Narrator Soneela Nankani runs the field in this timely sports romance. Elliot Reed, strategic communications director for the Denver Mustangs, addresses the public relations challenge caused when Black quarterback Quinton Howard, Jr., takes a knee before games. In her throaty voice, Nankani depicts Elliot's struggles as a biracial employee who must deal with the white male team owner's workplace behavior. Nankani's emphasis on certain phrases, both in dialogue and in Elliot's thoughts, creates humor and frustration with equal fluency. Other characters, including Elliot's female friends, are slightly differentiated in conversation. Quinton's speech stays in a narrow pitch range that fits his warm yet restrained manner. Narrator Cary Hite delivers the prologue, which tells the story of Quinton's first protest. Nankani's narration, powerful and focused, ensures that this audiobook works well as a stand-alone.
Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
Duration: 11 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9780593291375
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
After her divorce, Roberta Jewett, with her three daughters, returns to Camden, Maine, to start a new life. Such an independent move in 1916 brings difficulties with her mother, her in-laws and the townspeople. Dukes's performance, while skillful, sometimes suffer in scenes of emotional content. His pace slows, and his reading acquires the peculiar emphasis of someone trying to get instructions across to a non-English-speaking person. The effect is disturbingly laughable. When he resumes his normal pace, the story revives and personalities emerge again, but the awkwardness remains as an odd interruption to Spencer's drama of pain and love, dispelling Dukes's carefully constructed characterizations.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: 3 hrs
Publisher: Dove
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
A young Southern woman marries into an aristocratic Boston family and spends her summers at a vacation community on the Maine coast. Heavy-handed abridgment reduces this novel to an outline which denies the listener any character development. Judith Ivey offers stereotypical dialects which are discordant to a New Englander's ear. In her interpretation the Down East Mainers speak like thugs in raspy voices. Her presentation of a Boston accent is phonetically erratic and also spoken in gruff tones. The color and flavor of Maine are missing from this tasteless rendition.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: 3 hrs
Publisher: Harper Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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