November Audiobooks

I "only" read 5 books in November but that's because there was a holiday and The Follett book was over 21 hours. Also the last book I started is over 30 hours so that one won't be done for a few more days. The best part about reading this month is that none were duds. I enjoyed all of them. 

What good books do you have to recommend this month!
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Florence Adler Swims Forever
By Rachel Beanland, Read by a cast

I read another book by this author a few months ago. This House is on Fire was about a 1811 theater fire in Richmond Va. I really enjoyed that book and I'm sure that's what sparked me to get this one.

This book was promoted as a "perfect summer read" and that was clearly by people who had never read it. The cover makes it look like a good, light-hearted summer read. It's a good book but it's not what I'd put on a light summer reading list. It's covers several serious topics including death, grieving, anti-Semitism and Nazi Germany.

It's 1934 in Atlantic City, NJ and Esther and Joseph Adler run a bakery in the seaside resort. They are hosting a young woman who is trying to escape Hitler's Germany.  Their older daughter, Fannie is married and is in hospital on permanent bed rest due to a high-risk pregnancy. Their younger, 19 year old daughter, Florence, is training to swim the English Channel. During one of her training sessions in the ocean she dies. Ester makes the decision to keep the information from Fannie until the baby is born.

It's a serious novel covering a lot of serious topics and the consequences of decisions made. I didn't enjoy it as much as This House Is On Fire but it was a good read. My biggest complaint is that it's long in the middle and the ending wraps up a little too quickly and conveniently.

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The Survivors
By Jane Harper, Read By Stephen Shanahan

This is the 5th Harper book that I've read. Some I love (The Dry) and some are just OK. This one is in the OK category.

Kieran Elliott has returned home to his quiet seaside hometown in Australia with his girlfriend and new baby. His parents are preparing to move as his father has dementia. He avoids coming home since his brother, Finn, died trying to save Kiernan from drowning during a storm.

He's reconnecting with old friends when, one night, the body of a woman is found on the beach. She was in the town for the summer doing research for her art degree. As the investigation into the death gears up, many wounds are reopened from the summer when Finn and 2 others died.

The premise is interesting but I found the telling to be slow and the characters not all that interesting. I kept reading just to get to the end. I'd recommend a couple of her other books (The Dry, Exiles and The Lost Men) over this one.

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The Armor of Light
By Ken Follett, Read By John Lee

This is the 5th book in the Kingsbridge series. If you like Follett and the Kingsbridge series I don't need to sell you on book 5. The Pillars of the Earth was one of the earliest historical fiction books I read and I've enjoyed ever book in the series. Actually I've enjoyed all of Follett's books.

Kingsbridge is a town with an economy based on weaving and textiles. The story opens in 1770 when the spinning jenny was invented and it threatens to put a lot of wool and cotton spinners out of work. The story follows the fortunes and tragedies of people in the town through the period of the Napoleonic wars.

If you've not read Follett before, start with The Pillars of the Earth. The narration was perfect, as always with John Lee.

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Bright Young Dead
By Jessica Fellows, Read By Rachel Atkins

Last month I read the first book in this series, Mitford Murders. I enjoyed it enough to try another installment and I enjoyed this one even more.

Fellows weaves a fictional event into a real household, Mitford. Each book features one of the Mitford sisters. This one features Pamela. The main characters are a nursery maid in the house, Louise Cannon, and a young police sergeant, Guy Sullivan.  The Bright Young People were a group of young aristocrats and socialites that were the free-spirited partiers of the 1920's in London. They attended Jazz clubs, had treasure hunts and basically drank and did a lot of drugs.

At Pamela's 18th birthday party, one of the guests is pushed to his death from the top of a nearby church. A visiting ladies maid, Dulce, is immediate arrested for the murder. Dulce had also stolen some jewelry from one of the guests. Louise believe Dulce is innocent of the murder and that she was somehow forced into the theft.

Meanwhile, Guy, is investigating a shoplifting gang lead by the infamous Alice Diamond and the cases might be related.

I really didn't expect to like these books but now I'm hooked. There are six books in the series, one featuring each sister and I expect that I'll work my way through all of them.

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The Water Keeper
By Charles Martin, Read By Jonathan K. Riggs

Someone must have recommended this book to me because it's not one that I would have found on my own. 

Murphy Shepherd lives alone on an island in Florida and caretakes a church that has no parishioners. One day he pulls  a woman named Summer out of the Intercoastal Waterway and he's suddenly off on a mission to help find her daughter. The daughter, Angel, has been abducted by sex trafficers. Murphy has a lot of experience with the sex trade in Florida and knows where to start looking. Along the way he picks up a really cool labrador retriever and an ex-con named Clay. I liked the characters, I liked the pace of the story and it held my interest.

The funny thing is that I didn't realize until I sat down to write this review that this book is categorized as Christian fiction. Yes, there are characters that are Christian but that wasn't the focus of the book. Probably the most overt nod to the genre is that there aren't any hot sex scenes, Otherwise, there are fights, gun shots and lots of blood. The book reminded me of the Operation Underground Railroad organization founded by Tim Ballard. There's a movie based on Tim's life and I thought about that a lot while reading that book.

This is the first in a series of 3 books. They all deal with abduction themes so I'm not sure I'll read the others but I give this writer a thumbs up.

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