Author: Rebecca James
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Rating: WARTY!
Read by Justine Eyre, whose voice was way too mature for the story.
In hospital abbreviations, "BM" typically means 'bowel movement' and that's pretty much what this story was. 'BM' can also mean 'bone marrow', but there was nothing as vital as that to be found here.
It was in first person PoV which is typically a disaster to begin with. Why writers blindly cling to this format is as big of a mystery as it is an irritation. Once in a while an author can bring it off, but that's a blessed rarity in my experience.
The audio book reader's voice sounded far too mature to be credible. Yes. I know this is a reminiscence from several years after the fact, when the character is a married-with-child college grad, but the reader sounds more like someone recalling this from a retirement home, which would have been fine had the story called for it, but it was a voice which simply didn't fit here.
The volume on the audio CD was so low that every time I ejected one to replace it, the underlying radio channel blared jarringly if I forgot to turn the volume down beforehand. Why audio book makers do this is a complete mystery, but this is one of many such disks I've suffered.
And why do they feel the need to add music to the CD? Seriously? Was there music in the original book? I doubt it! Did the author compose the music? No! Is the music anything - anything whatsoever - to do with the story? Not remotely. So why? Just tell the friggin' story. That's why we got the audio book. If we want music we'll got to iTunes.... There's no rational explanation for this. The closest I can get is that audio book makers can't get their heads out of their asses and they're stuck in a rut thinking: Ah! CD = music or something must be wrong.
The story is ostensibly about the "friendship" that develops between the main character, Katherine, and Alice, someone whom Katherine would not have imagined would have wanted to befriend her. The conceit is that this friendship is so fascinating, so burdened with secrets and reveals, so full of subversion, that it deserves a novel, but the truth is that this story is one of the most tedious and boring novels I've ever had the misfortune to encounter.
The story is the same old done-to-death 'evil best friend' story. I hoped for something better, but there was nothing new or entertaining here at all. Most of the story was comprised of rambling digressions which had far more to do with conspicuous consumption than ever it did with moving the story forwards.
The narrator has a deep dark secret of which we're reminded with metronomic frequency. This immediately told me it would be a completely mundane trope, and I lost all interest in it. I got through about 30% of the story and couldn't stand it any more. There's nothing to see here - and nothing worth listening to, either.
