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America for Beginners
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
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Publisher's summary
Recalling contemporary classics such as Americanah, Behold the Dreamers, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, a funny, poignant, and insightful debut novel that explores the complexities of family, immigration, prejudice, and the American dream through meaningful and unlikely friendships forged in unusual circumstances.
Pival Sengupta has done something she never expected: She has booked a trip with the First Class India USA Destination Vacation Tour Company. But unlike other upper-class Indians on a foreign holiday, the recently widowed Pival is not interested in sightseeing. She is traveling thousands of miles from Kolkota to New York on a cross-country journey to California, where she hopes to uncover the truth about her beloved son, Rahi. A year ago, Rahi devastated his very traditional parents when he told them he was gay. Then, Pival’s husband, Ram, told her that their son had died suddenly - heartbreaking news she still refuses to accept. Now, with Ram gone, she is going to America to find Rahi, alive and whole or dead and gone, and come to terms with her own life.
Arriving in New York, the tour proves to be more complicated than anticipated. Planned by the company’s indefatigable owner, Ronnie Munshi - a hardworking immigrant and entrepreneur hungry for his own taste of the American dream - it is a work of haphazard improvisation. Pavil’s guide is the company’s new hire, the guileless and wonderfully resourceful Satya, who has been in America for one year - and has never actually left the five boroughs. For modesty’s sake Pival and Satya will be accompanied by Rebecca Elliot, an aspiring young actress. Eager for a paying gig, she’s along for the ride, because how hard can a two-week "working" vacation traveling across America be?
Slowly making her way from coast to coast with her unlikely companions, Pival finds that her understanding of her son - and her hopes of a reunion with him - are challenged by her growing knowledge of his adoptive country. As the bonds between this odd trio deepens, Pival, Satya, and Rebecca learn to see America - and themselves - in different and profound new ways.
A bittersweet and bighearted tale of forgiveness, hope, and acceptance, America for Beginners illuminates the unexpected enchantments life can hold and reminds us that our most precious connections aren’t always the ones we seek.
This audiobook includes an episode of the Book Club Girl Podcast, featuring an interview with Leah Franqui about America for Beginners.
Editor's Pick
A charming tale of travel and transformation
"This was one of my personal favorites last year. On the surface, it’s about unlikely travel companions on a tour across the country, but the real story is in the quiet transformations the characters undergo while learning about themselves and one another. Together, they confront their respective burdens of loss, repression, unfulfilled dreams, intercultural and inter-generational conflict, and ignorance of the world beyond their own little corner."
—Lavina K., Audible Editor
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Tamila Soroush wanted it all. But in the Islamic Republic of Iran, dreams are a dangerous thing for a girl. Tami abandons them…until her twenty-seventh birthday, when her parents give her a one-way ticket to America, hoping she will “go and wake up her luck.” If they have their way, Tami will never return to Iran…which means she has three months to find a husband in America.
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Rooting for freedom
- By Newman on 07-10-13
By: Laura Fitzgerald
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One Amazing Thing
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi, Soneela Nankani, Neil Shah
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry and an American Book Award for her short stories, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores themes of women, immigration, and her vibrant Indian culture to great effect. Divakaruni expands on these ideas in One Amazing Thing, a project long in the making and full of electric prose.
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An ok way to kill some time
- By R.Reader on 11-07-12
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Daughter of Darkness
- By: V. C. Andrews
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Seventeen-year-old Lorelei Patio is the adopted daughter of 200-year-old vampire Sergio Patio. She never realized why her family has had to move so often or why she is not permitted to get too friendly with other young people. In fact, except for one shocking moment that seemed more like a dream, Lorelei never fully realized who and what her father was nor what her sisters were brought up to do for him. But one day, that all changed.
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not the usual vc andrews book
- By Janae on 09-14-13
By: V. C. Andrews
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French Exit
- A Novel
- By: Patrick deWitt
- Narrated by: Lorna Raver
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Frances Price - tart widow, possessive mother, and Upper East Side force of nature - is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy. Her adult son Malcolm is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development. And then there’s the Price’s aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator and world-class cad whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social outcasts. Putting penury and pariahdom behind them, the family decides to cut their losses and head for the exit.
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deWitt deLivers Eccentric Quirky Characters
- By Liberty on 09-23-18
By: Patrick deWitt
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She Regrets Nothing
- A Novel
- By: Andrea Dunlop
- Narrated by: Rachel Dulude
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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When Laila Lawrence becomes an orphan at 23, the sudden loss unexpectedly introduces her to three glamorous cousins from New York who show up unannounced at her mother's funeral. The three siblings are scions of the wealthy family from which Laila's father had been estranged long before his own untimely demise 10 years before. Two years later, Laila has left behind her quiet life in Grosse Point, Michigan to move to New York City, landing her smack in the middle of her cousins' decadent world.
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Good Listen
- By Vallena on 02-19-18
By: Andrea Dunlop
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The Bastard of Istanbul
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In her second novel written in English, Elif Shafak confronts her country's violent past in a vivid and colorful tale set in both Turkey and the United States. At its center is the "bastard" of the title, Asya, a 19-year-old woman who loves Johnny Cash and the French Existentialists, and the four sisters of the Kazanci family who all live together in an extended household in Istanbul.
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A tender gift from far away
- By Barbara on 11-07-07
By: Elif Shafak
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Us: A Novel
- By: David Nicholls
- Narrated by: David Haig
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Douglas Petersen may be mild-mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that seduces beautiful Connie into a second date...and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades later, they live more or less happily in the London suburbs with their moody seventeen year-old son, Albie. Then Connie tells him she thinks she wants a divorce. The timing couldn’t be worse. Connie has planned a month-long tour of European capitals, a chance to experience the world’s greatest works of art as a family, and she can’t bring herself to cancel. And maybe going ahead is for the best anyway? Douglas is privately convinced that this landmark trip will rekindle the romance in the marriage, and might even help him to bond with Albie. Narrated from Douglas’s endearingly honest, slyly witty, and at times achingly optimistic point of view, Us is the story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves, and learning how to get closer to a son who’s always felt like a stranger.
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Great novel - my favorite in years
- By Mark on 07-21-15
By: David Nicholls
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Me Without You
- By: Kelly Rimmer
- Narrated by: Federay Holmes
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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If you enjoyed Me Before You by JoJo Moyes, One Day by David Nicholls, or The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks, then make time for Kelly Rimmer's stunning, heartbreaking new audiobook, Me Without You.A story of how love can break our hearts - and heal them. A year ago I met the love of my life. For two people who didn't believe in love at first sight, we came pretty close....
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Good Story; Too detailed
- By Seelake4 on 06-17-16
By: Kelly Rimmer
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Despite the Falling Snow
- By: Shamim Sarif
- Narrated by: Shamim Sarif
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Now a major motion picture. After an early career amongst the political elite of Cold War Russia, Alexander Ivanov has lived in America for 40 years and has managed to bury the tragic memories surrounding his charismatic late wife, Katya - or so he believes. For into his life come two women - one who will start to open up the heart he has protected for so long; another who is determined to uncover the truth about what really happened to Katya all those years ago.
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Beautiful snow fall
- By Mary findsplaces on 05-22-20
By: Shamim Sarif
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Nearly Normal
- Surviving the Wilderness, My Family and Myself
- By: Cea Sunrise Person
- Narrated by: Cea Sunrise Person
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
In her best-selling memoir North of Normal, Cea wrote with grace about her unconventional childhood - her early years living in a tipi in Alberta with her pot-smoking, free-loving counterculture family. But her struggles do not end when she leaves her family at the age of 13 to become a model. Honest and daring, Nearly Normal reveals the many ways that Cea's unconventional childhood continues to reverberate through the years.
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This one is just not for me
- By Pamela Plimpton on 03-15-19
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Gold Dust
- By: Kimberley Freeman
- Narrated by: Jennifer Vuletic
- Length: 18 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Three women linked by their blood, their dreams...and their sins. From Leningrad in the '70s to America and London in the present day, Kimberley Freeman's new novel follows the lives of two sisters, Lena and Natalia, and their cousin, Sofi, as they move away from Russia and all they have known. Despite promising to always take care of each other, a pact to meet every winter is shattered as their lives change and long-held resentments begin to surface. Can that resentment turn to hatred? To murder?
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It's just not the same without Caroline Lee
- By Maria on 12-04-17
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When It Happens to You
- A Novel in Stories
- By: Molly Ringwald
- Narrated by: Molly Ringwald
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
When it happens to you, you will be surprised. That thing they say about how you knew all the time, but just weren't facing it? That might be the case, but nevertheless, there you will be. Molly Ringwald mines the complexities of modern relationships in this gripping and nuanced collection of interlinked stories. Writing with a deep compassion for human imperfection, Ringwald follows a Los Angeles family and their friends and neighbors while they negotiate the hazardous terrain of everyday life - revealing the deceptions, heartbreak, and vulnerability familiar to us all.
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Narrated by Molly!
- By JillHen on 03-01-13
By: Molly Ringwald
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The Heart's Invisible Furies
- A Novel
- By: John Boyne
- Narrated by: Stephen Hogan
- Length: 21 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Cyril Avery is not a real Avery - or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.
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Outstanding. A Must listen.
- By Keith G on 09-04-17
By: John Boyne
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Very Good!
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Bone in the Throat
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Very unique culinary-based mafia story
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Seventeen-year-old Eleanor is the last person in Salem to believe in witchcraft—or to think that her life could be transformed by mysterious forces. After losing her best friend and first love, Chloe, Eleanor has spent the past year in a haze, vowing to stay away from anything resembling romance.
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Elizabeth "Gera" Fitz Gerald had a privileged life in her youth in Ireland, daughter of the FitzGerald Dynasty. Her privileged world is overturned when her father, the ninth earl of Kildare, is imprisoned in the Tower of London by King Henry VIII and her family is destroyed by corruption charges and scandal. Torn from her island home and the rest of her family spread out across Europe, Elizabeth has no choice but to accept a place in England's glittering court.
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A young nun is sent by the Vatican to investigate allegations of misconduct at a Catholic school in Iceland. During her time there, on a gray winter’s day, a young student at the school watches the school’s headmaster, Father August Franz, fall to his death from the church tower. Two decades later, the child - now a grown man, haunted by the past - calls the nun back to the scene of the crime.
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Tunneling to the Center of the Earth
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Kevin Wilson’s characters inhabit a world that moves seamlessly between the real and the imagined, the mundane and the fantastic. “Grand Stand-In” is narrated by an employee of the Nuclear Family Supplemental Provider—a company that supplies “stand-ins” for families with deceased, ill, or plain mean grandparents. And in “Blowing Up On the Spot,” a young woman works sorting tiles at a Scrabble factory after her parents have spontaneously combusted. These wonderfully inventive stories explore the relationship between loss and death and the ways we try to cope with both.
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Though her mind is still sharp, Elizabeth's eyes have failed. No longer able to linger over her beloved books or gaze at the paintings that move her spirit, she fills the void with music and memories of her family, especially her beloved twin sister, Emily. When her late father's journals are discovered after an accident, the past suddenly becomes all too present. With the help of Morgan, a delinquent teenager performing community service at her senior home, Elizabeth goes through the diaries.
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very good
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Small Pleasures
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1957: Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper in the southeast suburbs of London. Clever but with limited career opportunities and on the brink of forty, Jean lives a dreary existence that includes caring for her demanding widowed mother, who rarely leaves the house. It’s a small life with little joy and no likelihood of escape.
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Awful ending
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Beautiful Days
- Stories
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
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Overall
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Performance
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A collection of 13 mesmerizing stories by American master Joyce Carol Oates, including the 2017 Pushcart Prize-winning "Undocumented Alien". The diverse stories of Beautiful Days explore the most secret, intimate, and unacknowledged interior lives of characters not unlike ourselves, who assert their independence in acts of bold and often irrevocable defiance.
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Poor editing
- By Needles on 11-18-18
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A Walk Around the Block
- Stoplight Secrets, Mischievous Squirrels, Manhole Mysteries & Other Stuff You See Every Day (And Know Nothing About)
- By: Spike Carlsen
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In this celebration of the seemingly mundane, Carlsen opens our eyes to the engineering marvels, human stories, and natural wonders right outside our front door. He guides us through the surprising allure of sewers, the intricacies of power plants, the extraordinary path of an everyday letter, and the genius of recycling centers — all the while revealing that this awesome world isn’t just a spectator sport. Engaging as it is endearing, A Walk Around the Block will change the way you see things in your everyday life.
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Great look at the infrastructure under, above and all around us.
- By Chris on 10-24-20
By: Spike Carlsen
What listeners say about America for Beginners
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Marie Case
- 08-18-18
Completely wonderful production!
Soneela Nankani brings this story to life with a masterful style, vocal quality - humorous and serious and blunt and carefree and somber and reserved and silly...listening was a colorful adventure and the story was completely satisfying. Leah Franqui has created a genuine story and I will seek out her future books!
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3 people found this helpful
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- Sonya
- 02-12-20
Something Different for Me
I don’t usually purchase fiction but decided to give this book a try after hearing the author interviewed. I suspect the premise is probably more true than not, I enjoyed the story and the performance.
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- Zulma Duran
- 08-14-18
Good.
Not a book for everyone but I really enjoyed it. Learned new things and new perspectives. It was a calming read.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Debra
- 10-31-19
A moving story
I really enjoyed this audiobook. It was about parents and children, love and loss. It will stay with me for a while, and it had a great message. I liked the narration too.
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- Marianne
- 01-08-23
So good. Just read or listen to it.
This is not my genre. I read this book for a book club with my neighbors as a way to get to know them. The last book was awful and I barely got through it. America for Beginners salvaged this book club for me. What a good book. Poignant, funny, it made me cry. The author inspires all the emotions as you go on this journey of self discovery with these three people. Now I want to read or listen to this author’s next book. So good.
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- AdinaZimsausa
- 09-24-18
A it flat
A rendition of the difference between American and Indian/Bengali cultures through touring a woman from Colcutta through select USA places. A it flat and not captivating
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- Robin
- 08-06-18
an interesting listen, but somewhat stereotyped
The characters in this book all have their "issues" (certainly understandable), however I felt there were too many stereotypes for them to be relatable. So, for me, interesting listen but a 3+ rating.
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- Gigi007
- 08-07-18
Coming of age for all ages
This is a great story about who we are , who we think we are and how others perceive us . A wonderful journey thru our United States thru the eyes of three unlikely traveling companions. Very well written and a delight to listen to.
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- JPJC
- 08-02-18
I didn’t want to say goodbye to the characters
I thoroughly enjoyed the story. The character development was exceptional.. I didn’t want the story to end. I learned a lot along with the characters in this story of cultural comparisons. I hope Miss Franqui he writes more stories in the future.
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- A. Kiss
- 11-12-19
A pleasant story, wish I liked the reading more
The story is OK and entertaining, although perhaps a bit too pat (I know characters are supposed to change and grow during the course of a book, but maybe not quite so much or quite so fast...).
Unfortunately, I found Soneela Nankani's performance irritating. Her voice is a bit breathy, but my main complaint is that at the end of most sentences she raises both the tone and the volume/emphasis so that it sounds like she is a bit incredulous, as though she is really amazed by the statement, no matter how mundane it is, e.g.: "Then she stepped out of the BUS!!... They had dal for dinner AGAIN!!..The widow was TIRED!!..." I gave 2 stars instead of 1 because I realize not everyone is going to be as put off by her reading as I was (and she did fairly well with different voices and accents).
I stuck it out to the end because we were doing the book for our book club, but it was a bit painful listening.
UPDATE: I just tried to listen to another book club book, also narrated by Soneela Nankani, and had to return it. I simply can't tolerate listening to her reading. I will get the eBook and read it instead.
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