Maine

This book sounded like it had so much potential. What a disappointment! The main character is so unlikeable I was hoping she died early in the book (she doesn't). The other characters are stupid and uninteresting. But the worst part of the listen is the narrator. She speaks so slowly it sounds as if she is trying to read to a 2 year old, and the awful "Bwhosston"accent just grates on your nerves. DO NOT waste a credit!!

Listening to this, I felt that my own Mother had been plopped into the story and renamed. Ms Sullivan so pulled together several generations of women and respected each era they were from. I often try to do this also so I can understand younger people.

I read her first book and enjoyed it and was not disappointed with her second.

The narrator was not the best I have heard but the story line kept me reading any chance I could grab.

I am a long-term Audible listener and have listened to hundreds of audiobooks. The narration of J. Courtney Sullivan's novel is one of the most inconsistent readings. I was amazed to hear at least three errors where characters are incorrectly identified (not Kathleen) and timeline is inaccurate (If Kathleen and Maggie leave after the July 4th fireworks, then they are leaving on July 5 - not August 5). Someone needs to do some serious editing with this audiobook.

I bought this book when it had a higher rating. The only reson I did not skip to the end is that there are so many charcters, I wanted to know what happened to a few of them. Skip this book is right!

The narrator is enough to make me scream! Her voice promotes my dislike for most of these characters. Alice is downright ugly and unlikeable in spite of her great tragedy. Can't say I would recommend this book. It would be like recommending someone for root canal...

As unlikable a cast of characters as I have met in a long time. And the narrator's attempted breathy, yet inconsistent, Boston accent is, at best, annoying. Not worth giving it the listening time.

I had to stop listening to this book, though I had read good things about it and was looking forward to it. The reader sounds as if she is reading to toddlers, she is so slow and "flight attendant-ish." Having just finished listening to a book read by Hope Davis, who is terrific, this reader seemed intolerable.

I feel misled by all the talk of it as a "beach read." That implies a fun book, light hearted, romantic maybe intriquing. But this book was about family problems that never get fixed. And there is a huge logic problem that is never addressed. Grandma's big sacrifice to make up for past sins isn't a sacrifice for her, just for the rest of her family.

Alice needs to be set straight.

Performance was great.

The story of a NE matriarch and her daughters, daughter in law and grand daughter… if ever there was a woman more spiteful and hateful and self-important, it is Alice. The author paints a totally unflattering picture of a family so dysfunctional and unappetizing, and ultimately so pointless, I kept wondering when it would get to any real plot. It never did. It is told serially by each character in a back in forth montage of perspective covering day to day to year to year family events, as seen through the women's mostly battered lenses. Like the old song, there aint no good guys, there aint no bad guys, there's just you and me and we just disagree. Not sure who is calling Alice at the end, but I have my suspicions!

How that translates into a novel, well, for me, it just didn't. It is our February book club selection, so it was homework.

Yes, a good story about the different and complex perspectives of an average american family.

Yes, good story not to complicated. Good read.

Alice.

No, from the deep character development in the book you understand how they are going to move on with their lives without the house in Maine or without Alice.