Audiobook Review: Home to Whiskey Creek by Brenda Novak, Narrated by Carly Robins

Brenda Novak is a very intense author. I’ve read her before so I knew what to expect. “Home to Whiskey Creek” deals with a lot of serious and very scary topics. Although I applaud the author for speaking about these issues, at times it was very difficult to hear about. I say this only because sometimes we read a romance novel for some light fun and this book is definitely not light.

Nonetheless, I really enjoyed this story. One of Novak’s trademarks is that she always puts her heroines through the wringer. All the books I’ve read by her the heroine always has to deal with very difficult odds, and the same goes for “Home to Whiskey Creek.”

When the story begins, I mean the very beginning, our heroine is stuck down in a mine. Adelaide Davies was basically kidnapped from her home and thrown in a deserted mine after returning back to Whiskey Creek. The purpose of this was to warn her. The kidnapper wanted her to keep her mouth shut about a terrible crime she suffered back in high school. Noah Rackham is riding his bike when he hears her crying for help. When Addy returns home, although she is grateful to Noah, she basically wants nothing to do with him. There are many different reasons for this and I enjoyed learning about Addy and her history.

So a couple of things about the series. Because it centers on a group of friends who live in Whiskey Creek or return to Whiskey Creek the author has a habit of bringing them all into the story. I personally find this to be too overwhelming. There are so many different characters to keep track of. Also, I thought that Noah and Addy fell in love too quickly. Noah knows very little about Addy. He was the popular jock in high school and she was one of the smart kids. Aside from that he knows nothing about her, who she is as a person but he can’t understand why she doesn’t fall at his feet like all the other women in his life. This refusal is enough to intrigue him.

Despite these observations, I was intrigued by the story and the characters. Baxter, Noah’s best friend also has a sub-story and I really liked that Novak dealt with it very honestly and realistically. I also really got to like Noah because of his relationships, even his complicated ones. Addy had her own share of complicated relationships and I thought that they really gave a lot of insight to her character as well.

The narrator, Carly Robins, did a really good job. She had to voice many different characters and I thought she was able to give them all a distinctive sound.

As I said previously, Novak is an intense writer and since some of her stories are pretty intense they are not always easy but I was completely intrigued and wanted to see how she would play our all the different plots involved.

**Audiobook provided by Tantor.com**

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