anneinaz 's review for:

Those Empty Eyes by Charlie Donlea

5.0

dark emotional informative mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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Those Empty Eyes Dramatized Audio by Charlie Donlea is, at its core, a murder mystery, but there is plenty more thrown in. On a night in 1981, someone with her father’s shotgun came into her house and shot her parents in their bed and her younger brother as he was coming to check on them. Alexandra managed to misdirect the killer and then hide, but when she checked on the scene, she went into shock. She picked up the gun and leaned against her parents’ footboard and that is how the police found her. Despite the fact she was not yet eighteen, the detective chose to interrogate her with no representative present and despite the fact she was not, at that moment, competent. It was more than the first officer on the scene could handle and she called her husband, a defense lawyer, to come to the station and stop this fiasco. Thus began months of misery for this young woman culminating in a not guilty verdict and a judgement against the police and district attorney for millions of dollars. But, her life was not the same, and never would be. 

Alex has reinvented herself ten years later with the help of Garrett (defense attorney) and his wife, the cop. She goes to England to go to college but that turns out to be a mistake. She gets herself in some trouble there with some people who tried to take advantage of her, so Garrett came and got her and gave her a job. She became an investigator for his law firm, and learned from the best. Now, she is the best. The newest crime she is working on is the murder of a college reporter who has a true crime podcast and has discovered a rape scandal on her campus. It gets complicated, but she ends up dead, and Alex gets involved. Plenty of twists and turns. Many people are not who she thinks they are. She nearly dies herself, at the hands of her family’s murderer. The ending is explosive. Donlea has drawn such an interesting, complicated, story that the listener hardly knows what to believe. It is an amazing listen. 

I am not sure whey they made this dramatized version. I think straight narration would work as well. I didn’t like the whisper of music that was often in the back ground. The length of time between chapters suggests poor editing. I often pulled the iPod out, thinking it had stopped. It was, overall, a good listen. 

I was invited to listen to Those Empty Eyes by RB Media. All thoughts and opinions are mine. #Netgalley #RBMedia #CharlieDonlea #ThoseEmptyEyes