Tag: audiobooks

Book Review : Have You Seen Me? by Kate White

Post author By amaryie
Post date July 5, 2020
No Comments on Book Review : Have You Seen Me? by Kate White

What did I read? No, seriously. I am super confused on what I just read. Probably because it felt like several different books in one.

Premise

One rainy morning, Ally Linden arrives early to work only to realize she doesn’t have her key to get in and has to wait for someone. When her boss finally shows up, he is surprised she is there waiting because she has not worked there in years. Turns out, Ally has no idea where she has been and what she has been doing for the last few days. She is now trying to piece together what has happened to her and why she doesn’t remember.

Review

Have You Seen Me? by Kate White started out on the right note. I like a good amnesia thriller. It started to lose me right in the very beginning though. I felt like it moved too fast; no lead up to anything. We were just thrown in to the story and I thought I missed something.

This also felt like several stories in one. Storylines were just coming out of left field and it really made no sense. I feel like some of them could have been left out and we would have missed nothing from the actual story. I know thrillers like to throw out red herrings, but it felt like this author was just reaching for something and it became too far fetched.

It was a fast read, the audiobook made it go even quicker. But had I not been listening to it, I would have DNFed it. If I am being very honest, this felt like a debut novel and not something from a NY Times Best Selling author. It just felt very amateur; characters weren’t really developed (they were very much one note in fact), the dialogue was cringeworthy and then the ending was just so out there that it both made sense and made absolute no sense at all.

Overall, this was just a hard miss for me. There are better psychological thrillers at there.

2 Stars

Tags audiobooks, book blog, Book Review, bookish

audiobooks book blog

Audiobooks to Check Out

Last week I did a post detailing how I got into audiobooks. This week, I want to share with you some of my favorite audiobooks I have ever listened to. I hope you are as excited as I am.

The Century Trilogy – – Ken Follett

It is no secret that I adore Historical Fiction; and I especially love what I have read from Ken Follett so far. If you have some time to put into an audiobook, I would highly recommend you listen to The Century Trilogy, starting with Fall of Giants. These books are lengthy, running around 35-40 hours on audio, but they are so good. The narrator does such a fantastic job at voicing all the characters. In this series, we are following families from many different countries so you are introduced to many different accents and the narrator does a wonderful job at them. There is no confusion when it comes to figuring out who the characters are. This is definitely a series you want to read in order because you are following the same cast of families throughout. If you enjoy Historical Fiction, and haven’t read this series, I highly recommend you pick it up.

Caraval Series – – Stephanie Garber

Keeping with series, I really enjoyed the Caraval series, starting with Caraval. I picked up the first book on a whim and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Admittedly, I am not the biggest reader of YA and Fantasy but I blew through all three books. The were super fast paced and fun. I will say, the first book was my favorite of the series, but as we are talking about audiobook quality, I think they were fantastically done.

Anything by Karin Slaughter

I have listened to Pretty Girls, The Good Daughter, most of the Will Trent Series and all but one of the Grant County Series and I absolutely freaking love all of these, especially on audio. They are done so well and they keep you engaged and you blow through them so quickly because you don’t want to stop listening. I am such a fan girl for anything Karin Slaughter writes, but if I have the chance to listen to the audiobook version, I do. I think it just gives you a whole different experience than reading them in print.

The Bill Hodges Trilogy – – Stephen King

I really love my series on audiobooks and this is no exception. Mr. Mercedes is the first book in this series. I am pretty sure I started this in print and switched over to audio, and finished out the series in audio; it was so good. I just really loved the narrator for these and was completely engaged the whole time. Stephen King is hit or miss for me, and I find if I choose to read his books via audiobook, I tend to enjoy them more. I also listened to The Outsider and that was great too. I believe it is the same narrator for both the series and the stand alone book.

What are your favorite audiobooks? Drop your recommendations below!

Tags audiobooks, book blog, books, bookshelf, recommenced

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Let’s Talk Audiobooks

My love for audiobooks has only grown in the last few years. It is hard to believe that I only started utilizing this format a few years ago, considering it is how I do majority of my reading nowadays. That wasn’t always the case. I was very much intimidated by them. I thought there would be no way that I could retain what I was listening to. Not surprisingly, I was wrong.

The very first audiobook I listened to was The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith. (I will not be going into anymore detail with this series or author in light of the very cruel and insensitive things J.K Rowling has said in the past few weeks). Mystery/Thrillers are my favorite genre and I figured if anything was going to keep my attention, it was this genre. And I was right. At this point, it would take me almost a solid month to listen to a long audiobook, or any audiobook in general. I was listening to it at 1.0x speed and only when I was on the treadmill and maybe in the car. It was a slow moving process. But I enjoyed the experience and wanted to try out some more.

I started to venture into nonfiction and short story collections for my next stop in audiobooks. If for some reason, I zoned out, I didn’t miss a whole lot and could get back into the story without feeling lost. By this point I had also gotten into podcasts so it was becoming normal for me to listen to both of these in the car and on walks with my dog. I also learned you could adjust the speed at which you listen to an audiobook. I slowly started to creep up to 1.25x and 1.5x speed, allowing me to listen to a full book in less time. That was a game changer.

Here we are 2ish years later and majority of my reading is done via audiobooks. I always have an audiobook downloaded to my phone. I don’t watch a lot of TV so when I am cleaning, cooking, playing Animal Crossing, I am listening to an audiobook. In a good reading month, I can go through 2-3 audiobooks a week, listening on 2x speed. And to be honest, some books are just better on audio; you get so much more out of it.

If you are like me, and find audiobooks intimidating, just try them. There are so many free platforms to download them from. My main source is Hoopla. And then I use Libby and borrow from my local library system. I have had a subscription to Scribd, but to be honest, it wasn’t worth it to me to keep it. If there is an audiobook that I absolutely want to listen to and it is on Scribd, I may join for a month, but most things are available to me free elsewhere.

Clearly, I love audiobooks. And I do have my favorites.

Stay tuned to find out what they are. That post will be up Friday!

Are you an audiobook listener? Do you still consider it reading? (I do!)

Tags audiobooks, book blog, book shelf, book talk