The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

A bit academic, but a great listen. I may have given up if reading it as quite a lot of technical bits.
I do like an interesting factual book, occasionally.

This is unlike anything else I have read. It is hugely enjoyable and the narration superb. Read it and enjoy.

loved the book and the narration. it has really opened my eyes about research. a must read.

I enjoyed the book on the whole. I found the science and the story of Henrietta really interesting. I have to say I did find the story of the author and her involvement with the family a bit self indulgent and tedious at times. I think the interesting story makes up for the negatives and I would recommend reading it.

I was really moved by this book. I had heard of HeLa cells before, having studied and worked in medical science for most of my career, but I had never heard the real story behind them. Apart from being a great read the book raises a lot of questions about bioethics, fairness and the injustices of the past. Definitely a story that needed to be told!

I went into this having read many positive reviews, and I expected a in depth story into the scientific breakthroughs which resulted from the discovery of HeLa cells.

Instead what I got was an in depth story of how the writer of this book struggled to research the history of the person from whom these cells were drawn - Henrietta Lacks. It's incredibly self indulgent, and spends literally hours on how diligent the author was. The rest is all about the life (and death) of Henrietta and her family. Aside from her remarkable cells, the life of Henrietta was unremarkable in the extreme (for the time), and this book could have simply been a general history of the lot of poor, ultra religious African Americans in the deep south in the 1940s and 50s.

There is virtually no science in this book at all, so if science is what interests you, this book will not. I also found the narrator extremely irritating, as she spends much of her time either attempting (and failing horribly) to do deep south African American accents, or adding quivers and shakes to her voice during emotional moments in the text. It's one of the worst readings of a book I've yet encountered on Audible, and I've listened to a lot of audiobooks.

The story is fascinating in and of itself, but it seems that the author cannot really decide whether to go for good story-telling or scientific accuracy. The result is an enjoyable, but somewhat wobbly book. The real problem herr lies in the narrator. Far too grating and un-nuanced a voice for my taste.

i loved the book
an amazing story of Henrietta's life before HELA, her family and science. put together well

A book I would have never picked up but I'm glad I took the time to listen to it.

I listened to this as it was chosen by my book club.

Very well narrated. I learnt a lot but it was interesting too. Would definitely recommend to others