Finding Amanda

By: Robin Patchen

Narrated by: James L. Rubart

Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

Chef and popular blogger Amanda Johnson hopes publishing her memoir will provide healing and justice. Her estranged husband, contractor and veteran soldier Mark Johnson, tries to talk her out of it, fearing the psychiatrist who seduced her when she was a teen might return to silence her.

But Amanda doesn't need advice, certainly not from her judgmental soon-to-be ex-husband. Her overconfidence makes her vulnerable when she travels out of town and runs into the abuser from her past. A kind stranger comes to her rescue and offers her protection.

Now Mark must safeguard his wife both from the fiend who threatens her life and from the stranger who threatens their marriage.

©2015 Robin Patchen (P)2017 Robin Patchen

Excellent Story!

I love this story, but the narrator left a bit to be desired. Don't let that keep you from reading the book. He just sounds a bit robotic when doing some of the characters, but he does the two main characters pretty well, but I definitely recommend it!

Great story

I love it!

Great suspense. Realistic drama, creative suspense!

I love the real life struggles of these folks. Their struggles with relationships, with their faith.

Well done. Edifying.

First Time Reader

This was the first book I’ve read by this author, and will definitely read more. I could not put this down. Because it was a free download after subscribing to her newsletter, I was reading it, but was so hooked I also got the audible version so I could continue listening when I could not sit to read. I was on the edge of my seat until the very last page!

Narration is so bad

The book sounded interesting from the description. However, I can't even get through the second chapter because of the narration. Soooooo phony dramatic and almost stoping between words. Not worth my time at all. It's like finger nail cratching on a chalkboard. I'm returning this book ASAP.

My first and last Robin Patchen novel

From the description, I was expecting something of a thriller focused on a threat from the heroine’s past. But the mystery is an afterthought. Instead, the story is all about the heroine's relationship with her self-righteous, macho, domineering husband. There's little in the way of an actual plot. It’s just endless hours of them bickering and waffling about their relationship. I love you...I want a divorce....I love you....I want divorce. Blah, blah, blah. One of the main conflicts in their dysfunctional relationship centered on the husband's past cheating. The husband's father is also an adulterer. And the author uses the topic to blame women whose partners' cheat, and to condemn "bitter" women for not being eager to forgive. Apparently cheating is okay for a man, but woe to she who does not happily forgive. At the same time, under the author's double standards, the wife is also censured for having the audacity to even speak to another man, and the reader is subjected to a Neanderthal performance from the husband because the wife had dinner with a male friend. Frankly, the husband's personality and behavior was so repulsive that I was hoping the wife would go through with the divorce. Although, to be fair, maybe they deserve each other because the wife was pretty annoying in her own way: whiny, indecisive, self-absorbed. In any event, the couple gets their "happy ending." The husband saves the day, the wife agrees that the husband is right about everything, and she takes him back. The whole book had an bizarre "the husband is always right" message that was incredibly off-putting. Complete waste of a credit.

Couldn't finish...

Halfway through I returned the book, just couldn't stomach the soap and the half whispering voices the narrator gives the caractors.