Review: A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson (audio)

A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson

Read by Joshilyn Jackson

Hachette Audio

January 2012

Length: 12.5 hours

From the back of the audio case: When a long-hidden grave is unearthed in the backyard, headstrong young Mosey Slocumb is determined to investigate. What she learns could cost her family everything…

Every fifteen years, trouble comes after the three Slocumb women. Now, as the youngest turns fifteen, she’s desperate to know who used their yard as a makeshift cemetery, and why. The unlikely matriarch, forty-five-year-old Ginny, doesn’t know the truth…she only knows she must do everything in her power to keep it hidden. Between them is Liza, silenced by a stroke, haunted by the choices she made as a teenager, with the answers trapped inside her. To survive Lisa’s secrets and Mosey’s insistent adventures. Ginny must learn to trust the love that braids the strands of their past and stop at nothing to defend their future.

With riveting plot twists and off-kilter characters, A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty introduces three generations of Slocumbs: a child on the cusp of womanhood searching for her true family; a woman whose fight to protect her daughter will toss her headlong into a second chance at first love; and a lost soul, rediscovering her voice. New York Times bestselling author Joshilyn Jackson takes us on a wild ride from desperate mystery to a place of firm hope, proving once more that “she knows how to grab a reader – and not let go.”

My thoughts: This is the first book I’ve read (or in this case, listened to) by Joshilyn Jackson and I really enjoyed it. Right from the very beginning when bones are dug up in the backyard, I was hooked and had to know what was going on. 

Told from alternating points of view – Big, Liza and Mosey – the story moves at quite a good pace and we really get to know the characters. This is a family that trouble seems to find every fifteen years. Big has Liza when she was 15, Liza had Mosey when she was 15 and then when Mosey is 15, she learns there is another Mosey Slocumb in the world. Along with the mystery of finding out who the bones found in the backyard belong to, we also find out what happened to Liza when she had the stroke. The story seems to move from the present to the past effortlessly and the overall effect leads to quite an amazing story.

I definitely plan on getting Joshilyn Jackson’s other books – but I have a question. Are they better in print or audio? Does she narrate all her books?

Audio Thoughts: There’s just something about having the author narrate their own work…they know exactly the mannerisms and characteristics of the characters they created. They intuitively know the exact feelings they want to evoke throughout the story and it usually comes across perfectly. Joshilyn Jackson nailed it in this audio book. Her Southern accent brought a unique charm to the story and I found myself completely enthralled. 

(I borrowed this audio book from the library.)

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