mystery
Invisible Girl covers a few years of the lives of a couple with marital issues, a teenager obsessed with her
psychologist, and a creepy neighbor in their British town. It is told from three different
viewpoints of these characters. When the teen disappears, the main mystery revolves
around finding her.
Sadly, these characters are not likeable. They are insecure,
flawed, and suspicious. I’m never going to love a book when I can’t appreciate
any of the characters. The story itself did pull me in, though. There were
enough questionable activities and mindsets to gain my curiosity.
In the first half, it was apparent that
they were all guilty of something. Then, halfway through, the teen’s disappearance takes over as the big question. Lisa Jewell did a good
job making the reader suspect many possibilities around her disappearance. It was engaging but not as good as the
other novel I read by Jewell, The Family Upstairs.
The audiobook was narrated by three different people—one for
each of the viewpoints. Unfortunately, one of them, Katherine Kelly, had
poor sound production compared to the other two (Donna Banya and Connor Swindells). If she had been the only
narrator, I suspect I would have gotten used to it and it wouldn’t have stood out as much. However, her sections sounded like
they were recorded in a big hollow room. It was disturbing enough that I almost
returned the audiobook to the library to wait to get the actual book. I
persevered but it was uncomfortable and distracting at times. For a well-known,
successful author and a respected audiobook publisher (Simon & Schuster
Audio), I was shocked that they actually let this get out into the world with
such poor sound quality for her sections. I’d recommend
skipping this audiobook! Aside from the
sound issues, the narrators did a fine job with voice acting. Kelly actually had the best voice repertoire.
I’ll give them a B+ as an ensemble. I would have given Kelly a higher grade but
her sound production was too noticeably sub-par.
No comments:
Post a Comment