Susan

I'd heard about this book from another source. Here I read the summary and wasn't sure I would like it. After it started, I still wasn't sure because I couldn't really understand what was happening, but I kept listening. Before long I was hooked. This was one of the best stories I've heard, the best reader and I was overall very happy with this unusual story. Be careful what you ask for, you may get it! But you have to hear this story! The Handmaid's Tale will stay with you for a long long time.

I had to restart this story twice before I decided to just go with it. I found it to be well worth it. The story follows a young girl as she faces so much turmoil with wavering strength, but as the story continues I felt closer and wondered how she would get through it all. In the end the story was not as much about the stories her father told her but the unfolding of a family story.

I expected to see the problems a young man would have living with the stigma of being a sex offender. This is a big part of the story, but definitely not the story. I liked the book a lot, and I liked the story a lot, I just wish the summary included more about what it is actually about. It is about a relationship with people on the edge; having no alternatives. Then there is the mystery of the professor and the kid, that is the part that I continue to think about. To me taking a question away from a book and bringing it into my own thoughts after the story is over makes the book a success.

You continue to wonder if the murderer is Jacob. He is the perfect suspect and you understand why the police and everyone else believes he is guilty. But, for no other reason than experience and love, his father knows it couldn't have been Jacob. He loses his work, his friends, and his future, but he had no other choice, this was his son. This was a really good story to listen to and I really liked the narrator.

I wonder if this could be true? I don't know, but what if. A strange woman appears at a family hotel; very ill and kind of pretty. This story goes back and forth for 50 years, through the relationships and individuals, until the circle is complete. The story keeps you interested in following each character, both individually and as a group, through the years, until the end.

The couple has everything in the city. They move, and again seem to have everything. But without any warning the pretty wife disappears. Husband doesn't seem to be as concerned as he should be. An affair is discovered. All the things you've heard before. But this has so many turns you don't know who to hate and who to cheer for. Then you decide, and your choice was way wrong. The changes happen and happen again. This is a story that I refused to put down, even when I had "life" to attend to.

This is not the kind or story I wouldn't have normally taken the time for. It has drugs, people that I knew I wouldn't like, and lives wasted. But as I listened I was caught up in a story that was so intertwined with ugliness and hopelessness I kept listening to find the final good ending. It did end with a much more pleasant ending than the entire story, but it still wasn't perfect. This review sounds like I didn't like it, but I did! I would also listen to it again! It is about drugs, killings, bad people, but it is also about people that you won't like but will remember!

I started this as just a curiosity with all the interest in vampires lately. It actually proved to be not so easy to pass off as just another scary story. The historical research is pretty good. There were times I would think, "Wow, that could really have been the reason for ..." It turns out to be a pretty good story although I might not admit to anyone with a serious understanding of Abraham Lincoln's life that I'd thought it was worth the time!
Don't let fondness for historical correctness keep you from this book! You might learn something.

I couldn't imagine the pain that would be felt if this actually happened, but it isn't that far fetched. Often you can hear news reports of an elderly person walking away from a retirement home, but the heartbreak doesn't play out as well as when a child is missing.
In this book you can feel the pain of the family as they realize the details of their missing mother. They describe how they'd taken her for granted, gotten angry at her, abused her, and ignored the truth about her coming age and illness. The past is described in such detail, you live their lives; each member of the family, and know the regret, the resentment, the heartbreak that Mom must have felt all her life. But as mothers do, she kept it hidden in her deepest parts of her heart.

This is a nice story; misunderstood, outcast teen, girl that likes bad boys, she has a protective brother. After the three get close they notice the bruises and scratches. Bruiser's girl and her brother notice changes; no pain, winning games. When they figure out the secret it is not easy to give it up.