The Minefield Girl

By: Sofia Ek

Narrated by: Camilla Belle. Sound design by: Rich Macar – Buttons NY. 3D spatial audio by: VisiSonics.

Length: 7 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's Summary

The Minefield Girl is based on Sofia Ek´s personal experiences as a young woman doing business in Libya while Gaddafi was still at the top of his reign. Her mission was to present Libya to the Western world of big business via the pages of the Wall Street Journal’s magazine SmartMoney. Sofia finds herself facing one setback after another as she learns to navigate Gaddafi’s Libya, where nothing is what it appears to be. She discovers that she is watched at every turn. 

A love affair proves to be both thrilling and dangerous, as she gradually realizes that the country’s most powerful men have ways to control even people’s personal lives. Moving with determination through the corridors of power, consumed by her desire to succeed and to be part of something bigger than herself, Sofia remains blissfully unaware of the minefield she has walked into. 

Sound design by Rich Macar, Buttons NY. 3D spatial audio by VisiSonics.

©2018 Lissie Entertainment AB (P)2018 Lissie Entertainment AB

Glad this was a special offer, free, not worth using a credir

I stuck with the listen, just because I thought the main character might eventually show some mature thinking, but it never happened. Maybe, that was the point of the whole book. She continually boasts of how great she is, how tasteless every situation is, and really doesn't give the listener any reason to admire her accomplishments or abilities. I probably will not ever listen to another book by this author or this narrator as it would be too painful and boring.

I want a refund!!

I know this was a free book from Audible, but...I want my "free" back!

This [supposedly] "true" story had enough to keep me interested, but only because I kept thinking that it had to get better. Or maybe the main character would get torn apart by lions or something.

The writing was probably on a 5th grade level. There were a SURPRISING number of poor choices of words or phrases that became distracting and eventually, comical. For example, in describing a conversation, she writes "It was as though everything he was saying was just an entree, and he was waiting to present the main course." How does this make it past the editors?

In another instance, she is expressing how happy she is for the driver who lost all this weight, and how she knows what it is like to have been bullied in school while growing up, but in the same paragraph, describes her co-worker as "geeky" when he walks up and he and the driver have a knowing laugh at the co-worker's expense.

There are so many examples of condescension, ignorance, arrogance, indignation and self-importance that it's nearly impossible to not dislike the "protagonist". She has such a high opinion of herself, and describes all these situations that are obviously there to make her look cool or together or accomplished but it has the opposite effect. She looks...immature.

I eventually got to thinking that perhaps, this was actually *brilliant*--that all along, she was TRYING to expose Sofia's immaturity, naïveté, blatant cluelessness as character development, illustrating where she was at the start of the story, and how she grew up and matured and learned about the Libyan people and practices and culture and business along the way. But to my disappointment, that never happened!

The performance by Camilla Belle is equally cringe-worthy. Or...another example of brilliance as she portrays Sofia Levander as the proud, spoiled, ignorant tramp that she was in this book? It was a symbiosis of incompetence: the poor writing making the performance worse than it could've been, and the poor performance making the writing even more unbearable. And...maybe do some research into how to correctly pronounce Libyan names and places? That might help make you sound less childish. And stop using a hard-G sound at the end of words like "wrong", or "song", or "boring". That's not how English works.

Finally, there was the added sound effects throughout. If the author talked about a phone ringing, or buzzing, there would be that sound. If there was a crowd of people around at a party, there would be that background noise during the reading. If there was a phone conversation taking place, the party on the other end sounded like they did in 1970. For the first chapter or two, it was novelty. After that, it was just distracting and underscored how this was more akin to a comic book than a serious work of non-fiction.

I seriously hope this doesn't start a new trend on how audio books are going to be produced. I hope this was just an experiment that went horribly wrong. The beginning and end of each chapter was punctuated with some kind of music. It was supposed to be mysterious our suspenseful or somehow set the scene. But it was SO LOUD! I listen with headphones, and when the reader is at a comfortable volume where you can easily hear and understand, it's great. And then this weird music crescendos and my ears start bleeding. If it was music, it was bad enough. But one or two times, it was just this high pitched squeal. It was horrid. I laughed out loud when I read another reviewer's comments about it when [s]he stated that [s]he thought the brakes were failing!

All in all, this was a disaster. Judging by the reviews by HuffPost, Vogue, Billboard and others, and the pageantry that heralded the release of this book, I think it's fair to say that Sofia Ek has no friends close enough to tell her the truth that this book sucks.

I know it was free, but it truly wasn't even worth my time, and I'm an angrier, more jaded person because of it.

Seriously

Pretentious. Naive. Privileged. Self centered. Culturally unaware. This young woman is an example of delusional thinking at its best. If any of this is too be believed as anything near the truth it’s beyond any average sense of first world entitlement. And to top it all she wants her dark haired “love” to take revenge on the evil son of a cruel dictator not because he slaughtered his own people while living a life of unearned luxury which she willingly participated in but because she has sold her self sexually and ethically for her own financial gain. What a great example for young women everywhere. I hung around till the end for some sense of mea culpa or self redemption only to hear her self congratulation at her great victory over exactly what is sadly nothing.

a spoiled girl's love story

A girl travels to Libya with absolutely zero research on the country beforehand. I was hoping for an exciting book but all I got was a spoiled girls love story.

Western Woman Expects to Westernize Africa

I had hopes, I really did. But the narrator sounds like a teenage girl, not a good match for the main character, who presents herself as a woman navigating a man’s world, literally. The POV character comes across as the classic “I want to speak with the manager” type, and often quite unsympathetic. She seems hung up on male appearances and overly critical of fellow women. Her difficulty navigating Libya could have been mitigated, somewhat, by preparation beforehand, of which she speaks very little, aside from wearing designer jeans and a scarf to the airport. She disrespects the culture from almost day one. It reads like a spoiled woman complaining that she didn’t get her way. And the ambiance sounds added to set the mood? Sure, okay, I can see where it’s useful. But when I’m listening while walking my dog and I gradually hear sirens and traffic followed by shouting - it freaked me out for a good five seconds until I realized it was my book. I can only imagine how nerve wracking it would have been to hear it while driving. Street sounds are not really a good choice for ambient backdrop. All in all - not my cup of tea, and not recommended.

Interesting Subject, Very Disappointing Execution

Any additional comments?

This was a free offer given by Audible in mid-February, so I of course picked it up! One of my greater interests is world politics, and I'm not as well versed in Libya and the Qaddafi reign as much as I should be. I thought this would be a great jumping off point into some new territory. Unfortunately, it was a disappointing journey.

The story, written by Sofia Ek and based on her own personal experiences in Libya, was very much like a roller coaster. Occasionally, there were moments of great interest and enjoyment, as Sofia and her partners traveled around Libya, learning about all things from the culture to the government, and everything shady in-between. I thought that her love affair was an excellent addition to the story, as significant problems arose from her open relationship in conservative Libya.

But they we'd come crashing down, as other parts of the narrative were just boring and uninspired. The dialogue was at all times weak, characters were unrefined and undeveloped. And Sofia, when writing herself, would often put herself in a very favorable light. I'm not saying it's impossible that everything happened just the way she wrote, just a bit too much eyebrow-raising. One of my favorite things to do would be to count the number of times Sofia and her partners were in a meeting, which of course started poorly and was only made worse as time went on, only to be saved at the last minute by Sofia. It happened... more than you'd think.

The bad overtook the good in the end. This book felt more about Sofia then about Libya. That's not inherently bad, but not what I was sold on.

But that all might have been saved by the narration, as a good narration can often raise a sub-par story. But I'm sorry to say this was just some of the worst vocalizing I have ever come across. The tale was read flat, limp, like a fourth-grader standing in class reading their book-report. No infection, no heart; several times it's obvious they should have done another take. And this poor performance was compounded by ridiculous and overzealous sound-effects. Unlike other audio-books, this one had sound effects and noise overlaying the narration, constantly. I believe the intention was to create a dynamic atmosphere, but it was nothing short of distracting and annoying. An extremely poor decision.

I'm afraid I can't recommend this audio-book. A story with scattered quality and a horrendous narration and sound effects, it unfortunately isn't worth your seven hours, even when it's free.

Noise

The background noise throughout the story was extremely annoying and made it very difficult to concentrate on the person speaking .

Decent, but lots of hurdles to get past

I like elements of this book, but the author's overall demeanor is a big turnoff for me. One second she goes on a tangent about how awesome she is for doing all of these things, and she's "going on the attack" and her skills are so amazing, blah blah blah. And then the next she's spouting about how naive and stupid she is. My main problem with this approach is that the writing doesn't reflect a current state of humbleness. So the successes and the failures are written by someone with a very cocky view of themselves, which makes the whole thing rather unappealing for me.

I can't knock the story as a whole too much, and it's nice to see a book about dealings in a tyrannical regime that don't focus *exclusively* on the outsider/woman/enemy of the state angle. I just wish someone a little more down to earth wrote it that didn't seem to be most interested in self-aggrandizement.

Also of note. The sound/music/fx throughout were too much for my taste. It's nice to have a sound effect once in a while, but as an example, I don't need muffled audio for phone conversations, that just makes it more distracting to listen to.

Reads like the diary of a teenage girl

I’m really not sure what the point of this story was. The author talks of her time working in Libya, chronicling her encounters with powerful individuals whose favors she tries to covet in order to gain advantages for her business. Aside from that, it reads like a diary more than a memoir. She comes off as incredibly naive and foolish and the narration does nothing to detract from that. Thank god this book was free otherwise I would be mad I wasted my money on it.

Background noise and music was interesting

At first I was distracted by the background sounds but then I think it definitely accentuated the story line. The music was sometimes louder than I would have liked.

The story itself was surprisingly entertaining and the narration was well done. This was a pleasant listen. Thanks audible!

Don't waste your time

Absolutely crap. Wouldn't recommend to anyone. Don't be tempted by the fact its free. its free because its literally worthless.