Joanne

This book is pure entertainment, from Ms. Gerritsen's weaving of the tale to Ms. Eby's wonderful performance. There were so many intriguing plot twists that I was guessing until the end. In all, lots of fun and recommended (just make sure you have time to listen to it in almost one sitting)!

My mother recommended this audiobook and I wholeheartedly agree with her recommendation. This book is elegantly written with an intricate, meticulously-drawn plot and multi-dimensional characters.

The writer, "Kamensky", was my favourite character because of his profound capacity to love.

No - but I thought this performance was wonderful.

Yes.

The Secret Lovers is so much more than a spy thriller. It is a love story told with such elegant brilliance that it took my breath away.

In the top 25%

The discussion of the impact of human intervention on the environment through the lens of a particular 'natural' disaster was very interesting. I appreciated that the author created a 'thriller' to elucidate the many layers of significance. The characters and plot were very entertaining.

I haven't listened to any of her performances before. I definitely enjoyed this performance: the many characters were distinctively voiced and the dramatic settings were even more vivid in the 'speaking'.

There wasn't a particular moment; however, I continue to think about the hallucinations experienced by several characters at the height of the 'unnatural' natural disaster.

I definitely enjoyed this book and recommend it as a fast-paced thriller with a highly charged twist.

This audibook is in my all-time top 10. Another reader's review led me to it (thank you!) and I was blown away by the content and the wonderful narration. Mr. Samuelsson is thoughtful and perceptive, telling his story with clarity and a desire to tell the truth about the industry and, more importantly, about himself.

What's not to like! The story of a Swedish couple creating a family, adopting two siblings (just recovered from tuberculosis) from Ethopia who would join their other foster child. The way they created a home for their children, from teaching Markus how to fish and how to cook, was beautiful. Throughout the book, Markus writes of his grandmother and parents' unconditional, but practical, love. Markus writes about his search for "flavours". He writes about the traditional European training for chefs. And, he writes about New York City. I loved this inside view of restaurants I have read about in the pages of Gourmet and Bon Appetit. Fabulous! Along the way, Mr. Samuelsson writes about the paucity of black chefs in top-ranked kitchens around the world and about his journey to bring "flavours" of the world to unique experiences of gourmet cuisine.

There are so many but two stand out in my mind. The first is Mr. Samuelsson's encounter with Gordon Ramsay - you'll have to listen to the book to understand how this encounter incorporates so many elements of Markus's journey as a man and as a top chef.

The other scene is Markus and Maya's wedding in Ethopia - again, these scenes contain so many of the elements of his personal journey. I loved the sense of colour, texture, flavours, and joy he is able to convey through his writing.

I loved this book! It made me cry and it made me laugh. It inspired me and it made me think.

Often, when an author narrates his/her own book, the result can be lacklustre. This is definitely NOT the case here. Mr. Samuelsson is the very best person for the task - he brings his desire for excellence to it, along with his lovely voice.

In all, this book has everything: a fascinating story about the world of top chefs as well as the search for excellence and identity. Along the way, something truly alchemical happens - the result is far more than the sum of its parts.

This is a hard question to answer. The audio version is excellent: the performance captures the excitement of Mr. Perenyi's life and conveys the details of various painting styles in way that kept my attention. For an art lover, I think a hard copy of the book would be invaluable because Mr. Perenyi's career covers so many periods of art history and painting.

Mr. Perenyi was my favourite character because of his love of learning and of art. I was struck by his genius, his ability to understand an artist, his burning desire to paint, his love of technique, and his ability to move in all strata of society. I wondered if he was really "for real" - but, in the end, I didn't care. I loved being reminded that geniuses live among us. Another favourite character was Jose, Mr. Perenyi's best friend and partner, who died of AIDs. He was depicted as a devoted and loyal friend without peer - a lovely, gentle soul.

I enjoyed the Roy Cohn character and was fascinated by the way in which Mr. Perenyi's life intersected with his.

Absolutely, yes!

Read this book for an adventure with some fascinating characters (including Andy Warhol) through some really interesting times; for a story of New York in the sixties and seventies; and for a master class in art and painting. It's a gem.

I love mysteries for the suspense and the puzzles that are solved by the end of the book. The mysteries I enjoy the most contain multi-dimensional characters with plots being used to develop these characters. Even better, a story that explores a place I have never been and that leaves me with a sense of the smells, the sounds and the colours is a treat. Ms. Keller combines a tightly woven story with characters and a place I became deeply interested in. I don't feel that I have words that can express how much I enjoyed both the prose and the story itself. West Virginia now "lives" in my imagination, in the same way that James Lee Burke's St. John's Parish and Timothy Hallinan's Bangkok have come alive for me. Shannon McManus is superb. I highly recommend this book. Please write more stories about Bell, Ms. Keller.
P.S. I enjoyed the prose so much that I bought a Kindle copy of the book so that I could re-read certain passages. It really doesn't get much better than this!

Polar Star is one of the best audiobooks I have listened to this year. The story is set on a factory ship that is part of a Soviet-American enterprise to fish in America's Aleutian waters. Followed by American "catcher" ships, the Polar Star seems to symbolize a new kind of international partnership. A murder takes place. Arkady, banished from Moscow and bowed by his circumstances as a worker on the "slime line", is called upon to investigate the murder. Martin Cruz Smith is a wonderful writer: I could see the "gelatinous ice" and swirling fog; I could feel the cold beyond cold. Such hard, cruelly cold work and so many undercurrents - passion, espionage, desperation. The characters in the book are fully formed: the workers all banished, for various reasons, to a job that will feed the Soviet Union or hide them from their pursuers. Frank Muller is fabulous. This is a great book and I can't recommend it highly enough.

One of the reasons I love Audible so much is that other readers review books I haven't discovered before. A recent review of Deborah Crombie's latest book led me to the first in the series. Set in a country house, organized as a time share, this could have been a re-telling of the old "parlour" whodunit. Happily, the story was fresh and the characters were well-drawn. I enjoyed "meeting" Duncan Kinkaid and look forward to learning more about him. What little was glimpsed of Gemma James made me want to know more. The narrator, Michael Deehy, is excellent. In all, a very enjoyable listening experience.

I admit to being a fan of this series and put down everything else I was reading in order to listen to this book. I was not disappointed. The Fear Artist is a worthy sequel to The Queen of Patpong, one of my all-time favourites. The book opens with an accidental encounter on a street in Bangkok - guns, paint, cameras, and police acting more brutal than usual - and Poke Rafferty somehow ends up on the run. Rose and Miaow are out of town for most of the book and I missed them. This being said, the story is more believable for their absence. This is a problem Poke must solve without his Thai family. Even the stalwart Ardit is sidelined - recovering from the death of his beloved wife, he is not his usual insightful, wry self. Mr. Hallinan continues to explore the themes of family, nature and nurture, as well as the impact of "others" on South East Asia. In so doing, he creates a credible, often heart-breaking story, that completely absorbed my attention until the end. Victor Bevine is wonderful and I can't imagine anyone else narrating this book.

While I haven't yet read any of the previous books in the "Will Trent" Triptych, I have been intrigued by his character in other books ("Fallen" and "Undone"). Ms. Slaughter is masterful in revealing the mystery of Will's past, slowly but inexorably leading the listener/reader to a horrifying discovery. The compassion extended toward Will by Sarah Linton is lovely and believable. The story of Amanda Wagner and Evelyn Mitchell's early days as detectives in a misogynistic police department rings true. Set in 1974 and 1975, this part of the book is woefully believable. Nothing in the book is too soft, nor does anything feel contrived. Perhaps the "detecting" part of the story is a bit too convoluted but it all hangs together. The last words are cliff hangers... Kathleen Early is an excellent narrator. All in all, highly recommended.