Vanished

By: Karen Robards

Narrated by: Joyce Bean

Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

Seven years ago, Sarah Mason's five-year-old daughter vanished during an outing at a park in Beaufort, South Carolina. Despite a frantic search, little Lexie was never found, and Sarah was left to pick up the pieces of her shattered life and go on the best she could.

Then, one hot August night, Sarah comes home to hear the phone ringing. When she picks it up, a child's terrified voice whispers, "Mommy, help, come and get me . . ." The call is cut off, but not before Sarah's heart goes into overdrive: she is sure the voice belonged to Lexie. Five-year-old Lexie. Though seven years have passed, she sounds exactly the same.

Frantic, Sarah turns to the police, the FBI, and her co-workers at the County Prosecutor's office, none of whom takes the call seriously. The only person she can count on to help her is Jake Hogan, her closest friend in the world, the man who has provided a strong shoulder for her to lean on throughout the long search. A former FBI agent, Jake is now a P.I., and though he is skeptical about the authenticity of the call, the attraction he feels for Sarah pushes him to help her. He is convinced someone is deliberately tormenting the grief-stricken mother.

Their long friendship explodes into a romance as they try to figure out who, and why - and what happened to Lexie. When the torment escalates to murder, Jake is the only one who can keep Sarah safe. Together, they are caught up in a nightmare search for Lexie that just might end with Sarah's death.

©2006 Karen Robards (P)2006 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

decent. not great.

The main problem with this book lies both with narrator and with author.
First - Author. Well constructed story with consistent characters. The problem with that is, to reach consistency, the same viewpoints are PAINFULLY repiticious. For Sarah to be a strong women, we have to hear endlessly that she won't let herself cry, that she doesn't want to be that kind of woman....and when it gets around to romance with Jake, it was awful. I heard so many references to his broad shoulders and his long muscled legs that it was nearly unbearable. I get that this might well be aimed at women but for heavens sakes..enough is enough. And not only was it repetitive, it was WAY too extended. For as well done as the story was, the Jake romance was written as if by a freshman girl in Creative writing. That.bad. Now, the rest lifts the overall rating to decent.
Narrator- acceptable but for the strained attempts at Jake. The attempts came off poorly- would have been equally effective with just a slightly varied intonation instead.

loved it. The narrator Joyce Bean usual was great

I enjoyed this book. I have never read any of her books. Will enjoy her next.!

Story

Good Karen Robards style story. The ending is a bit too fairytale for me, no mention of the difficulty to be faced post trauma for a child. Good escapism listening.

Awesome book!

Felt almost like a romance book. But overall awesome book, with decent performance. Thank you

Should have been abridged

Would you try another book from Karen Robards and/or Joyce Bean?

no, all the details made it kind of boring at times

What did you like best about this story?

the story was good, just very drawn out with lots of needless details

What didn’t you like about Joyce Bean’s performance?

her voice as Jake, made him sound like old man

Sammie from Bozeman Hit The Nail on the Head

What disappointed you about Vanished: A Novel?

Everything from writing style to character development to narration.

What could Karen Robards have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Not elaborate on insignificant, mundane so-called details

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Joyce Bean?

Julia Whelan or Cassandra Campbell or virtually any other female narrator.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Anger for having wasted money, impatience waiting for the story to get better, frustration for it never getting better.

Any additional comments?

I couldn't agree more with the review provided by Sammie from Bozeman.

Needs a good editing

I'm only partway through the book; at the point of trying to decide if I'm going to continue or not.

The writing suffers from an abundance of non-essential details, and the author uses three descriptors where one would have been sufficient. I'm a dog person, and even I found her multiple descriptions of Sweetie Pie tedious. And, I'm starting to count the number of times she uses "the thing is".

I would have been much happier if the narrator had used her normal voice for the character "Jake" -- her growly, constricted voice has me hating the guy.

False advertising!

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

Someone wanting to read about how 2 best friends ( may) become lovers.

Would you ever listen to anything by Karen Robards again?

Not unless I red some rave reviews. Not sure how many ways " broad shoulders" can be described, but this book talks to at least 20 of them

What three words best describe Joyce Bean’s performance?

Good Georgia cent

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Vanished: A Novel?

I am only 2/3 way through, but I would cut all reference to the " vanished" person. It has not, as of yet, had any real bearing on the story

Not worth the credit or my time

Would you be willing to try another one of Joyce Bean’s performances?

No thank you

Any additional comments?

The story was okay. Seemed like 25% of the book was full of meaningless details. The narrators character voices were AWFUL!! I cringed when she started talking, and hoped it would grow on me or I would at least get use to it as I listened longer. Terrible...terrible...terrible.

Avoid "Vanished" .... Please!

First of all, do not get this "Vanished" mixed up with the excellent book also entitled "Vanished" but written by Joseph Finder; they are not of the same subject or quality. "Vanished" as written by Karen Robards is not unique in any way, and I do not recommend it.

Ms. Robards' "Vanished" is the very over-used story about every parent's nightmare; a woman's six-year-old daughter vanishes in a busy park and is never found. But 10 years after the girl's disappearance, the Mother begins to receive strange phone calls from her long-gone daughter, wanting to come home. The Mother, of course, panics and begans frantically looking for her little girl. At this point, the story starts going downhill quickly; for example, It's immediately apparent to the reader that the calls could not possibly be from the daughter. The voice on the phone sounds like a typical six-year-old child, but the reader is thinking: WAIT; wouldn't the daughter be 16 or 17 now and presumably not still have the same baby voice and lisp that the Mother's six year old had when she first disappeared? Someone finally figures that out, but not until a lot of panicky scenes have occurred and not until the reader has became a little agitated at being treated like an idiot.

But the real tragedy occurs not with the very trite subject but with the narrator. Joyce Bean does an excellent job when she stays in the voice of female characters. However, in the audiobook, when Ms. Bean first starts growling out the voice of her supposed male lover, I laughed, then cringed, then was rather creeped out. Her boyfriend, as voiced by Ms. Bean, sounds exactly like a cranky old woman, a life-long smoker with a resulting scratchy throat. At first it wasn't much of a problem listening to Ms. Bean trying to make her voice sound an octave deeper than it could actually go, but it was a Big Problem during the "romance" scenes: since we cannot "see" the sexy scenes, all we can picture in our minds are a young woman and a grouchy old cigarette-smoking old lady with male genitalia. And, no, I am not homophobic or transgender-phobic, and I usually have little problem with a female reading a man's part in an audiobook. But Joyce Bean needs to stick with narration of female characters only (and at which she is very good), and the author needs to quite trying save a buck by not hiring both a male and a female for naration of her romance novels.