The Bullet

From former NPR correspondent Mary Louise Kelly comes a heart-pounding story about fear, family secrets, and one woman's hunt for answers about the murder of her parents.

Two words: the bullet. That's all it takes to shatter her life.

Caroline Cashion is beautiful, intelligent, a professor of French literature. But in a split second, everything she's known is proved to be a lie.

A single bullet, gracefully tapered at one end, is found lodged at the base of her skull. Caroline is stunned. It makes no sense: She has never been shot. She has no entry wound, no scar. Then, over the course of one awful evening, she learns the truth: she was adopted when she was three years old, after her real parents were murdered. Caroline was there the night they were attacked. She was wounded too, a gunshot to the neck. Surgeons had stitched up the traumatized little girl with the bullet still there, nestled deep among vital nerves and blood vessels.

That was thirty-four years ago.

Now Caroline has to find the truth of her past. Why were her parents killed? Why is she still alive? She returns to her hometown, where she meets a cop who lets slip that the bullet in her neck is the same bullet that killed her mother - full-metal jacket, .38 Special. It hit Caroline's mother and kept going, hurtling through the mother's chest and into the child hiding behind her.

Caroline is horrified - and in danger. When a gun is fired, it leaves markings on the bullet, tiny grooves almost as unique as a fingerprint. The bullet in her neck could finger a murderer. Can Caroline unravel the clues to her past before the killer tracks her down?

©2015 Mary Louise Kelly (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Gas Burner

So if an excellent paperback is a page turner, an excellent audio book must be a gas burner. I'm in my car often for work so I listen to audio books regularly. While listening to this book, I found myself sitting in the parking lot with the engine on just to get a few extra minutes with this story. I loved the plot twists and I really enjoyed being repulsed by the very human behavior of the characters. I was entertained by the voice given to the characters by the reader. Great story!!

Good start, but then it derailed

The story started off well with an intriguing premise, but then the implassibilities started to creep into the plot and the character of Caroline. By the final third, she had metamorphosed from French literature professor to Jason Bourne. What ? Narration was only adequate.

Should be titled "So you got shot as a kid, get over it."

I got sucked in by the set up and the snippet in the sample was misleading. It reads like a cheap romance novel where the dramatic highlights need to be repeated ad naseum in an effort to make you care at all. But then wait, let's talk about our meal forever... Whatever. Jack Reacher would have rolled right on through this town. Might have shot her himself just to thin the herd.

The reader has talent for sure. Great accents. I would search her out except that I was tricked so badly by the sample...

Fun & entertaining....but cringe-worthy reader!

This was a good little story, though it consistently lost credibility as it progressed. From an uncritical perspective, though, I enjoyed it a lot, and would recommend it for a perfect beach/airplane situation.

Fortunately, I switched between the book and the audiobook-- and the latter was terrible. At first it wasn't so bad, but when she does others' voices? OMG. Terrible! The male voices are silly and stereotypical, southerners are comedic, and law enforcement have a "dopiness" to them. It's like she tried to put her own perspective on the characters by the way she defined their speech patterns and drawl ("Whay, hullo there, little lady, arentcha a pretty little thang?") More than once, I laughed out loud before going into a cringe.

If you can suspend the annoyance, you may be okay.

Light read

It was just ok. I found myself rolling my eyes at the character quite often. Her judgement was just off and odd. It was much like sitcom hijinks. Also, all the people we’re just too perfect. Thin, beautiful, well employed, could eat whatever and never gain a pound, perfect people.... it’s always surreal and annoying.

I found myself annoyed with the book.