#tanafrench – Rosepoint Publishing

The Final Target, The Keeper, Yesteryear, Buckeye—Audiobook Mini-Reviews -–#HistorialFiction #Suspense #TuesdayBookBlog

Four short reviews of audiobooks on one page; short, sweet, and that hopefully will pique your interest. (Links on individual covers are to Amazon.)

Quite the variety of genres in the books below as well as authors but all unique and recommendable! Give a peek into each.

Take a peek!

The Final Target by Nora Roberts
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Narrator: January LaVoy

Arden is a successful debut author being stalked by a wannabe. Or is it worse than that? Dustin is totally obsessed. Following an assault, he is sent away but absence only appears to make his heart angrier and more determined. He’ll find her wherever she went.

Arden is a strong, independent character and meets Gideon in her new location. They form a loving, relaxed relationship that doesn’t overpower the suspense dwelling in the background.

Including Dustin’s POV provides a sense of tension and desperation. Of course, he feels he is intellectually superior and has everything planned out. She’ll be his to do as he bids.

It’s a suspense thriller that’ll be hard for you to put down. Of course, I’ve long been a Nora Roberts fan. You too?

Suspense fans? Thriller fans? It doesn’t get much more thrillerish than this one. Totally recommended.

The Keeper by Tana French
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Narrator: Roger Clark

This is the third book in the Cal Hooper trilogy (read #2, The Hunter back in 2024 and The Searcher before that). If you read Tana French, you know her books can tend to get…lengthy. That is because she loves to write long-winded Guinness-driven discussions by the good ole boys in the local pub. I’ve said before, she might be a master of thrillers, but she is definitely a mistress of dialogue. I listen to the audiobooks to get that Irish flavor and obviously I can listen to it for quite some time.

As with the first and second, this tale is wholly atmospheric. You can live between these pages, lost in the characters. Even if you didn’t start with the first installment, these characters will grow on you. Well, maybe not everyone, but I learned to love them all and watched with interest the growth and maturity of Trey. Cal Hooper is the ex-Chicago PD detective well out of his element but thrust into the center of Ardnakelty business anyway.

This time, young, soon-to-be-engaged Rachel Holohan goes missing and turns up in the river. Dead.

The gossip runs rampant. The whole village in arms and divisive in theory. Deeply descriptive prose has you feeling the chill of the fog, the collision of sentiments. Such an immersive story and sad to see the end to this series. If you haven’t read it yet—yeah—it’s long but delightfully easy listening.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
Publisher: Random House Audio
Narrator: Rebecca Lowman

A debut novel that sparked a lot of controversy over whether it was meant to be a satire–or not. What you thought you were getting, you weren’t. I was interested in the premise, not really a new one, but definitely deceived.

Natalie has created a lifestyle and made herself a controversial influencer by adopting a “traditional” family, living the good life. But it’s a front and a front she detests. That includes the kids (all six of them), her husband, the whole scene, her eight million followers (particularly “the angry women.” If only they could see behind the scenes. That kitchen? A front. All those homecooked meals? Yeah, she has a cook, nanny for the kids, and the farm is not particularly idyllic either.

It’s okay if she doesn’t like anyone. The reader doesn’t like her either. She’s nasty and whiny.

So does she get her comeuppance when she wakes up in 1855 to an old farmhouse where the bathroom is a hike outside, the kids are dirty and she must (gasp!) care for them, her husband is exhausted and worn and never was exciting in bed. She has to cook on what? Wash clothes in a wash tub? Are you kidding?!!

Well, this could have been a real lesson in contradiction: a culturally, politically, morally flawed individual. She created this version of herself. Can’t she also change it? End it? Is she trapped in 1855, a victim of herself?

I found it a difficult and long audiobook, easily distractible. Maybe I’m just too tired or too short on time to dig for the deeper meanings. You may love it; it’s rather cerebral.

Buckeye by Patrick Ryan
Publisher: Random House Audio
Narrator: Michael Crouch

The novel spans several decades and generations and focuses on Cal Jenkins and Margaret Salt. The sympathy all goes to Cal, the empathy to Margaret. And yes, the novel a long one. I actually started this one once before and lost the loan before I could finish it. On a wait list, took a while to come back around.

WWII only highlighted Cal’s childhood deformity, denying him participation in the fight when all the others left. He marries Becky, who practices her gift as a spiritual medium, which annoys Cal and drives a wedge between them.

Margaret was abandoned to an orphanage and her early life consisted of foster placements until she got to an age where she struck out on her own and discovered how cruel the world really could be. She eventually marries a gay man who finds the love of his life. It isn’t her.

These two flawed main characters find each other in a novel of multiple themes, including love and loyalty. While it paints a transparent picture of post-war middle America, written in beautiful emotional prose, I found it incredibly sad. Four lifetimes, the sacrifice, and the loss.

A literary hangover with these four characters, their decisions, obligations, strengths, and weaknesses in a look back during a historically turbulent time. You may enjoy the authenticity and the major events noted during the decades, but this one didn’t provide sufficient grief relief for me.

The first three of these books were released during the second quarter of this year all receiving acclaim. Buckeye achieved a Goodreads Choice Award as a Nominee for Readers’ Favorite Historical Fiction in 2025.

Many thanks to my local library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to these audiobooks. Any opinion expressed here is my own.

Audiobooks

The Hunter by Tana French – #AudiobookReview – #ReadingIrelandMonth24

Cal Hooper #2

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Literary Fiction

Book Blurb:

An Instant New York Times Bestseller

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by the Washington Post, TIME Magazine, BBC, TODAY, Elle, CrimeReads, and more

“Hailed as the queen of Irish crime fiction, French spins a taut tale of retribution, sacrifice, and family.”—TIME

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Searcher and “one of the greatest crime novelists writing today” (Vox), a spellbinding new novel set in the Irish countryside.

It’s a blazing summer when two men arrive in a small village in the West of Ireland. One of them is coming home. Both of them are coming to get rich. One of them is coming to die.

Cal Hooper took early retirement from Chicago PD and moved to rural Ireland looking for peace. He’s found it, more or less: he’s built a relationship with a local woman, Lena, and he’s gradually turning Trey Reddy from a half-feral teenager into a good kid going good places. But then Trey’s long-absent father reappears, bringing along an English millionaire and a scheme to find gold in the townland, and suddenly everything the three of them have been building is under threat. Cal and Lena are both ready to do whatever it takes to protect Trey, but Trey doesn’t want protecting. What she wants is revenge.

From the writer who is “in a class by herself,” (The New York Times), a nuanced, atmospheric tale that explores what we’ll do for our loved ones, what we’ll do for revenge, and what we sacrifice when the two collide.

My Review:

The good ole boys are back and more than happy to render opinions, considered or not—in their own way and in their own time. Book 2 picks up with Cal and Trey as main characters, Cal still struggling with his transition from retired Chicago cop to rural village in the west of Ireland.

Trey, the teen, is still exhibiting all the anti-social, rebelliousness as before, worsening when her absentee dad reappears with an English millionaire. Trey sets her venomous eyes on revenge and proceeds to set in motion an action that, combined with a tale of gold in them thar hills, sets the village into a frenzy of conflict.

I hope the narrator gets paid by the word cause this is a long one. Probably much too long, though in all honesty, I must confess to listening to hours of spirited brogue-studded pub discussions partly just to hear the unique Irish vocabulary amid lilting sounds.

“They are not dishonest men, or anyway not what they or Trey would consider dishonest, not one of them would ever so much rob a package of mints from Noreen’s and between any of them a spit and a handshake would be as solid as a legal contract…(but) an Englishman wanting to reap from their land falls under different rules.”

In fact, most of the book is filled with dialogue and if the author is a master of thrillers, she might also be considered the mistress of dialogue. Like a senior who wanders from one subject to another, it just keeps going while gaining very little in advancement of the plot.

As the plot begins to reveal the sub-plot…wait: Is the main plot Johnny coming home and Trey taking umbrage or the supposed possibility of gold? And then, the discovery of the body. Hooboy! Now Cal gets to shine, if somewhat in the background as this would appear all Trey’s episode.

I enjoyed Cal’s part in mentoring Trey in The Searcher and appreciate he’s out of his jurisdiction, but this is where the well-plotted (if overly long) storyline begins to add a few subtle twists.

Still, those long-winded, beer-driven lively and animated discussions in the pub between all those ole boys deciding whether or not to throw in money to look for gold offered a number of humorous breaks from the more serious Trey foreground leg of the plot.

Wholly atmospheric, character-driven tale of Irish proportions. If you like to ferret out the culprit, it may not be real difficult for you, or maybe I wasn’t paying attention, but I was caught by this one. There were only so many it could have been but had my money on someone else.

I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.

Rosepoint Publishing: Three Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Police Procedurals, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Literary Fiction, Suspense
Publisher: Penguin Audio
ISBN: ‎ 0593493435
ASIN: B0C7729CF8
Listening Length: 16 hrs 24 mins
Narrator: Roger Clark
Publication Date: March 5, 2024
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)
Title Link: The Hunter [Amazon-US]
Amazon-UK
Barnes & Noble
Kobo

Add to Goodreads

The Author: Tana French is the author of In the Woods, The Likeness, Faithful Place, Broken Harbor, The Secret Place, and The Trespasser. Her books have won awards including the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards, the Los Angeles Times Award for Best Mystery/Thriller, and the Irish Book Award for Crime Fiction. She lives in Dublin with her family.