BROKEN BAYOU (audiobook) by Jennifer Moorhead



Published by Brilliance Audio in July of 2024.
Read by Sophie Amoss
Duration: 10 hours, 18 minutes.
Unabridged.

My Synopsis

Broken Bayou features Dr. Willa Waters, a child psychologist with a very popular podcast who lives in Texas. After a disastrous local television interview goes viral, Waters runs to Broken Bayou, Louisiana. This is where her two great aunts lived in a mansion on the edge of town.

When she arrives in town, there is an uproar because a body has been found in the bayou and then a young schoolteacher and her car went missing. But, some of the locals still remember her because Waters spent most of her childhood summers in Broken Bayou with her great aunts. Waters and her little sister would be brought to town by her mother. All three of them would move in and her mother would spend the summer having a good time with the locals. 

In many ways, her great aunts were the closest thing to proper parents that Waters and her sister had. Her great aunts passed away within hours of one another and they have given the house to the local historical society. Waters says that she is in town to go through some things, but really she is looking for one thing - one very specific thing from a horrible night - the last night they ever stayed in Broken Bayou... 

My Review

This book is steeped in Southern Gothic vibes. There is a brooding mood from one end to the other. The murder mystery aspect was quite good, but I found Dr. Waters' behavior to be amazingly, frustratingly, and all too conveniently self-sabotaging. This very educated woman couldn't seem to grasp the concept of taking the stuff she wanted and going to some other town (any other town) with it until it becomes too late.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Broken Bayou by Jennifer Moorhead. 

Note: The publisher of this book sent me a free copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts over the last 30 days

THE BOYS: A MEMOIR of HOLLYWOOD and FAMILY (audiobook) by Ron Howard and Clint Howard

Image
Highly Recommended. Published in 2021 by HarperAudio. Read by Ron Howard, Clint Howard, and Bryce Dallas Howard. Duration: 13 hours, 18 minutes. Unabridged. Ron Howard and his brother Clint Howard practically grew up on America's television screens. Ron Howard starred in the  The Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days for a combined 15 years of his early life. Ron has since gone on to become a prolific director. His credits include Cocoon , Willow , Cinderella Man , and Solo: A Star Wars Movie . His movies have won 9 Academy Awards. Clint Howard starred in the TV show Gentle Ben when was a little kid and has since gone on to become the quintessential model of a working actor. He has more than 200 acting credits, including the original Star Trek series, Austin Powers , The Waterboy , and a recurring role on the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful . The Howard brothers are the sons of a working Hollywood actor named Rance Howard. Rance's credits look a lot like his son Clint'
Read more

GHOSTED: AN AMERICAN STORY (audiobook) by Nancy French

Image
Published by Zondervan in April of 2024. Read by the author, Nancy French. Duration: 9 hours, 56 minutes. Unabridged. My synopsis: Ghosted is an autobiography of Nancy French. Nancy French had a career as a Conservative political columnist and ghost-writing for people in Conservative circles. She helped Conservative politicians write opinion pieces, helped them come up with clever lines for radio and TV interviews, and even books. She worked with such Conservative stars as Sarah Palin and Ben Sasse. She even worked with the Romney campaign.  The book starts with her childhood in Kentucky, including an awful story of sexual abuse at the hands of a manipulative youth pastor and how that sent her life into a spiral into she met her future husband while she was in college. Nancy French is married to David French, a well-known Conservative political columnist, commentator, and attorney. He worked for two organizations that defended the rights of Christian groups and Conservatives on colleg
Read more

SAINT PETER: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Image
Published in 2021 by Hourly History. Hourly History has a series of short histories and biographies. As the name implies, they are designed to be read in about an hour. Some of the best offerings in this series are the biographies and this biography of Saint Peter was no exception. Saint Peter, of course, is one of the main figures in the New Testament, probably tied with Saint Paul for the second most important after Jesus himself. But, he's kind of a mystery in many ways because the references to Peter are scattered. This biography gathers together all of those scattered references and puts them in a narrative format so that it reads like a traditional biography. It takes care to note when stories are from the Bible and when they come from tradition (the description of how Peter was executed comes to mind.) The general outlines of Peter's life are laid out with only a token discussion of the implications of his theology, such as the decision to not require converts to Christ
Read more

MALAYAN CAMPAIGN: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Image
  Published by Hourly History in 2021. Hourly History writes short histories and biographies that take the average reader about an hour to read. Sometimes they try to explain too much in a short book (such as the Mayan Civilization, for example.) But, an hour is plenty of time to explain the basics of a military campaign that lasted 2 months and 8 days. When the Japanese Navy attacked the American naval forces at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941 it was actually part of a much larger, highly coordinated push against all Western forces in the Pacific and in East Asia. American forces were also attacked in the Philippines, for example. This push also included the British-held Malay Peninsula and Singapore that started on December 8. Britain had not provided much of a defense for this area, which was understandable considering the dire threat Britain itself faced from Nazi forces in Europe. The Japanese landed with a slightly smaller force than the British had, but the British w
Read more

THE OTHER SIDE of the WALL: A PALESTINIAN CHRISTIAN NARRATIVE of LAMENT and HOPE (audiobook) by Munther Isaac.

Image
Published in 2020 by ChristianAudio. Read by Neil Shah. Duration: 8 hours, 5 minutes. Unabridged. I heard about The Other Side of the Wall on The Holy Post podcast . I knew that there were Palestinian Christians in Gaza, but I hadn't given it much thought. Generally, I find the Palestinian/Israeli conflict too intractable to think about. It's not that I don't care, it's that simple solutions (or even insanely complicated solutions) don't even seem to be on the horizon at all and in a world with so many problems close at hand, it's easy not to think about problems half a world away. My bandwidth is just not that big. But, the interview was good - it came from an unexpected source in this conflict. The podcast host interviewed Munther Isaac, a Lutheran pastor and teacher. He is also a Palestinian from Gaza. There has been a continual Christian presence in Gaza as long as anyone can tell, although it is dwindling as Palestinian Christians opt out of the conflict z
Read more

A MAN CALLED OVE by Fredrik Backman

Image
Published by Dreamscape Media in 2014. Read by George Newbern. Duration: 9 hours, 9 minutes. Unabridged. Ove (pronounced ooo-vah) is a 59 year old grump in Sweden. His wife has passed away, he has no children, no pets and no job since he has been forced to retire. He keeps himself busy by keeping an eye on the neighborhood - he yells at the neighbor lady that lets her dog pee in front of his house, he yells at people who drive through the neighborhood (it has a parking area so that the entire area is pedestrian friendly), he yells at bureaucrats, bad drivers, hipsters, immigrants and...well, he just yells. Ove has determined that the best thing about his life left when his wife passed away. He was filling in that hole in his life, at least a bit, with his work. But, since his forced retirement, he has nothing. So, he is planning his suicide to join his wife. Then, a tough old homeless cat shows up. After that, a hipster father with an immigrant wife and two little girls moves in acr
Read more

Pete & Pickles by Berkeley Breathed

Image
Fantastic - and yes, I did read it to my children Published in 2007 by Philomel Books. Pete and Pickles is the story of a lonely, widower pig and an exuberant, outgoing elephant that escaped from a circus. According to the back flap, it was inspired from a drawing that Breathed's five-year old made in a restaurant. She drew an elephant hugging a pig in its trunk. Breathed asked why the elephant is holding the pig. "The pig's sad." "Why?" "Because he's lonely, Dad...But he doesn't know it," she whispered. Pete is indeed lonely. He misses his wife who has died. Pickles comes into his life unexpectedly and turns it all over and, in a way, saves it. Or, at least makes it worth living. I cannot imagine the adult that does not tear up at the end of this book (I've got no qualms with it - this 40 year old Republican darn near cried!). Berkeley Breathed On top of a great story you've got great pictures. The ar
Read more

LIVING for ANOTHER: MORE of OTHERS, LESS of YOU by Brent Gambrell

Image
Museums, parking duty, and the point of it all. This book was originally published in 2017 by Abingdon Press. I had a week off of school for fall break last week. During that week I had three experiences of a religious bent (beyond my weekly church attendance): 1) I read Living for Another: More of Others, Less of You , 2) I helped park cars for my church's annual "Trunk or Treat" that we host for the community, 3) I visited the Creation Museum in Kentucky. I listed the activities in this order because that is the order of importance on a spiritual level. The Creation Museum is an impressive and beautiful 75,000 square foot facility that, to me, is just the wrong approach to Christianity. It is so bent on proving that every little sentence fragment in Genesis is accurate that it almost entirely misses the point of Christianity. I felt no love or comfort there. It reminded me of the passage from 1 Kings Chapter 19: " 11-12  Then he was told, “Go, stand on the mou
Read more

THE COLD DISH (Longmire #1)(audiobook) by Craig Johnson

Image
  Originally published in 2004. Published by Recorded Books in 2007. Read by George Guidall. Duration: 13 hours, 17 minutes. Unabridged. The Longmire book series is the definition of a successful franchise with 16 novels and a six season television series. I watched the series and I enjoyed it immensely, so I decided to give the books a go. There are obvious differences in characters (The Ferg is a massive change, for example), but they are not deal-breakers. I prefer to look at them as another interpretation of the characters.  The main mystery in The Cold Dish was highly adapted for the TV series, so much so that it was basically a whole new mystery. A few years earlier 4 white high school boys sexually assaulted a fellow student. She was Native American who suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome and didn't really understand what had happened. The trial that followed was rough on the local white and Native American communities and ended with minimal punishments for the boys.  Now,
Read more

THE BROKEN GUN (audiobook) by Louis L'Amour

Image
Originally published in 1966. Audiobook published in 2011 by Random House Audio. Read by Jason Culp. Duration: 4 hours, 35 minutes. Unabridged. My synopsis: The Broken Gun is the story of a writer named Dan Sheridan. Sheridan is kind of a stand-in for Louis L'Amour himself. L'Amour was a prolific author, but he before he was a writer he skinned cattle, worked in mines and lumber camps, was a professional boxer, and was a merchant seaman. Later, he served in World War II in Europe. His character Dan Sheridan worked on ranches, lumber camps, and served in the Korean War where he was captured and escaped back to the American lines. Later, he was trained in guerilla warfare, served as an advisor in South Vietnam where he was captured again and escaped again. Sheridan researches a topic thoroughly before he writes. It is the early 1960s and his latest interest is a large cattle drive in the 1870s that was led by two brothers named Toomey from Texas to Arizona. They were looking for
Read more