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Greetings! I'm the author of four novels and five books of short stories, including this latest offering -- an audio book -- because to me there's little better than telling a story. I blog a lot at www.jesswells.com and have a soft spot in my heart for northern Michigan.
Reviewed by Sefina Hawke for Readers' Favorite
The Disappearing Andersons of Loon Lake, written and narrated by Jess Wells, is a two-hour short story collection audio book that would appeal most to a mixed audience of young adults and adults who enjoy short stories that all share a common setting and a mix of different themes and characters. The audio book is made up of eight short stories which are: Letters from the Land of Plenty, The Witness, The Disappearing Andersons, Soulmates, Dinner with Dad, The Roses, The Last Excursion, and Monopoly. Each short story is about a different family that lives around an area in Northern Michigan called Loon Lake.
The Disappearing Andersons of Loon Lake by Jess Wells is a well written and produced audio book. I loved how the author managed to truly capture the feelings different people might have living in a small community. Each of the characters felt like real people instead of fictional characters, which made me wonder if the author had based some of them on real people, or if the stories themselves were inspired by true events. The author’s use of figurative language throughout the stories was beautifully chosen in order to evoke real emotions and to allow me to picture the events in my mind as they unfolded. Overall, I felt like the audio book was an emotional roller coaster with how each story provoked different emotions from me.
The author, Jess Wells, performed the narration of The Disappearing Andersons of Loon Lake with remarkable talent. Often authors fail at successfully narrating their own books as they narrate more for themselves than for their audience, but that was not the case with this audio book. Jess Wells might be new to audio book narration, but I would never have been able to tell from her performance as she truly succeeded in making the words come alive for me. I hope to hear her narrate more of her books, or books written by other authors in the future, as she truly knows how to use her voice to draw the listener deeper into the story with every word she speaks!
