Next Stop, Chancey (Chancey #1) by Kay Dew Shostak Narrator: Suzanne Barbetta
Series: Chancey #1
Published by Kay Dew Shostak on December 22nd 2016
Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Fiction
Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
Format: Audiobook
Source: Audiobookworm
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Overal Rating:
Looking in your teenage daughters’ purse is never a good idea. After all, it ended up with Carolina Jessup opening a Bed & Breakfast for railroad fanatics in a tiny Georgia Mountain town. Carolina knows all about, and hates, small towns. How did she end up leaving her wonderful Atlanta suburbs behind while making her husband’s dreams come true? The town bully (who wears a lavender skirt and white gloves), an endless parade of teenagers through her house, and everybody's talk about a ghost have Carolina looking for an escape, or at least a way to move back home. Instead, she''s front and center for all of Chancey's small town gossip. Unlike back home in the suburbs with privacy fences and automatic garage doors, everybody in Chancey thinks your business is their business and they all love the newest Chancey business. The B&B hosts a Senate candidate, a tea for the County Fair Beauty contestants, and railroad nuts who sit out by the tracks and record the sound of a train going by. Yet, nobody believes Carolina prefers the ‘burbs. Oh, yeah, and if you just ignore a ghost, will it go away?
Carolina Jessup moved along with her family to the little town of Chancey, after a short visit with Jackson, her husband, some months before. Jackson immediately felt in love with the town due, and especially, one of the houses, since from it there is a great view of the railroad, where many trains pass everyday. Leaving the suburbs of Atlanta behind, Carolina’s family will try to start over in Chancey, where people will try to convince her to open a bed & breakfast.
I had great expectations about this book. Not that I expected any kind of fireworks but at least that I could relate to Caroline’s experiences. Sadly the story got lost somewhere between long descriptions and meaningless details. It seemed to drag forever and it was mostly bland.
I found the characters two dimensional and I was not able to connect to them. I got a bit annoyed at how Caroline let everyone in town dictate what she should do. At the same time, I missed some charismatic characters, key to this kind of novels. Another reason for this book to not really work for me.
There was a supposed ghost in the house. I think this was the main issue that could motivate readers to finish this book, but honestly it did not really engage me at any time.
Suzanne Barbetta did a good job narrating this book and interpreting characters, with a decent voice range and good interpretation skills. I noticed some mouth noises though, that distracted me a bit from the story.
I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by Suzanne Barbetta. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.
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My name is Elena. Since I was a little child I loved science fiction and fantasy, and I can’t resist a good novel. In 2015, while wait I started to listen to audiobooks and I discovered the pleasure in being able to read while doing my daily tasks, so there’s always an audiobook playing on my phone. If you see me with my Bluetooth headphones on, please be gentle, I get easily startled.
I live with my boyfriend, which I met during my six-year stay in Belgium, four cockatiels, eight lovebirds, and a hamster in Madrid, Spain; and I like to spend my free time knitting and sewing while listening to audiobooks.
