Half Past

A Novel

By: Victoria Helen Stone

Narrated by: Emily Sutton-Smith

Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

At forty-five, Hannah Smith is at a crossroads. That's her spin on it. The reality is she's divorced, jobless, and moving back to her family home in Iowa to keep an eye on her mother, who's slipping into dementia. Her return stirs up the same unnerving sense of disconnect Hannah has felt since childhood - always the odd girl out, the loner outshone by her two older sisters. Hannah knew the feelings of hurt would come back. But she never expected fear. Because when her mother looks into her eyes and whispers, "You're not my daughter," Hannah is beginning to believe it's not just the rambling of a confused woman.

It's the truth.

Now Hannah's following the trail of a family mystery to the dark coast of Big Sur, where years ago a lie was born - and buried. As frightened as she is to unearth it, Hannah knows this is the last chance she has before her past - and all its terrible secrets - are lost forever.

©2017 Victoria Helen Stone. (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

I thought it was pretty boring

didn't care about the main character at all nor her journey. lt seems like a lot of audiobooks aren't as good as ones they don't bother making into audiobooks

Great plot with excellent narrator

For fans of genealogical mysteries this was a great book. The characters are believable the main character someone I could identify with and the setting one I know well, it was described perfectly. Perhaps I'm bias as I absolutely love Emily Sutton Smiths voice but I thought she did a wonderful job here. She really shines on doing introspection and her soothing voice is both mysterious and yet calming even when she's reading action scenes. Don't pass this great find up!

Holds Your Interest

I felt like I knew the characters. Excellent storyline. Didn't have the ending I wanted but more true to life.

Half Past

Very entertaining and I was surprised by the way the story flowed. The characters were interesting. The story kept me up. I had to know how it would end.

wonderful story

I actually live a very similar story so this was touching. bravo and keep it up!

Terrible narration

Narrator sounds like a robot! Love this author but can’t tolerate this narration! She runs the story

Enjoyed the story

Perhaps because I live near Big Sur, the story struck a chord with me. It's believable, sad and captures your imagination.

A child of 70's hippies

As an actual child of 70's hippies, there were more than a few times I was appalled at the wildly inaccurate depiction of hippies of the 70's living in norther California. I grew up in Santa Cruz, not far from where the novel takes place, and I can assure you, the negative description of heathenistic, dirty, drug abusing, vagrants, who were sleeping with any and everyone could not be further from the reality of it all. Sure, there were likely those who were, exactly that; but the same can be said of every group of people.
Perhaps a bit more research, a bit more knowledge, and a whole lot more of an objective outlook would have allowed me to enjoy the overall story a bit more. But I sincerely only continued to listen to see of the main character discovered that the jaded, dark stereotypes were completely incorrect. But, that didn't exactly happen.
Sadly, it's left a pretty bad taste in my mouth, and I'm not likely to seek out anything else from this author.

Boring

The narrator was so monotone would put me to sleep. The story was o.k Maybe it would have been better with a different narator.

Ummm...

It was overall a decent read/listen...however I wish the book gave a little more voice to the back story of the parents and the commune previous life.