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The Healer's Apprentice  By  cover art

The Healer's Apprentice

By: Melanie Dickerson
Narrated by: Jude Mason
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Publisher's summary

A realistic, fast-paced reimagining of the Sleeping Beauty fairytale full of royalty, romance, and danger. This masterful combination of love and heartbreak - combined with the novel’s surprise ending - is everything fans of fantasy, historical, and medieval fiction yearn for.

Rose has been appointed as a healer’s apprentice at Hagenheim Castle, a rare opportunity for a woodcutter’s daughter like her. While she often feels uneasy at the sight of blood, Rose is determined to prove herself capable. Failure will mean returning home to marry the aging bachelor her mother has chosen for her - a bloated, disgusting merchant who makes Rose feel ill.

When Lord Hamlin, the future duke, is injured, it is Rose who must tend to him. As she works to heal his wound, she begins to understand emotions she’s never felt before and wonders if he feels the same.

But falling in love is forbidden, as Lord Hamlin is betrothed to a mysterious young woman in hiding. As Rose’s life spins toward confusion, she must take the first steps on a journey to discover her own destiny.

The Healer's Apprentice:

  • An award-winning historical romance - a creative retelling of the Sleeping Beauty fairytale - by author Melanie Dickerson
  • Perfect for listeners ages 13-18 and adults who enjoy historical romances similar to Eva Ibbotson’s
  • A romantic, fast-paced story - sure to entrance fans of fairytale retellings
©2015 Melanie Dickerson (P)2015 Zondervan

What listeners say about The Healer's Apprentice

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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A book for the Faithful

Melanie Dickerson takes the "fairy" out of fairytale. The classic love story is reinvented using the Christian/Catholic myths. Instead of good fairies you have the power of faith in Jesus and God and instead of a wicked fairy cruising the sleeping beauty's family you have a pagan follower bent on inflicting demonic possession.

While it was an interesting take, it wasn't really what I was looking for. While it was interesting enough to finish this book, I will not continue to read Ms. Dickerson's works.

The narrator was not as enjoyable to listen to as others I've experienced. She spends the first part of the book speaking too fast and has no variation in her character's voices. It was hard to tell who was speaking at any given point in time. This could be forgiven if she imparted some emotion into her delivery, but overall everyone always sounded only mildly interested in what was going on around them.

Summary: Good book for the right audience, but you'll have to deal with some pretty shoddy narration.

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17 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Mixed Feelings

The time period, storyline and characters were appealing. However, the narrator was sooo one dimensional that it really ruined the book for me. Her inflections were ill-timed, emotions poorly emitted and I never knew when one person stopped speaking and the other began. The only voice variation portrayed was that of a more common English accent for 1 or 2 characters. Also, it was read entirely too fast, making it an anything but pleasurable read. I slowed it down a bit and found it more tolerable. I honestly feel that this could have been really great, had it been read by someone else (like Mary Sarah Agliotta). However, I can't discredit good story material. This has the potential for greatness, but in all honesty, I'm glad it's over. 😕

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15 people found this helpful

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Love it!

I absolutely loved this book. It was so cute and exciting and very interesting. Definitely recommend this!

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4 people found this helpful

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tender romances

I couldn't stop listening to it. this author has more passion and tension in the desire to hold a hand than most romance authors have in their entire books.

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2 people found this helpful

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Utter drivel, bad mental illness messages

This book starts as highly predictable self-insert fiction. It then reveals its hyper-religious core, which isn't a bad thing in itself but characters are praised for inaction or "meekness" that makes them boring, and things just happen to work out for them, not through their own influence.

But my real issue is that the "villain" is a purely evil man with his motives driven from his mental illness. He then goes and infects (using a potion) someone else with mental illness, who is cured through exorcism. These messages are dangerous - those with mental illness need professional help rather than to be vilified, or told they are infected with demons. There was a little girl in my city who was killed by her family when they tried to perform an exorcism on her, so it can't be argued that these ideas aren't dangerous. If there had been more development in the mage's character, or if the author had made it clear that these ideas were prevalent in the middle ages but not acceptable now, the book might be forgivable; but honestly, that would require more substance than is contained in the rest of this white-bread book.

TL;DR: Predictable with overt Christian preachiness and dangerous implications about mental illness being evil. Do not buy.

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2 people found this helpful

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Had potential...with a different narrator

I read this book, and all the books in the series, and I loved them all; I have loved reading each and every one of Melanie Dickerson's books, in each series. However, I was very disappointed by the narrator. Her voice itself was okay in general, but she used almost no different voices or tones to differentiate between characters. Switching voices for each character is kind of the point of narration, in my opinion. Not to be mean or disrespectful to Jude Mason, but I wish they had maybe used someone like Cassandra Campbell or Julia Whelan, both of whom do an amazing job at giving each character a unique voice.

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2 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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Boring

Struggled to listen to this story, ugh. I feel like I was ripped off. Going to take the rest of the series out of my wish list.

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2 people found this helpful

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FABULOUS!

Listened to this with my 14 year old daughter. We both loved it! Can't wait for the next book!

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1 person found this helpful

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Nice book and good fairytale surprise.

I liked this book. It was nice to listen too romantic but not sexy at all which I liked.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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Pretty Bleh

Predictable and annoying. The writing is flowery with no substance. Very boring and the characters are forgettable.

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