One Last Child

Tallman's Valley Detectives, Book 1

By: Anni Taylor

Narrated by: Caroline Lee

Length: 15 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

Winner, Earphones Award 2020

Five long-missing children are about to be returned.

It was summer in the mountains when five small children vanished from their nursery school picnic. The heat was stifling that day, the tinkle of an ice-cream van in the air....

Three-and-a-half years later, in the dead of winter, the children are returned to their families...one by one.

All except for Ivy - the granddaughter of Homicide Detective Kate Wakeland. The other four children say Ivy is dead.

Speculation grows that the mysterious abductor is enacting a cruel revenge plot due to a murderer that Kate put in jail years before.

Kate isn't sure what to believe. But one thing is certain - she's about to begin the battle of her life. When the children were first stolen, she was prevented from investigating the case.

But now, Kate will be relentless in uncovering the identity of the abductor and discovering what happened to Ivy.

©2020 Anni Taylor (P)2020 Podium Audio

Critic reviews

"Lee's delivery of both the narrative and the dialogue is flawless." (AudioFile Magazine)

So many showers

I enjoyed this book. The story was longer than it needed to be but still good. The narration was good but one thing that puzzled me was how the detective had to shower so much and how she had the time to do so. I will go on to the next book in the series.

Wonderful Story! Stellar Narration! Wow!

I really enjoyed this book! Their are many characters, and the narrator brings them all to life! Great mystery story! I really loved the main character, Kate.

Narrator

This narrator is just… yuck. It might just be me but her voice is annoying and she just drones on. No personality given to different characters. Love Anni Taylor books this narrator made it hard to keep listening.

Great listen

I thought the story was very good with a few surprises. I like the main character, and I really like Caroline Lee...I look for books read by her.

Fantastic!

This is one of the best books I've heard in a long time. The narration was perfect and the book was well written enough to keep me guessing the whole way through. I highly recommend it!

so sad it's finished!

terrific narration and good storyline, likeable characters, with a bait 'n switch surprise ending. worth a go.

Caroline Lee is fantastic!

I enjoyed this book. Great plot, I was intrigued until the end. Caroline Lee is an amazing narrator.

Fabulous

The narrator was excellent. The different accents she used were great. It sounded like several different people were reading.

Riveting

Loved it. I am new to this author. Now I can't wait to hear her other books.

Surprised by unnecessary accents

I’m a huge fan of Caroline Lee’s narration. In fact, I came across this book by looking up Caroline Lee’s works. But I was very disappointed about inaccurate/unnecessary accents of minority groups in this book.

I want to be very clear that this is not an attack on her artistry. There’re times in the book that the author mentions a specific accent of a character and Caroline tries her best to perform it (which is expected and understandable). But for certain characters in this book who didn’t have a specific description of their accents in the story, Caroline made up an accent based on the character’s name origin. I found this unnecessary and offensive for two reasons:
1. The accent was not accurate or even close. For example the accent of the Japanese police officer/detective sounded like how white people describe the sound of “Asian” accent. Japanese English accent is quite different from what Caroline performed. And don’t get me started on the psychologist doctor’s accent that sounded robotic and very made up.
2. There’s no reason for someone who has a non-white name to not sound Australian. If the book doesn’t assign a specific accent to a character why should we assume that all immigrants or immigrant decent have a specific accent? Going back to the two examples I raised earlier, in a case of a doctor or detective who lived in Australia for years, it’s more than possible they have a fluent Australian accent for all we know!

So in conclusion, the narrator shouldn’t assume an accent to begin with but if the assumption is there, they better get it right otherwise it just sounds like you’re mocking them.

To Caroline Lee, you always blew me away by your artistry. I’m not sure if it was your decision or you were directed to do these accents. Your art is powerful and I want to ask you to be mindful of the way you approach accents because it can have a big impact on minority groups.