Showing posts with label john pirhalla. Show all posts
Showing posts with label john pirhalla. Show all posts

Friday, October 11, 2024

Audiobook Review: The Last One at the Wedding by Jason Rekulak

 

The Last One at the Wedding by Jason Rekulak
Publication Date: October 8th 2024 by Macmillan Audio
Pages: 352
Audio Book Length: 11hrs 14min
Narrator: John Pirhalla
Source: Publisher
Rating: ½

My Thoughts:
From the surface it seems like Frank’s daughter, Maggie, is marrying into a fairytale. Her fiancĂ©, Aiden Gardner, is the son of a famous billionaire, and she says she’s in love, but as the date grows closer Frank the more things unsettle him. Frank finds out something troubling about Aiden’s recent dating past.  Maggie brushes things off. Things get stranger when Frank gets to Osprey Cove, a sprawling forest estate with cabins and a private lake. The luxuries are astounding, and the security raises questions. Not even his sister Tammy and her foster daughter, Abigail, who’ve tagged along, can put him at ease.
 
Told in first person from Frank’s perspective, you feel a growing unease as Maggie’s nuptials draw close, but at every turn there’s a convenient explanation. Maggie doesn’t seem keen to make time for her father. I was not thrilled with a lot of the characters.
 
The Last One at the Wedding was entertaining and held my attention, but it was an odd mystery. Reactions didn’t make sense to me. There’s a surprise twist that turned everything around.  The story makes you question: what would you do to protect your child? It seems Frank would do a lot.
 
I listened to an audio copy, and I thought John Pirhalla captured Frank’s everyday guy, protective dad persona wonderfully, but he did a great job with all the characters male and female and a variety of accents. He definitely enhanced my enjoyment of the story!

3.5 Stars


Book Description:

From the bestselling author of Hidden Pictures comes a breathtaking work of suspense about a father trying to save his daughter from a life-altering decision that will put everything he loves on the line.

Frank Szatowski is shocked when his daughter, Maggie, calls him for the first time in three years. He was convinced that their estrangement would become permanent. He’s even more surprised when she invites him to her upcoming wedding in New Hampshire. Frank is ecstatic, and determined to finally make things right.

He arrives to find that the wedding is at a private estate—very secluded, very luxurious, very much out of his league. It seems that Maggie failed to mention that she’s marrying Aidan Gardner, the son of a famous tech billionaire. Feeling desperately out of place, Frank focuses on reconnecting with Maggie and getting to know her new family. But it’s difficult: Aidan is withdrawn and evasive; Maggie doesn’t seem to have time for him; and he finds that the locals are disturbingly hostile to the Gardners. Frank needs to know more about this family his daughter is marrying into, but if he pushes too hard, he could lose Maggie forever.

An edge-of-your-seat thriller that delves deep into the heart of one family, The Last One at the Wedding is a work of brilliant suspense from a true modern master.



Saturday, January 20, 2024

Review: The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins

 


The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins
Publication Date: January 9th 2023 by St. Martins Press & Macmillan Audio
Pages: 294
Audio Book Length: 8hrs 20min
Narrator: Eliza Foss, Dan Bittner, John Pirhalla, Patti Murin
Source: Publisher & Library Audio
Rating: ½

My Thoughts:
The Heiress is my favorite Rachel Hawkins to date! Old money, a historic estate, dark secrets, a kidnapping, and four dead husbands! The story was riveting!

This twisty mystery unfolds through three POVs: Ruby “The Heiress”, Camden, Ruby’s heir to Ruby’s large fortune, and Jules, Camden’s wife. I think Ruby’s POV had to be my favorite. What happened to three-year-old Ruby when she was kidnapped? Was she that unlucky in love? Why did Camden leave, and will he now stay home and take up his position as heir to the great Ashby House? Everyone had at least one secret!

A fast-paced, glued-to-the-pages kind of read! I was eager to see how it all turned out! Of course, I was rallying for a happy ending for Cam and Jules.

I alternately read and listened to The Heiress. Dan Bitner, Eliza Foss, John Pirhalla, and Patti Murin’s performances were excellent! I listened at my usual 1.5x normal speed. I recommend either format!

4.5 Stars


Book Description:

When Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore dies, she’s not only North Carolina’s richest woman, she’s also its most notorious. The victim of a famous kidnapping as a child and a widow four times over, Ruby ruled the tiny town of Tavistock from Ashby House, her family’s estate high in the Blue Ridge mountains. In the aftermath of her death, that estate—along with a nine-figure fortune and the complicated legacy of being a McTavish—pass to her adopted son, Camden.

But to everyone’s surprise, Cam wants little to do with the house or the money—and even less to do with the surviving McTavishes. Instead, he rejects his inheritance, settling into a normal life as an English teacher in Colorado and marrying Jules, a woman just as eager to escape her own messy past.

Ten years later, Camden is a McTavish in name only, but a summons in the wake of his uncle’s death brings him and Jules back into the family fold at Ashby House. Its views are just as stunning as ever, its rooms just as elegant, but coming home reminds Cam why he was so quick to leave in the first place.

Jules, however, has other ideas, and the more she learns about Cam’s estranged family—and the twisted secrets they keep—the more determined she is for her husband to claim everything Ruby once intended for him to have.

But Ruby’s plans were always more complicated than they appeared. As Ashby House tightens its grip on Jules and Camden, questions about the infamous heiress come to light. Was there any truth to the persistent rumors following her disappearance as a girl? What really happened to those four husbands, who all died under mysterious circumstances? And why did she adopt Cam in the first place? Soon, Jules and Cam realize that an inheritance can entail far more than what’s written in a will—and that the bonds of family stretch far beyond the grave.