The Rented Family

By: Leliz Andiz

Narrated by: Danielle Fliller

Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's summary

Stella Marigold traded her suburban life to live on the road for a reason.

But getting offered an innocent-sounding job as a motherly figure to a young girl seems like a rewarding role that’s hard to pass up. And the paycheck will allow Stella to pay for repairs and get back to van life.

Jhor Farrow—the girl’s uncle and the one who hired Stella—keeps a watchful eye on them. But as time drags on and Stella’s van needs longer to repair, unsettling events take place.

While the money is helpful and the child might need a mentor, Stella begins to be afraid for their safety. Jhor isn’t what he seems, and the more Stella uncovers the truth, the more fearful she becomes as she realizes he’ll stop at nothing to protect his dark secrets.

©2021 Leliz Andiz (P)2023 Teal Moon

Decent Thriller

This is not my usual genre of book, I prefer horror. But took a chance on this one, and I actually enjoyed it. The narrator was good, and the story kept me interested.

good story

this was very entertaining from beginning to end had me guessing at each turn narration was good

Creeped Me Out Beautifully!

Freelance writer Stella Marigold’s been living the life of an independent free spirit, but when her funds run low, the offer of short term employment from entrepreneur Jhor Farrow seems like a gift from the heavens! However, it’s not long before Stella realizes Jhor isn’t who he seems, and THIS opportunity is sourced from a place considerably warmer than heaven! “The Rented Family” is a gripping psychological thriller! The main characters are finely developed with complete backstories, and believable personalities. I LOVE that it’s not immediately clear who are the good and who are the evil! Discovering who fits where was part of the mystery, and part of the fun! I guessed wrong on a few, but when ALL was revealed, it made sense to me. The plot had more than a few surprises as well, raising my eyebrows, causing a few excited utterances, pushing me to the edge of my seat, but through it’s entirety, holding my interest! I’m going to keep hush on that the details so as not to play spoiler! The narration was truly a delight! I was able to clearly understand every word! I loved the voicing choices, and the pacing was perfect. I loved that nothing felt rushed! I really enjoyed everything about “The Rented Family”. It creeped me out, and with a psychological thriller, that is a very good thing indeed! Five fantastic stars!

Needs professional editing, etc.

This was conceptually good—there’s an exciting story here, and it did grip me early in. The female lead is living van-life, how fun! One of those things I don’t want to do myself, but love following others who do.

But early in, the continuity issues started to occur and they never let up. I’d started noting them down in order to list them here, in case the author or publisher reads reviews. However, it got too excessive for this—I’m not trying to spend more time on this book than its own author/production team did. It’s really frustrating when reading a book and coming to the realization that its author completely had no care in what they produced.

A few examples off the top of my head:
After just a few dinners w/ the family, Stella is shown to the reader observing that her body and face are “fuller”. Didn’t seem realistic.
Stella describes the laptop Jhor bought her as “the latest MacBook Pro” , yet later described it as costing “a thousand dollars”. (Though, if you know where I can get the latest MacBook Pro for only a grand, please do tell!)
Jhor admits to having stalked Stella since he was 12 or so … then shames her for not figuring out he’d only started his company “a couple years ago” (as in it couldn’t have been all about her). It certainly could with that timeline, obviously. (Lots of contradictions like this arose, and these details were crucial to the plot.)
We see Stella have 1 glass of wine, and it even turns into a big event when it’s fought about later that evening. Yet, a day or two later, she tells the reader “it’s been a while” since she’s had any wine, as she treats herself to some.

There are lots of things like this, they end up occurring throughout. There are literally millions of amazing books to spend my time, money and energy on and I prefer to put those resources into books written by authors who care about the quality of the work they’re putting out.

Plausibility was at times, an issue also:
For example, why was Stella’s mother at a yacht party that was thrown by/ for Stella’s husband’s work? If this were the only thing, sure, I’d just accept it, but when the whole book contains little things like this / and lacks continuity, it just comes off poor planning / lack of professionalism on the author’s part.

There are also many instances of poor grammar. This author either doesn’t use an editing team, or is being preyed upon by someone claiming to be an editor.

I strongly suggest this author consider using editors and beta readers, so that their end product packs plausibility and continuity, along with the fun stories they’ve dreamed up.

There’s poor character development / poor continuity among individual character personalities. A developmental editor could’ve helped with this, or even just a critique from another author, or beta readers.

One thing the author did well: the antagonist was sufficiently depicted as a creep, pretty much from the get-go. Were they to put this much attention into any other aspects of the book, it’d at least be as good as a low-budget Lifetime movie, however, it falls short of even that, sadly.

Overall:
Would I consider any other reads by this author, based on this one? I’m not sure. Conceptually, I liked the story, so they may have potential. Realistically though, I struggle with supporting indie and small-press authors who publish books which lack professionalism, because they’re what gives the entire industry the bad rap.
But I may be open to it, if it were produced later than this one, because certainly the author could’ve honed their skills and/or begun using a professional team. So short answer, I guess, is: maybe.

Ultimately, this book for me is 1 star. For a good story idea, but a terrible execution. If the author/publisher had bothered to care about quality, it could’ve easily been at least 4 out of 5 stars.

Also: I recommend not stealing other people’s quotations & acting like they’re your own words. Again, a professional team would’ve likely advised the author of this. Twice, her male lead said, “I can’t remember what you said, but I do remember how you made me feel.”

“...people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel…” —Maya Angelou
(I could be wrong of course, but I feel like everyone knows this quote.)

⭐️

Audio:
The narrator has a great voice, but more reads robotically than performs the book. She does use different voices for different characters, and I think if she’d refrain from sounding like AI, she’d be amazing.

Production-wise there are some issues … it’s mostly smooth, but there are a lot of instances where entire sentences are read twice. Also in between chapters, sometimes the pause is so long, I’d be reaching for my phone to be sure the book was still open. 3-stars on the narrator / production front.