Valley of the Dolls 50th Anniversary Edition

At a time when women were destined to become housewives, Jacqueline Susann let us dream. Anne, Neely, and Jennifer become best friends as struggling young women in New York City trying to make their mark. Eventually, they climb their way to the top of the entertainment industry only to find that there’s no place left to go but down, into the Valley of the Dolls.

©1966, 1967, 1997, 2016 Tiger LLC, Bernard Geis Associates (first hardcover edition); Bantam Books (first paperback edition); first Grove Press edition; Fiftieth Anniversary Edition. Recorded by arrangement with Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. (P)2018 Audible, Inc.

It's OK

It's an old favorite and guilty pleasure. However, the narrator's lisp finally worked my last nerve and I stopped listening.

After 30 minutes...

After 30 minutes of listening to this disaster, I logged back into Audible HOPING to find another recording of this story, NO LUCK. I didn't read the reviews or even pay attention to who the performer was. When I began listening, I was taken aback. First, I thought, "this is a drag queen," how strange (I am part of the LGBT community, this is just an honest review). Drag queens put on a show, they have an act, I think this story is okay without an act. As it went on, I found that I couldn't focus on the story because I couldn't get past the little girl lisp! Come on! I don't think that someone with a real lisp would even be hired to read books aloud - IT IS IRRITATING. Furthermore, this performer barely differentiates between character voices and all characters have a lisp! Logging back into Audible, I found that the performer is not a drag queen, but trans, and while Cox is fine on OITNB, she has NO BUSINESS reading books. Review after review says the same thing. The performance is embarrassing for Cox and Audible, and it is so distracting, that I am trying really hard to focus on the story. I rarely review books on Audible, but this one needs to be redone.

Hmmm

I absolutely love this book and Laverne Cox, but her narrative was awful, I really struggled listening to it, but I managed.

What was Audible Thinking?????

I read this many years ago (more than once) and had not thought about it in years. I listen to books on my daily commute and thought it would be fun to "read" this again. Since I knew the story I did not look at the reviews. From the first few minutes, I started wondering why this narrator was chosen. The voice, inflection and intonations were so off the mark for characters portrayed and that I "knew". I listened through but found the narration a huge detriment to my enjoyment of this story.

Narration!!!!!!!

OMG! Okay, for the 1st half of the book the narration is actually passable. Not really the voice I would have chosen for these particular characters, but she does an ok job. Then, inexplicably, about halfway through, the narrator portrays all dialogue of all characters in a high pitched whiny sing song voice. It's a shame to ruin this classic novel in this manner. It was really jarring and took me completely out of the story. I guess that's why you can add Audible narration to the kindle book for a buck 99.