Vanished: A Novel

This is the first book I listened to by Karen Robards and I couldn't put it down. A credit well spent. I will definitely buy more from her library.

I found this book to be a tear dropper and I could feel the pain for the Mother, I know it's only a book, but I found myself being in the same position, it's like I was there in the book. Good one, I recommend it.

This tale was predictable and replete with an interesting cast of characters. It was not too difficult to figure out where the story was going but its predictability did not really detract from the listen. A few of the minor characters were a stretch but nonetheless interesting. The story ended where one would anticipate it ending. If you are need of a relaxing listen, this book may be for you.

It was a mystery, romance and some thriller all in one.

The author brought the plot and the character all in a full circle. A very smooth but yet mysterious journey.

Saving Sweet Pea from the gator!!

A great author. This was my first. I will listen to more of Karen Robard's books.

First of all, do not get this "Vanished" mixed up with the excellent book also entitled "Vanished" but written by Joseph Finder; they are not of the same subject or quality. "Vanished" as written by Karen Robards is not unique in any way, and I do not recommend it.

Ms. Robards' "Vanished" is the very over-used story about every parent's nightmare; a woman's six-year-old daughter vanishes in a busy park and is never found. But 10 years after the girl's disappearance, the Mother begins to receive strange phone calls from her long-gone daughter, wanting to come home. The Mother, of course, panics and begans frantically looking for her little girl. At this point, the story starts going downhill quickly; for example, It's immediately apparent to the reader that the calls could not possibly be from the daughter. The voice on the phone sounds like a typical six-year-old child, but the reader is thinking: WAIT; wouldn't the daughter be 16 or 17 now and presumably not still have the same baby voice and lisp that the Mother's six year old had when she first disappeared? Someone finally figures that out, but not until a lot of panicky scenes have occurred and not until the reader has became a little agitated at being treated like an idiot.

But the real tragedy occurs not with the very trite subject but with the narrator. Joyce Bean does an excellent job when she stays in the voice of female characters. However, in the audiobook, when Ms. Bean first starts growling out the voice of her supposed male lover, I laughed, then cringed, then was rather creeped out. Her boyfriend, as voiced by Ms. Bean, sounds exactly like a cranky old woman, a life-long smoker with a resulting scratchy throat. At first it wasn't much of a problem listening to Ms. Bean trying to make her voice sound an octave deeper than it could actually go, but it was a Big Problem during the "romance" scenes: since we cannot "see" the sexy scenes, all we can picture in our minds are a young woman and a grouchy old cigarette-smoking old lady with male genitalia. And, no, I am not homophobic or transgender-phobic, and I usually have little problem with a female reading a man's part in an audiobook. But Joyce Bean needs to stick with narration of female characters only (and at which she is very good), and the author needs to quite trying save a buck by not hiring both a male and a female for naration of her romance novels.

The book's heroine is deep in grief. Her colleague is in love with her. I listened to find out what happened to the little girl, but even that plot didn't hold together too well.

I liked it in general, yet I was annoyed the whole way through.

The scenes were SO LONG it made me wonder what the book was ultimately supposed to be about. A shooting at the convenience store? A kidnapping? A murder plot? A ghost story? A courtroom drama? A love story? WHAT!!!!! Plus there was WAAAAY TOOOO MUUUUCH emphasis on what everyone was wearing all the time. Ugh! Spare me! Who cares!

I was never sure which tangent was the “a-story” and which one was the “b-story”. You kind of assume that if an author goes into that much detail and spends that much time on any given scene it’s because it matters and has a direct link to the main story, but in this book I was never sure about the ultimate plot. It felt like a little bit of everything and a whole lot of nothing.

The ending felt stereotypically silly - yet I doubt anything would have pleased me by that point! Still, I cared enough about the characters to see how it all would end up. I was curious (to various degrees) about all the storylines so I suppose I have to give it a pass!

I'm only partway through the book; at the point of trying to decide if I'm going to continue or not.

The writing suffers from an abundance of non-essential details, and the author uses three descriptors where one would have been sufficient. I'm a dog person, and even I found her multiple descriptions of Sweetie Pie tedious. And, I'm starting to count the number of times she uses "the thing is".

I would have been much happier if the narrator had used her normal voice for the character "Jake" -- her growly, constricted voice has me hating the guy.

The story of a mom who can't give up on her missing daughter was one that caught my attention from the beginning. Narrator Joyce Bean did a good job on this. My only complaint is that the story is resolved too quickly. The whys are answered over lots of pages and all of a sudden, here's the end. It's almost as if an editor decided the book was getting too long and had the conclusion down to a few pages.

I find myself wanting to get it over with...

The main charachter Sarah with her emotions...I understand how she would be upset but it was just never ending back and forth. Too many details made the story really drag.

Yes...she did horrible with the male voices...I agree with another listener when she said it sounded like a old woman who was a chain smoker instead of a sexy PI.

It wasn't bad but I probably won't listen to it again.