Doggerland

Sam Applewhite, Book 2

By: Heide Goody, Iain Grant

Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies

Length: 12 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's Summary

There’s something very wrong at the Otterside care home.

When Sam Applewhite tries to help a friend who’s lost a beloved pet she  finds that it’s just the first in a series of seemingly unconnected deaths. Is it her imagination, or do all of them somehow point back to the same residential home for seniors?

Sam’s skills are in demand elsewhere however, as she must orchestrate a safety drill with animal actors, cook dinner on an abandoned oil rig, and keep an eye on those vikings who are building a longship.When the police don’t see the pattern, it’s all down to Sam, and the closer she gets to uncovering what’s going on at Otterside, the more danger she’s in.

©2021 Heide Goody and Iain Grant (P)2021 Heide Goody and Iain Grant

Just Get It

If you listened to the first one and liked it, you'll love this one too. Sam is great as always, and we get some serious Odinson exploits to enjoy. Goody and Grant are able to create colorful yet credible characters and weave them into zany and satisfying plots. I really love everything they write. More please!

Sophomore slump?

I enjoyed the first book and also enjoyed the second. The author uses like every detail mentioned in the beginning to weave it all together at the end. I did find this book to be alittle slow in the beginning but I did power through and it was ultimately worth it.

Another fun, quirky tale, works fine as standalone

Note: While this is book 2 in the series, it works jut fine as a stand-alone story.

What a crazy, crazy romp! Take a chunk of mammoth, a murdered turkey, old folks home gang, and a Viking longship, and you get a very strange, quirky mystery. Sam is still living with her dad (a former famous-ish magician) and working for the security firm DefCon4. Her friend asks her to look into the mysterious death of her pet turkey, Drumstick. From there, things just get weirder.

I thoroughly enjoyed book 1, Sealfinger, and this one is good too, tho I did like book 1 a little better. This one rambles a bit more, feels more sprawled out. At times I couldn’t see where we were going and not sure we’d ever get there (which is what I imagine it feels like to live with the Odinsons [a constantly cheerfully scheming family]).

I really loved this idea of creating an Ice Age animals park. Richard, a billionaire and Sam’s ex-boyfriend, wants to start with a mammoth. Hence, Sam is hired to transport a frozen chunk of mammoth. Also she gets hired to do some assessments of safety to public and this gets hilarious when a troupe is hired to dress up as Ice Age mammals and chase a crowd of potential zoo goers. This made me laugh so much! Also, I learned that Doggerland was the Ice Age land bridge between Europe and the modern UK.

Meanwhile, we got some interesting characters over at the old folks home, Otterside. Polly is new to this little gang of tightly knit friends. Strawb (short for Strawberry because of a birthmark) is gently flirtatious and very likeable. Sam is at the center of things again as she was hired to provide a short class of fitness monitoring equipment. Also her dad wants an audience to dust off the cobwebs in front of.

Then we have the Odinsons, modern-day Vikings that are proud of not having regular jobs and being able to scavenge up resources. Their latest project is to build a Viking longship. Ha! They are so lucky to have the guidance of their women to keep them mostly grounded, out of jail, and injuries stitched up. Hilda (or was it Greta?) is the brains behind the brawn. If not for her, we wouldn’t have a longship for the big rallying end of this odd adventure. Yes, the story finally gets there, giving us answers to who killed who and why. All together, it was a fun book that provided many chuckles. 4/5 stars.

The Narration: Matthew Lloyd Davies gave another good performance. He nailed the humor every time and I like his variety of voices. I do wonder a little why a male narrator was chosen when the center of the series is a woman (Sam Applewhite), but with book 1 I really couldn’t tell who would be the main character of the series until the end, so maybe they went with Davies because most of the characters are male. Anyhoo, Davies has passable female voices and he has unique voices for all characters, pulling on his dynamic use of regional accents. I especially liked his old folks voices and the voice for the patriarch of the Odinsons. There were no tech issues with this recording. 5/5 stars.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My opinions are 100% my own.

I loved every minute

I loved the story, the characters. I loved it all. Thank you. I can’t wait for the next installment. A fun mystery.

Highly entertaining

This is great fun, amusing and exciting, it’s an adventure with a bit of a madcap feel, but while some books miss the mark with that sort of thing, this is spot on, it’s really well done.

Different

Loved it lived in Skegness so found it more interesting
Some parts really funny in this and book 1 looking forward to the next 2books

A marvelous melting of the mundane and murderous

Sam Applewhite and a new prickly co worker are enabling her ex boyfriend's mad plan to build a prehistoric theme park and that's one of the least weird things in this tangle of plots.
Vikings, murdered turkeys, suspicious deaths, magic shows, and a whole lot of OAPs.
Each character is well rounded, the plots well weaved, the writing style fast paced and the narrator perfectly suited.
It feels very different to the other Goody & Grant books I've read (though I have now bought the first Sam Applewhite book too) and did that dull my enjoyment? Not at all!

Wonderful

A wonderful sequel in the Sam Applewhite series. I smiled and laughed throughout as the plot thickened. With some familiar faces and a host of new ones, I welcomed the voice of Matthew Lloyd Davies to narrate the tale of Doggerland and it's twists and turns as the plot developed, I thoroughly enjoyed this!

When Sam is tasked with solving the murder of Drumstick, a rescued turkey owned by her good friend Delia she could never have guessed that his death was part of an intricate plot to rid the world of bad people. With a tale that involves kidnapping, explosions and a rescue mission aboard a viking sailship you will not be disappointed.

Loved it

I loved clovenhoof and odd jobs so thought I would give the new series of Sam applewhite a go, both books have been brilliantly written and can't wait for the next one.

Absolutely loved every second of this!

The narrator is always great but he really excels with this one.
Book one was a great start to the series, but this one is even better, hooked me from the start and kept me hooked, I didn’t want to stop listening.
It’s a fabulous second instalment, cannot wait for book three.