Mrs. S. J. Caldwell

Thin plot for me

Reviewed: 07-01-25

Great descriptive writing and builds up the tension … but there’s not actually a lot happening in the plot for me

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Interesting stories well woven to the end

Reviewed: 22-12-24

The stories were well balanced and paced throughout, interesting characters. I found it an interesting and enjoyable listen.

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Neat ….

Reviewed: 19-04-24

Amusing, lyrical, beautifully sad, lovely descriptive focus on relationships …. Of course very rose tinted romantic view of some difficult parts of life when you need an escape from gritty writing. Narration was really excellent, really enhanced the emotion in the writing.

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Excellent narration

Reviewed: 21-02-24

The narrator really brought the story to life and handled multiple different accents brilliantly.
I really had to focus to work out who was who sometimes which would have been easier had a read the written copy,
Novel storytelling of Sri Lankan modern history and I thought the ending well crafted.

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Interesting, amusing and clever twists

Reviewed: 19-01-24

Really interesting story that developed at a good pace, placed in a very believable near future. Both thought provoking and entertaining.

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Unnecessarily sexually explicit

Reviewed: 24-11-23

Could have been good - combination of Hunger Games, Divergent ,Harry Potter and How to Train Your Dragon. I would have recommended it as a brilliant story for age 11 upwards. (WARNING do not let kids read it)
But then endless focus on female lust means it felt like it was targeted at women not young male readers.
And then it got really explicit - lengthy descriptions of sex and then ongoing banter about sex and longing that just continued throughout to the extent I skipped forward some bits.
For me it detracted from the story rather than enhanced it and made me wonder who the target market for the book is.
Hopefully someone will make it into a great movie full of YA emotion and adventure but without the need to be explicit.

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Good concept but needs more work. Very disappointing

Reviewed: 09-11-23

This is a good concept but poorly researched and too inconsistent so becomes annoying rather than thought provoking or enjoyable.
Mostly written in a near future that feels more like some cosy image of England in the 1950s….. even today no one at Oxbridge wears gowns to lectures. No one is teased for being an IVF birth.
Mix of English and American terms so not sure who the author was trying to please. The only attempt to position this in the future was by constant reference to noone eating meat any more (until the end when there were still lots of sheep in the Highlands, and haggis and black pudding) and no one owning cars. Then some basics - Tulisa arrives in London off a flight from New York, join the family for a late dinner, and things about everyone still asleep back in New York. Later she tells the car to go to the airport but two sentences later is in fact on her way to see her friend in London.
Needs a lot of work to make it work. Disappointed.
Narration was fine, decent accents to distinguish characters, sounded like she was reading a text book clearly at some points and stalled in the middle of some sentences.

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A traditional tale

Reviewed: 02-11-23

A classic tale of good and evil - child with ‘wicked’ step mother journeying through a serious of challenges with various beasts and temptations, making friends and learning along the way to come to a full conclusion. I would have said it was more suited to YA apart from some of the dark themes around the baddie towards the end (won’t spoil the plot). Cleverly weaves in classic stories along the way. So a good neat story.
Narrator was good, deployed different accents for the various characters very well BUT MUCH TOO SLOW. After about 4 minutes in I switched it onto faster speed, something I have never done before, and listened to the whole thing at 1.3 x speed.

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Thoroughly enjoyable

Reviewed: 13-10-23

Includes characters and backstories hinted at in the Slough House series. Similar style, momentum, dry humour, narration, and spy craft storytelling just focused away from the Slow Horses.

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I liked it! Unique.

Reviewed: 27-09-23

A great story with lots of threads expertly brought together. I liked its uniqueness and the tone reminded me of ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ type humour - this would equally make a good movie.
It does have a lot of characters, all with backstories and essential parts to play, and so this makes it a challenging audiobook. I did have to rewind a couple of times to remind myself who was featured in the dialogue. But I think the narrator does a brilliant job of trying to give every character a different accent and personality.
Keep going! Is my recommendation.

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1 person found this helpful