What Once Was True
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Narrated by:
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Caroline Lennon
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By:
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Jean Grainger
About this listen
Robinswood, Co. Waterford, 1939.
The once grand house is home to two very different families. Despite delusions of grandeur, Lord and Lady Kenefick and their adult children live a life of decayed opulence as the money needed to keep such a large house and grounds ever dwindles.
Meanwhile, the Murphy family, Dermot, Isabella and their three almost grown-up girls, live and work on the estate and do their best to keep everything running smoothly.
Social structure is vital. Everyone knows their place, but as war looms, both families find themselves drawn into the conflict and begin questioning everything that once was true.
From the leafy grounds of an Irish stately home to the bombed-out streets of London in the Blitz, Jean Grainger’s latest best-selling historical saga will sweep you away.
©2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLCListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Dublin, Ireland 1915. Eighteen-year-old May Gallagher is beautiful but restless, and longs for the freedom to live her own life, to decide her own destiny. Mollycoddled as the only remaining child of middle-class parents in the suburbs, she sneaks out to the theatre when she can. She is mesmerised by the captivating actor Peter Cullen, and wishes she could enjoy a more bohemian life. The Great War is taking all the boys away, and the promise that it will all be over by Christmas is ringing more hollow with each passing month.
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For All the World
- By Delores DeMaria on 10-05-24
By: Jean Grainger
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Sisters of the Southern Cross
- By: Jean Grainger
- Narrated by: Siobhan Waring
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Queensland, Australia, 1936 Sister Claire McAuliffe has been called from Dungarvan, County Waterford, to do God’s work in Jumaaroo, Queensland. Along with four other sisters, she is charged with setting up a Catholic school for the education of the gold rush families. But life between the tropical Australian rainforest and the azure ocean is far from the spectacular paradise it seems. Sister Claire finds life challenging in more ways than she can count—but far more worrying is the constant presence of the much-loved mayor of Jumaaroo, Joseph McGrath.
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Wow!
- By Rebecca HIll on 06-17-21
By: Jean Grainger
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The Winemaker's Secret
- A Starlight Cove Novel
- By: Cynthia Ellingsen
- Narrated by: Kate Rudd
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Abby Harrington’s family has dedicated their lives to cultivating the family vineyard and collecting vintage wines. But it takes only one night for the priceless collection to vanish, stolen during Abby’s grandparents’ sixtieth anniversary celebration. Then a devastating plane crash leaves her grandfather clinging to life in intensive care. Desperate to take action, Abby sets out to discover who stole the precious wine - and why. The clues lead her to dark truths about her family she is not prepared to face.
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Whiney Main Females Need to go Away!!!
- By Lisa on 04-12-19
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The Copperfield House
- A Nantucket Sunset Series, Book 1
- By: Katie Winters
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Copperfields were once the most beloved family on Nantucket Island. Twenty-five years ago, their lives changed forever. And they never saw one another again. Not until now. In the spring of 1997, Julia watched as a judge sentenced her father, the renowned novelist, Bernard Copperfield, to twenty-five years in prison for conning, swindling, and stealing millions of dollars from his dearest Nantucket friends and fellow artists. With her family in ruins around her, seventeen-year-old Julia packed up her bags and ran away, pledging never to return to Nantucket ever again.
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Feel good story
- By CD on 01-13-23
By: Katie Winters
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The Robinswood Series Bundle
- Books 1 & 2
- By: Jean Grainger
- Narrated by: Caroline Lennon
- Length: 21 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
In the first book, What Once Was True, two families, one of grandeur and one of the working class, navigate the conflicts associated with the looming war ahead. Despite delusions of grandeur, Lord and Lady Kenefick and their adult children live a life of decayed opulence as the money needed to keep such a house and grounds ever dwindles.
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The absolute best in every way!
- By Anonymous User on 06-05-22
By: Jean Grainger
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Last Port of Call
- The Queenstown Series, Book 1
- By: Jean Grainger
- Narrated by: Siobhan Waring
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The day Titanic sails from Queenstown, taking with it the hopes and dreams of so many, Harp’s life too is devastated. The small port town is shaken to its foundations at the loss of the unsinkable ship, but the revelation of a long-held secret means that Harp and Rose have a much more pressing issue to solve, one that could destroy them if they cannot find a solution.
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Love, love, love
- By Anij on 06-13-23
By: Jean Grainger
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For All the World
- The Aisling Series, Book 1
- By: Jean Grainger
- Narrated by: Siobhan Waring, Gary Furlong, Jean Grainger
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Dublin, Ireland 1915. Eighteen-year-old May Gallagher is beautiful but restless, and longs for the freedom to live her own life, to decide her own destiny. Mollycoddled as the only remaining child of middle-class parents in the suburbs, she sneaks out to the theatre when she can. She is mesmerised by the captivating actor Peter Cullen, and wishes she could enjoy a more bohemian life. The Great War is taking all the boys away, and the promise that it will all be over by Christmas is ringing more hollow with each passing month.
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For All the World
- By Delores DeMaria on 10-05-24
By: Jean Grainger
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Sisters of the Southern Cross
- By: Jean Grainger
- Narrated by: Siobhan Waring
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Queensland, Australia, 1936 Sister Claire McAuliffe has been called from Dungarvan, County Waterford, to do God’s work in Jumaaroo, Queensland. Along with four other sisters, she is charged with setting up a Catholic school for the education of the gold rush families. But life between the tropical Australian rainforest and the azure ocean is far from the spectacular paradise it seems. Sister Claire finds life challenging in more ways than she can count—but far more worrying is the constant presence of the much-loved mayor of Jumaaroo, Joseph McGrath.
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Wow!
- By Rebecca HIll on 06-17-21
By: Jean Grainger
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The Winemaker's Secret
- A Starlight Cove Novel
- By: Cynthia Ellingsen
- Narrated by: Kate Rudd
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Abby Harrington’s family has dedicated their lives to cultivating the family vineyard and collecting vintage wines. But it takes only one night for the priceless collection to vanish, stolen during Abby’s grandparents’ sixtieth anniversary celebration. Then a devastating plane crash leaves her grandfather clinging to life in intensive care. Desperate to take action, Abby sets out to discover who stole the precious wine - and why. The clues lead her to dark truths about her family she is not prepared to face.
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Whiney Main Females Need to go Away!!!
- By Lisa on 04-12-19
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The Copperfield House
- A Nantucket Sunset Series, Book 1
- By: Katie Winters
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Copperfields were once the most beloved family on Nantucket Island. Twenty-five years ago, their lives changed forever. And they never saw one another again. Not until now. In the spring of 1997, Julia watched as a judge sentenced her father, the renowned novelist, Bernard Copperfield, to twenty-five years in prison for conning, swindling, and stealing millions of dollars from his dearest Nantucket friends and fellow artists. With her family in ruins around her, seventeen-year-old Julia packed up her bags and ran away, pledging never to return to Nantucket ever again.
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Feel good story
- By CD on 01-13-23
By: Katie Winters
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The Existential Worries of Mags Munroe
- The Mags Munroe Series, Book 1
- By: Jean Grainger
- Narrated by: Siobhan Waring
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Life is calm and fairly predictable. Until something unthinkable happens in our sleepy backwater. A crime, but not like anything I've ever seen before. It's a complete mystery. And it's up to me to solve it.
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Anticlimactic
- By kathleen thomas on 12-09-22
By: Jean Grainger
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The Irish Boarding House
- By: Sandy Taylor
- Narrated by: Aoife McMahon
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Dublin, 1952. When Mary Kate Ryan receives a surprise inheritance from the woman who abandoned her as a tiny baby, she’s stunned. All her life, she has longed to know why her mother disappeared, and now she’s devastated to realize that every lonely night she spent without a home or family of her own, her mother knew exactly where she was.
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This is a story as sweet as peppermint candy
- By Tresia on 05-23-23
By: Sandy Taylor
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Niccolò Rising
- House of Niccolò Series, Book 1
- By: Dorothy Dunnett
- Narrated by: John Banks
- Length: 23 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Niccolò Rising, book one of the series, finds us in Bruges, 1460. Jousting is the genteel pastime, and successful merchants are, of necessity, polyglot. Street smart, brilliant at figures, adept at the subtleties of diplomacy and the well-timed untruth, Dunnett's hero rises from wastrel to prodigy in a breathless adventure that wins him the hand of the strongest woman in Bruges and the hatred of two powerful enemies.
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The best novel series of 15th century Europe
- By Terri Hogoboom on 05-21-23
By: Dorothy Dunnett
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Autumn Masquerade
- Timeless Regency Collection, Book 1
- By: Josi S. Kilpack, Donna Hatch, Nancy Campbell Allen
- Narrated by: Sarah Zimmerman
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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When Lila overhears her uncle talking about a man coming to look for property in the county, she doesn't think twice, until her uncle says he hopes Lila will find enough interest to marry the man. How can she marry someone named Mortimer Luthford, not to mention that his advanced age of thirty-three, and especially since she's already in love with her absent cousin Neville?
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Happily Ever After
- By J. Byerly on 02-11-20
By: Josi S. Kilpack, and others
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Shadow of a Century
- By: Jean Grainger
- Narrated by: Alana Kerr Collins
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Mary Doyle arrives in Dublin in 1913, doomed, she fears, to a life of domestic service. Instead, however, she finds herself deeply affected by the social and political turmoil of a fledgling nation struggling for independence. Suddenly, all that was once inevitable is no longer a certainty as she is embroiled in the very heart of the Easter Rising.
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Loved this book!
- By Amazon Customer on 11-14-20
By: Jean Grainger
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The Words We Lost
- By: Nicole Deese
- Narrated by: Libby McKnight
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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As a senior acquisitions editor for Fog Harbor Books in San Francisco, Ingrid Erikson has rejected many a manuscript for lack of defined conflict and dramatic irony—two elements her current life possesses in spades. In the months following the death of her childhood best friend and international bestselling author Cece Campbell, Ingrid has not only lost her ability to escape into fiction due to a rare trauma response, but she's also desperate to find the closure she is convinced will come with Cece's missing final manuscript.
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Not my favorite
- By Tina on 07-13-24
By: Nicole Deese
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A Hundred Suns
- A Novel
- By: Karin Tanabe
- Narrated by: Angela Dawe, Emily Ellet
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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On a humid afternoon in 1933, American Jessie Lesage steps off a boat from Paris and onto the shores of Vietnam. Accompanying her French husband Victor, an heir to the Michelin rubber fortune, she’s certain that their new life is full of promise, for while the rest of the world is sinking into economic depression, Indochine is gold for the Michelins. Jessie knows that the vast plantations near Saigon are the key to the family’s prosperity, and though they have recently been marred in scandal, she needs them to succeed for her husband’s sake.
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I have been seduced!
- By Maurice Peterson on 06-09-20
By: Karin Tanabe
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Simply Dirac
- By: Helge Kragh
- Narrated by: Jack Wynters
- Length: 4 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Paul Dirac (1902 - 1984) was a brilliant mathematician and a 1933 Nobel laureate whose work ranks alongside that of Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton. Although not as well-known as his famous contemporaries Werner Heisenberg and Richard Feynman, his influence on the course of physics was immense. His landmark book, The Principles of Quantum Mechanics, introduced that new science to the world and his "Dirac equation" was the first theory to reconcile special relativity and quantum mechanics.
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Meet the quantum genius!
- By LaPazBC on 05-19-17
By: Helge Kragh
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Circle of Shadows
- By: Evelyn Skye
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Sora and Daemon are apprentice warriors of the Society of Taigas - marked by the gods to be trained in magic and the fighting arts to protect the kingdom of Kichona. As their graduation approaches, they look forward to proving themselves worthy of belonging in the elite group - but in a kingdom free of violence since the Blood Rift Rebellion many years ago, it’s been difficult to make their mark. So when Sora and Daemon encounter a camp of mysterious soldiers while on a standard scouting mission, they decide the only thing to do to help their kingdom is to infiltrate the group.
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Fun characters, too much setting
- By Julian on 10-11-21
By: Evelyn Skye
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Letters of Freedom
- The Carmel Sheehan Story, Book 1
- By: Jean Grainger
- Narrated by: Siobhan Waring
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Carmel, a forty year old Irish woman is living a life that’s fine, not exciting or awful, just fine. She has a house, a husband, it’s all ok. She never had kids, but that’s just life, right? She knows she should be grateful. She’s better off than a lot of people. Then one day, out of the blue, she gets a Facebook message, from a total stranger. With information that could transform her life, for better or for much worse.
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Interesting read
- By A. Shelton on 12-15-22
By: Jean Grainger
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One for My Baron
- An All the Duke's Sins Prequel
- By: Christi Caldwell
- Narrated by: Timothy Campbell
- Length: 3 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Entangled by their pasts, a rakehell lord and an outspoken lady find passion that flares in their present. Will they have a second chance at romance, or will the sins of the past keep them apart forever?
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Disappointing
- By jayme Westerfield on 07-26-23
By: Christi Caldwell
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The Widows
- By: Jess Montgomery
- Narrated by: Susan Bennett
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Kinship, Ohio, 1924: When Lily Ross learns that her husband, Daniel Ross, the town’s respected sheriff, is killed while transporting a prisoner, she is devastated and vows to avenge his death. Hours after his funeral, a stranger appears at her door. Marvena Whitcomb, a coal miner’s widow, is unaware Daniel has died and begs to speak with him about her missing daughter. From miles away but worlds apart, Lily and Marvena’s lives collide as they realize Daniel was not the man that either of them believed him to be - and that his murder is far more complex than they imagined.
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Terrific story and a terrific performance
- By Barbara on 02-17-19
By: Jess Montgomery
What listeners say about What Once Was True
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Holly
- 08-25-20
Enjoyed it
I enjoyed it very much! I’m new to audiobooks and have not been enjoying my last few choices, this was a great story that pulled me in, I get like I was there.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Elaine C.
- 11-28-22
Totally Enjoyable!
Loved the story, though it did get a bit melodramatic towards the end. I look forward to the next book in this series. The narration by Caroline Lennon is especially good. She brings the characters to life and has a lovely flow to her voice that is very pleasant to the ear. Jean Grainger is becoming one of my favorite authors after 2 or 3 of her books, and I have already purchased a few more to get into very soon!
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2 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-12-23
really good story
I enjoyed this story more than I thought I would it is very good. I the way it ended, it was a satisfing ending but still.made me.want to hear more. truly good story.
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- Mary T.
- 09-09-24
Good listen
It was good ! It would make a good film. I could visualize the estate in Ireland and even bombed out London.
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- Jodi Renee Pilot
- 06-07-20
easy listening
Enjoyable story set in war time Europe. Main characters are interesting and have desirable story lines that are easy to follow. Would like to see what happens with the rest of the group if the stories continue.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Laurie S
- 04-01-21
Very good
I enjoyed this story and the narrator, and listened to it mostly nonstop. Of course there are a few slower spots, as most books have. But increasing the speed does the trick. It was an interesting study of time and place, intertwined with interesting people.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Barbara Cress
- 07-29-22
A different look at World War II
This was a lovely and historical book with a different look at World War II. I enjoyed every character. There were many surprises. I hope to find more books by this author.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Karyn F. St Pierre
- 10-13-21
Enjoyed
All good. Enjoyed very much. Looking forward to the next book in this series.
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- Cyn ND
- 11-06-21
Another Stunner!
Ok, here I go... I love Jean Grainger, her books, the characters in her books, the talented narrators and most of all -- I LOVE Ireland. I am what I call an "immersive reader." If an author grabs my heart and sparks my imagination, I can see it and feel it all and, magically, I'm there a part of the whole adventure! It's a grand experience and I can hardly wait to begin the next book in the series. If not for books like Ms. Grainger's, this nasty Covid business might have done me in! Someday, God willing, and we can travel again, I'll get over to Ireland and see where my family came from. 🙏
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-24-23
Truly riveting
I don’t usually like stories revolving around the 1st and 2nd Wars and have not read much about Ireland of that time but I loved it.
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