Mara Wilson and Emil Benjamin narrate a second-chance romance. Hannah Rosenstein and Levi Matthews were each other's first love and first heartbreak. After five years apart, can they rekindle their relationship? Wilson captures Hannah's anxieties over her job, her life, her relationship with Levi--anxiety about everything, really--but never lets it overwhelm Hannah as a person. Benjamin portrays Levi as prickly and complicated but allows his humanity to shine through. Levi may be difficult and annoying, but Benjamin always makes it clear why. Wilson and Benjamin clearly show Hannah and Levi's affection for their friends and family, deep connection to their shared faith, and eventual compassion for themselves.
Pub Date: Nov. 28, 2023
Duration: 9 hrs, 45 mins
DD ISBN: 9781668632116
Publisher: Hachette 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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