Greyhound

Yes, He is an amazing narrator. His different voices are so good and really sound like different people. He draws me so deeply into the story. His performance is just unreal!

That "Greyhound" is based on a true story is both tragic and wonderful. Cold and fragile, young Sebastien is a lonely boy shunted off to live with his grandparents. And apparently it's not the first time his unloving mother (and absent father) have tossed him aside. Through his journey and his friendship with the ex-con but also grieving Marcus, he learns about life, he learns about how to live with the hand that was dealt him, he learns what it is to be a man.
This is a great little book, filled with spicy tacos in Albuquerque, a man who defecates on himself in Phoenix (oh, the joys of bus riding...!), hijackings, and Hall and Oates. Plus, no spoilers but, there's an action taken, a choice made, and possible consequences that add suspense to the latter half of the book.
Mostly it's the wisdom of the warmhearted Marcus to the note-taking Sebastien.
I see no similarities really to "Huckleberry Finn" and the like, but it's a sweet tale and Nick Podehl, who sometimes falters when he does nonfiction, narrates this really, really well, capturing everyone from Sebastien and Marcus, to a grouchy waitress, to the loudspeaker at the bus station.
Sometimes you just need a nice, good book about broken people reaching out, reaching within. "Greyhound" is it...

As I began listening to this story, I had an instant kinship to Sebastian Raines, an almost 12 year old boy abandoned by his mother at a Greyhound station in California. And so begins a heartwarming road trip across America with a sweet young boy entirely dependent on the kindness of strangers. Narrator, Nick Podehl, perfectly captures the voices of the never-ending array of strangers Sebastian encounters drivers, waitresses, convicts and pedophiles. He does them so well that I had to check that this was not a dramatized book with numerous narrators.

I wanted to much to LOVE this story. But in the end, I only ever liked it. Author, Steffan Piper, almost gets you there, and you, the reader believe you are on your way to something like a modern-day Huckleberry-Finn. But he never fully delivers. The story is at its best when the author shares vignettes with varying strangers. But as the story wore on, and the strangers all disembark, and the story transitions toSebastian`s back story. This is where the author lost me. In a typical novice writer's flaw, he failed to show me the story. Everything is told. In fact, it is over-told, as though the author did not trust his reader to get it - Sebastian has a terrible mother. Sebastian stutters. Sebastian needs to become a man.

I wanted very much to LOVE the interracial, intergenerational story of Sebastian and Marcus (a kind-hearted convict who teaches Sebastian what kind of man he can choose to be), but then it just fizzles out. What began as a tale I could not wait to return to, ended with an adolescent`s self analysis that I was just as eager to finish.

Almost perfect. But the distance between perfect and almost perfect is equal to a Greyhound bus trip that ends in Albequerque, and one that ends in Altuna.

This book was such fun. I immediately bought and downloaded the sequel. Ready for more entertainment. It's a nice break from daily stress. I think I'll break my lifelong rule and listen to this again--it was that good. A new favorite.

The narration was the best of any audio book I have listened to. Great story

This is a lovely story full of smiles, laughs and hard trues about life. It takes you on a journey that you will not forget and make you fall in love with the main carracter and the story that he tell. This is a "must" read / listen and you will never regret picking it up. I loved it!

A ride you can't help enjoy with a young man who grows with the tests of life on a cross country Greyhound bus. Fascinating trip with fascinating people! Reader and story I will visit again.

An excellent story that entertains and is well narrated. I highly recommend this book.

The writing was well done, the story carried, never seeming to drag. The characters rounded out nicely, it captures the era accurately and reminds us of a time and place without cellphones and when this country was a different place (for ill and for good) to be in.

This is one of the best books I have read this year. Not only is it wonderfully written but the person who reads it is a genius plain and simple.
It was a joy listening to this creativ work while painting.