Anyone but Her

By: Cynthia Swanson

Narrated by: Jennifer Pickens

Knowledge has a price . . .

It's 1979, and fourteen-year-old Suzanne, who should be enjoying her first year at Denver East High, is instead reckoning with the aftermath of her mother Alex's shooting death during a robbery at Alex's store, Zoe's Records. A clairvoyant since childhood, Suzanne is unsurprised when Alex's ghost appears. But when Alex raises alarm bells about Suzanne's father's new girlfriend, what Suzanne can't foresee is the lifelong repercussions as she heeds Alex's warning.

In 2004, Suzanne returns to Denver with her husband and their two children, a defiant teenage daughter and a nine-year-old son with unspecified cognitive disabilities. When the opportunity arises to rent the old Zoe's Records space and turn it into a gallery, Suzanne jumps at the chance. While ecstatic to honor Alex's legacy, Suzanne nonetheless can't shake the sensation that she's being watched—while at the same time tackling a clandestine investigation of her own, searching for genetic clues into her family's hidden past that might lead to a diagnosis for her son.

What if she knows too little? What if she discovers too much?

©2024 Cynthia Swanson (P)2024 Tantor Media

Authenticity of Mother/Teen Daughter Relationships

Swanson carefully wove a tapestry of alternating time periods in the life of the protagonist. Each time period explored the character’s parallel challenges and flaws in the context of the mother daughter relationship.

There were times I got a little lost with all the extra characters (e.g., Laura/Rosalee, dad/son criminals, Renee/Donna); but it was a minor distraction.

The dialogue was superb; it had substance and flowed like a real conversation every time—especially the Mother/Daughter conflict. I especially appreciated the contrast of how love and compassion beats mistrust and cynicism every time.

It’s rare that a book so grips me that my emotions become involved. Swanson managed to gather up all my motherhood regrets and fears and shake me like a dog playing with a toy. I didn’t notice I was crying until I wiped the tears away.

I appreciated the accurate descriptions of Denver during the 70s (both culturally and spatially) juxtaposed with growing issues in the early 2000s.

The narrator brilliantly combined all the nuances of voice, intonation, pause, etc., to tease out Swanson’s skillfully crafted imagery of the complexities of mother/daughter and family relationships.

A captivating story made even better by superb narration.

not bad

The story was decent. For a Denver native, it was nice reading about local stuff. But the narrator was awful. Flat voice and lispy.

Thrilling! Unexpected! Unforgettable!

Wow! What an experience. Unforgettable. Suzanne, "Susie-Blue”, that's her mother's, "Mom-Not-Mom", pet name for her, is tough, somewhat-broken, unique. Her searching, parsed into two threads, roughly in 1979 and 2004, sucked me right in. Yes, there's a murder. No, this does not open like your standard murder mystery, nor does it progress through the (yawn) three-act plot. There's romance, but not what you expect. The daughter of a vivacious, LP-music-loving mother, Suzanne follows her own path, and it involves things perhaps best left unseen, and knives, many knives. She made them herself. Suzanne walks a lot. She moves back and forth through Denver's Colfax Avenue, stores, neighborhoods, Cheesman Park, built on top of an old cemetery. (Shiver!) And the music! It weaves in and out of the story, is practically a character itself. Suzanne is special, as are other family members, in good ways, and in not-so-good ways. She digs into violent adoption secrets, her young son’s bizarre behavior, a heart-rending disappearance, and the murder. You won't believe how it ends. Prepare to put your life on hold until you finish the book. Or in my case, spend nine-plus hours of the weekend on house chores and wearing earbuds as an excuse to keep the Audible version going.