The Fall of Hidden Meadows

By: Jenna Veirs

Narrated by: Gryphon Corpus

Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's Summary

Sarah Margo stomped out of the courthouse in sixth grade yelling, "I am never getting married!" The heartbreak of her parents' divorce and mother leaving never left her. That's why Sarah went out of her way to avoid meaningful relationships - the long-term boyfriend she didn't love and a fling that caused controversy. Her childhood love breaking her heart didn't help. 

Sarah decides to leave the past in her Midwestern town and take an engineering job in New York City. New friends and a great career provide Sarah her ideal life until she collides with Iain Mackgale. As Sarah learns more about Iain, she discovers he has many secrets. While processing her unexpected feelings, she receives a life-changing phone call. 

The Fall of Hidden Meadows is a funny and heartwarming story spanning 17 years of a girl's life as she navigates relationships, loss, and a life she never expected.

©2018 Jenna Veirs (P)2019 Jenna Veirs

A hidden Gem

Words cant express how wonderful this story is.
The story starts out when Sarah was an awkward 12 year old. She hated the changes in her life at that point in time. Her best friend hanging with the popular crowd, her secret crush, Daniel, dumped her to take Tiffany to the dance, and the final blow was her parents bitter divorce. Sarah begged her father to fight for her. At the courthouse, she ran out and yelled why does everything have change? I will never get married.
As Adult Sarah these traumatic childhood events, effected her relationships with men, Never get too close, never get serious, never get married.
This story built on love, trust, mystery, fun, secrets and growing as a person.
The secondary characters add deep emotions, and fun to the story, There are laugh out loud moments, along with gut wrenching sorrow.
I didn't read the story, but had the opportunity to listen to this on Audible.
Gryphon Corpus is an excellent storyteller and superb narrator. She emotes every Feeling of love, anger, angst, fear, pain, humor and sarcasm of every character in this story. Bringing all the characters to life. Brilliant , I loved listening to it
🎧audiobookobsessionreviewer🎧

Cinderella story?

Like many before me I liked Sarah's story. Her childhood trauma with her mother rang true but the whiplash speed that she went from ostricized, self-doubting, victim to strong, Independent woman seemed forced. It would be more satisfying if her prince charming was one of her childhood friends that had pulled himself up by his bootstraps instead of poor little royal/tycoon.

AMAZING

This audiobook was given to me for free at my request, I am leaving a voluntary review:

I loved this book, especially the beginning. I loved hearing about Sarah in the 6th grade and her crazy mother. Oh her mother made me sooo mad! She could have probably written a whole book just about her insane childhood. (It vaguely reminded me of Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs...another amazing book btw) The second half of the book was phenomenal too. Even though I occasionally wanted to yell at both of them for making thing so much more complicated than they had to! The narrator did an excellent job as well!! This was such a good book. I will definitely be looking for more books from Jenna Veirs!!

(I hope this review doesnt pop up twice or something. I wrote it yesterday, it was here, and then it was gone. No clue why.

A gem but I couldn’t see myself finishing it.

One thing I really want to say is that I liked this story up to the middle , but it then started dragging on and on.

A lot of moments reminded me of a book that I enjoyed called Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld, however I was able to get through that book unlike this one.

This is a 3 star DNF, I liked a lot of it, but it kept on going on and on, so I couldn’t finish it.







——————-
Disclaimer: I received a free code from freeaudiobookcodes.com. All opinions are my own.

The Fall of Hidden Meadows

I loved this epic tale that followed 17 years of Sarah Margo’s life... from youth to adulthood. The things that we experience as a child can definitely have an impact on the type of adult we grow into.

This is a well written and well thought out story by Jenna Veirs.

Gryphon Corpus truly brought the characters to life and brought out the emotions.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and I have voluntarily left this review.

Bittersweet romantic story

First, I would like to mention that this is not my typical genre. For someone not into romance books, this one is quite okay, with a main flawed character and a story that spans several years. Sarah Margo has a difficult childhood, with her parents getting a divorce and being psychologically abused by her mother. She is not the best at choosing men, and half of the time she is escaping from a situation that was partly created by her.

I enjoyed the first part, on which we see how Sarah’s personality was shaped by several events. I also like the relationship she had with her father, because it was nuanced and it felt real. Her first attempt at a relationship with a boyfriend was okay from a reader’s point of view. She screwed up massively, but even though the several coincidences were a bit too much sometimes, I found the story entertaining, and at the same time, Sarah was evolving as a character.

The part with Iain was my least favorite, even though things worked out more or less in the end, and it is, in fact, the main part of the book. I think it was because it is a so often used plot that I find it completely unrealistic: Problematic girl meets rich handsome guy, their love is impossible for diverse reasons, he psychologically abuses her, and although she promises to herself that he is not good for her, she just can’t help it but be madly in love with him. In a way, it reminded me of the well known “50 shades” but without all the kinky stuff. If there is something missing in this romantic story is sex.

The ending turned out to be beautiful and comforting but also as unreal as a pink unicorn. It was a bittersweet book, with some conspiracy theories added to the romantic story. I felt a bit confused by so many secondary characters that appeared once or twice and ended up being important to the story. I think they could have been presented more carefully to keep them in the mind of the reader.

I enjoyed Gryphon Corpus’ narration. She did a wonderful job interpreting the different characters, giving each one a unique voice and style. She did great with male voices. There were a couple of audio production issues, like some background noise, noticeable audio edits, and swallowing noises; probably due to inexperience. I see only six audiobooks narrated by Gryphon Corpus on Audible, so I think it is amazingly good how she is doing in a such a short time.

I would recommend this book to readers into romantic stories. There are no explicit sex scenes, something that I know, bothers some people.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Intriguing and heartwarming

The story is compelling with a sense of humor! Real life meets heartwarming. The feelings range from “I wish I had the balls to say that” to “my heart hurts”. Dying for the next book and potentially a movie version! I would love to see the characters come to life on the big screen.

If you’re in it for the long haul it’s great!

Narration
Different than I am used to but loved her style as the book went on.
Story
I checked a couple times in the beginning of the book because it sounded like a youth - young adult book but it’s worth the wait as I got more invested in the book having started from a child and through to her being 30+. If you don’t mind listening to a book that feels YA for the first half or so this might be a book you love!

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Interesting, hard to put down story

Interesting story!

This was a very interesting story with lots of twists and turns.

I really felt for young Sarah trying to navigate through the divorce and everything that went along with it. How it affected her through her whole life. Then she truly fell in love. I couldn’t stop reDing. I just had to know if she and Iain could make it. There were some laugh out loud moments, which was good, because the story was so sad in other parts.
I like the way it ended, but the ending was left a bit up in the air. WE still don’t know if She and Iain can navigate through all the trouble yet to come. Some of the characters were truly wonderful, and others were really awful and nasty.
The Narration was fantastic and totally believable. Gryphon Corpus put loads of emotion in to the character of Sarah. She even did the male parts really well. The accents were spot on as well.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

WOW

The Fall of Hidden Meadows
by Jenna Veirs

This romance begins when Sarah is 12 years old and she goes through traumatic life changing events. As time passes she is grown and out in the world, but has very little trust in people. She meets a man that everyone thinks is out of her league. There is plenty of drama, laugh out loud moments, and tear jerking situations. This book will keep the listener engaged from start to finish. I hope there will be a sequel, SOON!!!



The narration was well done. The characters were well portrayed. Gryphon Corpus gave this book emotion and brought the characters to life!!!



I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

omg

wow SO MANY FEELS!!!! This book is a roller coaster of emotions. the narrator is new to me, and did a good job. the author is also new to me. Her words are woven to bring the reader through this roller coaster unscathed but all the better for it. Great book.


🎧AudiobookObsessionReviewer

Never say never.

I enjoyed this audiobook, although I would class it as a Romance novel primarily and that's not my first choice of genre. It didn't hurt that I rather fancied Nick, the owner of the company that Sarah worked for.

Sarah Margo is traumatised by her parents' sudden divorce and vows never to marry. Her mother is a harridan and abuses Sarah psychologically. Her father, however, is adorable and things improve when she goes to live with him. As she matures, she throws herself into her career as an engineer and becomes super-proficient in her field. She works for a large company in New York and eventually gets sent to the parent company in Burrell, situated on an island in the English Channel (does this place actually exist, I couldn't find it?). That's where the story really takes off and the pieces begin to fit together.

On the downside, I thought this book was overly long, in fact the first part seemed a bit disjointed from the rest and at one stage I wondered where we were going. In the end it made sense, but I think I would have preferred the whole of the part be edited out and the important information drip-fed to us through the remainder of the book. This would have added interest as we read and cut out a large chunk that felt unnecessary.
In addition, there was rather a cast of thousands and when some of these people popped up again later in the narrative I admit, I wondered who they were. This is probably more of a problem in the audio version, where your speed is regulated by the narrator and doesn't give you much chance to think back. Which leads me on to the narrator, Gryphon Corpus, who did a pretty good job, although I wasn't too convinced by her upper-crust English accent (being English myself!).

As far as I'm aware this is the author's first book and in spite of my reservations I did enjoy it. There was just one odd chapter at the very end that suggested that everything had been planned from the start...no!!!

Funny , relatable, emotional and soul stirring

This is the first book I have read/listened to by Jenna Viers. The cover drea me to the book and i found that it spoke to me on some subconscious level. This book has everything you would look for in a well written story. It is funny , relatable, emotional and soul stirring .
Sarah is such a likeable character and as the book covers such a large time span of her life , you feel that you are on the journey of all the ups and downs along with her. i was given this book by the author/narrator in return for an honest and unbiased review