St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves: Stories

The writing in these stories is wonderful, but the casting could not be worse. There are about two good readers in the whole book. I had to strain to get through the others. Loved the story about the camp for kids with sleep disorders. I particularly noticed a lot of mispronounced words in this audiobook, which was really distracting. I would read this one, not listen.

I'm not quite finished with these stories but feel compelled to comment at this point anyway. So far, so good. I have really enjoyed these, some more than others, but all of them are fun with layers that make you really feel for the main characters. The story "The City of Shells" however fell flat. Probably because the narrator mispronounces a word that is used over and over again. The word "conch", which is a shell so of course it's integral to this story, is mis-pronounced with a soft "ch". In reality it is pronounced "konk". It's a small detail but for a longtime resident of the Florida Keys it's an annoyance to hear it mispronounced repeatedly. When I hear it said wrong by a tourist I forgive them their ignorance. But someone paid to narrate a story should do their homework. That said, I'm sure the few stories I have left won't disappoint. I look forward to hearing them.

I like stories with unreal aspects such as time travel, vampires, reptilian monsters, space aliens. But this set of short stories was not enjoyable at all. Each story just stopped ... there are no conclusions, no sense of understanding, no connection with the characters.

I ordered this book because someone on NPR recommended it (Maureen Corrigan who reviews books regularly). I will be very careful about taking her advice in the future.

The writing here is beautiful, the images lovely and haunting, BUT I'd read this one on paper. The performers as a group are mediocre for the most part, but the thing that has driven me to write my first review ever for Audible is that some of them used the wrong words. For example, in "Ava Wrestles the Alligator," the reader calls the sister's boyfriend Lucius. When I looked at the paper version, I discovered that his name is Luscious. Huge difference, don't you think?

I liked a few of these stories (Ava Wrestles the Alligator, Star Gazer's Guide to Summertime Crime, Accident Brief, and the title story). A few were good except for the endings. A few I pretty much hated.

The author writes well and I loved the quirky, original ideas but some of them weren't executed very well. Many of the stories seemed pretentious or obscure at times. The author also likes to use highbrow words that don't really fit the characters/narrators (who are mostly children).

Overall, I thought the book averaged out to be just OK. There were some high points, some low points, and a lot that was in between. I was pretty glad when I finished the book and I could move on to something else. Each story was read by a different person. Some readers were better than others.

Highly recommended, I want to listen as I had read a review of Swamplandia. The stories were interesting but they end so abruptly that I struggled to get closure with the story.

first story was terrific but others were convoluted and unclear and the magical part just didnt' work - might be a better read than a listen.

I expected whimsical and/or weird because of the name. I never even made it to the title story. I can't explain exactly why I didn't care for the book. All the stories felt the same, I skipped over one or two. I finally just gave up. I can't even come up with one redeeming quality. This was a complete waste of a credit.