A Heart Without A Home

A memoir about homelessness through the eyes of a young girl

De: Nichole Carpenter

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

9-year-old Nichole and her parents are evicted from their home because both of her parents are addicted to heroin. With nowhere left to turn, they are now homeless. In order to survive they must dig through dumpsters, beg, and steal. While living on the streets, Nichole struggles to understand why people treat them differently.

Heroin addicted Family's

Good telling of a topical heroin addicted family. Shows how our society is not doing enough to educate young people early on the pitfalls of drug involvement!

Strength of the girl

That was by far the worst reader ever. Expressing in wrong place; sometimes reading like a robot. Was this read by a robot

love for child

although in there addiction mom always had her child in mind looked out for her and showed genuine love to her daughter

The insight of the real challenges of day to day life of homelessness, especially for those with addictions.

Although the story portrayed loving, patient parents I didn't like their selfishness of wanting to keep their daughter with them for her to live in those unfit conditions for a child, especially when their were loving grandparents willing to provide a clean, safe and loving environment. As a survivor of mental, physical and sexual child abuse that my mom was most definitely aware of, I'm baffled by her selfishness by choosing not to protect her children because she valued her material possessions more than the safety and well-being of kids!!!

I feel like a lot of details were left out

I was happy that the child was always treated kindly by her parents and that she had other family members who cared about her. I don’t like the virtual voice narration as the story had many bloopers. This is a story that needed told with some emotion which we don’t get with a robot!

AI is not the way to go

The story was simple but not bad. I listened because it was free. The AI narrator was so cringy that i almost stopped listening multiple times.

The storyline was heartbreaking

I just don’t care for Virtual Voice, but it’s something we have to live with.

Even though addiction LOVE never waived I know because I to am an addict in recovery.

I love the fact her mother & father are always is there for her daughter no matter what

The AI narration.. It was pretty bad.

First off, as I stated in my title; the AI narration was one of the worst I’ve heard. And I’ve listened to around 8 to 10 AI narrated books over the last year or so.

The narrator’s phrasing was way off a LOT of times. For instance; trick…. OR treat: The few times she said that drove me nuts; always the same way. As if no one ever uses those words together..

For me the worst part, hands down, was the pronunciation of the author’s name, Nicole: Occasionally it was pronounced (properly) Nicole; but most of the time it was pronounced Nickle…. Nickle! 😖

I don’t know if it’s spelled differently at times in the book, like maybe it was a nickname or something; but the back and forth with Nicole and Nickle was so arbitrary it was really annoying. REALLY annoying…

There also seems to be a problem with AI and contractions; ‘Do not’ being the most noticeable. I guess AI can’t handle pronouncing words like don’t, won’t, can’t, ect. Everything was ‘do not’, ‘will not’, ‘cannot’, again; to a noticeable and annoying degree.

Then there’s the writing of the book itself. No offense to Ms. Carpenter, but a lot of the ‘he said’ and ‘she said’s were redundant. Almost robotic in a way: Mom said “Go outside, Nicole.” “Yes mommy, I’ll go outside.” NORMAL people: “Go outside, Nicole,” “Okay.”

And what happened to the ending? It was like the author got tired of writing and decided to say, “OK, I’m done: The End.” I definitely wanted to know if anything was REALLY learned by any of the characters I had been listening to about for the last 4 hours..

My heart goes out to the author and what she endured growing up homeless for a time as a child of drug addicted parents, but she probably could have used a better editor to do her life story justice. 🤔 Most DEFINITELY a human-voiced narrator! 👍🏼