Girls in Trucks

Katie Crouch reads her own book with expression, but she often doesn't do enough to differentiate character voices and doesn't even attempt a Southern accent for these Southern debutantes. More importantly, she lacks the narrator skill to surmount the challenges presented by her writing: unexpected leaps forward in time, skipping over important events, and inexplicably changing from first to third person in some chapters. A more experienced reader might have been able to bridge the transitions and make the audio feel seamless, but as it is, the audio comes across as choppy and often jarring, like a poorly-done abridgement (even though it is unabridged). In addition, when reading the last moment of the book, in which protagonist Sarah reflects on her life and future and what she's learned, Crouch sounds flat, as though she's simply reading aloud, rather than truly being Sarah thinking. Stick with the print version. A Little, Brown hardcover (Reviews, Jan. 28).