Zim Avaltrades narrates from the perspective of 26-year-old soccer veteran Grace Henderson, and Dana Varden portrays 22-year-old rookie Phoebe Matthews. Henderson and Matthews find themselves playing for the same team, in more ways than one. While jokester Phoebe is hoping to score on and off the field with her childhood icon, secretive Grace is busy hiding her hip injury and her feelings for Phoebe. Avaltrades captures Grace's ice queen persona. Avaltrades's portrayal of Phoebe matches the same boisterous quality used by her co-narrator, whose energetic delivery fits Phoebe's extroverted temperament. Both are more conversational than sexy during love scenes, and patches of Varden's audio lack continuity in volume and tone.
Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
Duration: 10 hrs, 45 mins
DD ISBN: 9781250292896
Publisher: Macmillan 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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