girl.” The filmmaker wanted me to know what I already knew: I had no power. He saw my need and used it against me. My hatred for him was immediate. ...The filmmaker laughed at me, and so did the others, the older man who would later place my hand on his dick while he drove me home. None of this was rare. Things like this happened hundreds of times. Maybe more. The hatred that vibrated beneath the surface of my girl’s face—I think Suzanne recognized it. ... There was so much to destroy."
I don't have a problem with the number of male monsters in this book. Frankly, my issue was not obviated until near the end in the above-quoted. At that point, I saw that not only did Ms. Cline use all the negative stereotypes (in itself, no big deal), but the entire tenor of the novel is an outright hatred of men as evil incarnate. Even this wouldn't put me off but for the fact that her casting (or any author's casting) all of a kind or type as culprits significantly diminishes realism and truth within the novel. That, I cannot forgive. As such, I'm knocking down to 3.3 stars, a story I'd otherwise give 4.1 stars.
Unlike other reviewers, it doesn't bother me that parts are over-written as tends to happen with newly-bronzed MFAs, or that the publisher probably overpaid (IMO, that's the publisher's problem, not the reader's).
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6 people found this helpful