The Pen Pal

A West Virginia Mystery

By: Storm Young

Narrated by: Marie Hathaway

Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's summary

The Pen Pal follows the story of Shiloh Ray, who is a military wife, new mother, and college student. Shiloh also suffers from postpartum depression and overall loneliness from living in rural Alaska, far away from any family or friends.

Shiloh then breaks out of her comfort zone and signs up for a pen pal. Weeks pass and she is matched with Penelope Young. This is where her whole life will change. Shiloh and Penelope become the best of friends and write letters every week. Until one day, the letters just stop. Penelope has vanished.

Shiloh cannot handle the thought of losing her best friend, so she flies across the country to figure out what she did wrong, or what happened to Penelope. Once she gets there, she finds out from Penelope’s husband that she is missing. Shiloh takes matters into her own hands, finding out the truth of what happened to her friend. Shiloh will follow clues and figure out the truth, no matter the cost. She also meets a few unexpected friends along the way to help her. Shiloh and her friends will face many challenges and have to race against the clock to find out the truth before someone else covers it up.

Trigger warning! There is talk of suicidal thoughts and mental illness.

©2021 Storm Young (P)2022 Storm Young

Great story set in my home town!

Loved it! Great mystery, also loved hearing about locations that were in my home town.

Wanted to Love This

I really wanted to love this book but getting past the awful narration made it hard to enjoy the story.

love it

Absolutely love this book. Can't wait for a future books to come out amazing writer

“Penelope!”

This story is truly riveting and compelling as I stayed up all night listening to this on audio. Being a military brat myself, born and raised in the south, I was instantly mesmerized by this storyline. The characters in this book all has unique qualities as the writing was pure bliss! I was at the edge of my seat a lot of the time and left me wanting more. The narrator did a stellar job s as well bringing these characters to life. I will be on the lookout for more of Storm’s novels and enjoyed the narration immensely! Now, off to bed.

I had such high hopes for this book I gave it a

shot it has the potential to be really good. maybe it was the narrator

Not great

There were so many holes in the story, and it was very unbelievable. The narrator was very monotone. Overall, I was very disappointed with the story and performance.

Disappointing on all fronts

There were many things about this book that bothered me. I really wasn’t sold on the instantaneous bond between the two women, which is why the “drop it all and go” action left me feeling uneasy. Honestly, I wondered from early on if we would discover that the main character was actually mentally unstable/imagining the whole thing, because of how she quickly had attached to Penelope. I thought the language was somewhat repetitive, uninspired and didn’t flow naturally. The pace of the story was fine, but I think that was its one mildly redeeming quality.
I do wonder if it was the extremely poor narration that created the above issues for me. There was a little to no inflection or emotion, and no tonal change between characters during conversation, making certain exchanges difficult to follow. Overall this audio book was the biggest bummer of my week.

Disappointed

The narrator has a lovely voice and it was very soothing in tone, but the narration itself was choppy and halting in places, to the point I had to rewind several times to be sure it hadn't just skipped.
The story was rough and not very believable. The language ran the gamut from overly formal, to crass and back again within the same conversations. The "mystery" was really not a mystery at all, though there was 1 unexpected plot twist. That twist, however, quickly fell flat. Then, the way the twist was "resolved" was beyond disappointing and made no sense. Overall, I won't be listening again, nor recommending this book.