Odd Numbers

 Details:

• author: JJ Marsh
  
• full title: Odd Numbers
  
• narrators: Jess Nesling, Paul Panting
  
• genre: mystery; general fiction
  
• topics: #friends #reunion #grief
• publisher: Saga Egmont Audio
  
• publish date: 04.11.2021
• timing: 5:57:00
  

My Rating of the Audiobook:

• content: 💙💙💙.5
• narration: 💙💙💙💙💙

Goodreads

Excerpt from the Book:

Twenty years. In the beginning, grief is a crushing weight you're convinced you cannot bear. After two decades, you can bear it but the effort changes you. The others have altered too, an extra line on the brow, a slight stoop, a shadow behind the eyes. Although no one liked to talk about it. Over the years, our gatherings have become less of a memorial to death and more a celebration of life. Our lives go on.

My Thoughts: 

A group of six friends met at the University during their studies of linguistics. On 31st December 1999, Dhan disappears. So, two years later, five remaining friends organize a new year’s gathering as a memorial for a lost friend. They meet every other year on new year’s eve. As linguists, they meet in a different city each time. We get to know a group of distinct characters from different parts of the world: from party animals to fragile and sensitive ones.

Psychological drama. Slowly, through five POVs, the true story of friendship unravels. And with it also the lies and secrets they are trying to hide. The story stretches from the first gathering to the last twenty years later.

I liked most of the book and this whole character dissecting, but the last twenty percent of the book was just ok. I guess I was hoping for something more. Despite that, I liked it, and it was worth reading it.

The narrators did a wonderful job. Jess Nesling narrated three different accents for each female friend.

About the Author:

As a child, Jill read so obsessively she got kicked out of the school library. But her passion for words continued. She graduated in English Literature and Theatre Studies from the University of Wales and set up a theatre company. Since then, as an actor, director, teacher, writer and journalist, she’s worked in fifteen countries. She learnt something from each one.  

Now, with her husband and three dogs, Jill lives in Switzerland, a country with four languages and mountains of new words.

She works as a language trainer all over Europe, collaborates with Nuance Words and Triskele Books, and contributes regularly to Words with JAM magazine. But most of the time, she writes. And reads.

Behind Closed Doors is the first Beatrice Stubbs novel, a European crime series set in compelling locations all over the Continent.