The Bullet was requested from Audiobook Jukebox and Blackstone Audio. The premise sounded great and it’s narrated by Cassandra Campbell. You really can’t go wrong with a book narrated by Campbell. She has a very smooth, calming and relaxing voice. She also simply narrates, meaning she doesn’t attempt to make much distinction between male and female voices. This is something I greatly enjoy and appreciate when listening to a book in audio. Again, Campbell’s narration is just so smooth and enjoyable, she always elevates whatever she is reading to a higher level and makes it a more enjoyable experience.
This certainly is the case with The Bullet. While I had absolutely no issue with the audio narration, the story in The Bullet veered towards the predictable and unfortunately ended with far too much cheesiness for my liking. It’s a great premise that unfortunately could not sustain my interest. When the story started to fill in with other parts that went here, there and everywhere and brought in the predictable, I ended up checking the hardcopy out from the library. I did this so I could quickly skim over it to see how I imagined it was going to end and so that I could move forward with other audiobooks I’m scheduled to review.
First of all, let’s get to the (intriguing) premise of The Bullet: Caroline Cashion is a professor of French literature at Georgetown University and has been complaining to her physician of the persistent pain in her wrist. Initially diagnosed as carpal tunnel syndrome she is told to slap a brace on it. When the pain intensifies, she is sent for an MRI which has a striking revelation… Caroline has a bullet lodged into her neck dangerously near her spine. A bullet? How in the world did a bullet get there? She’s never been shot? When she reveals this to her parents, they reluctantly inform her she was adopted at the age of 3 and her birth parents were murdered in their Atlanta home. She too was shot, but the surgeons at the time felt it better to just leave it in her neck. They raised Caroline without ever once mentioning any of this information.
So, at 37 years old, Caroline, who, by the way is a vivacious dark haired beauty, looking nothing at all like any member of her family (the family that raised her), is off on a quest to discover who her birth parents were, why the killer was never brought to justice, to identify said killer, etc. Caroline immediately flies off to Atlanta to conduct some research. All of this against medical advice as the bullet is obviously moving and causing serious pain and could have serious adverse issues. In Atlanta, she meets with a cast of characters involved in her parent’s lives from 1979, the year they were murdered.
Now, Caroline is a university professor, therefore supposedly a highly educated person but in this story, the trail she embarks upon, or how she goes about her investigation, is not one that is expected for an educated person. Nor is it highly believable that in all of her 37 years she never, ever questioned why she looks so incredibly different from her parents and brothers. Throw in the predictable, yet unlikely romance between her (oh! oops!he’s actually married with kids) physician combined with the ridiculous ending and The Bullet didn’t match the excitement posed in its premise.
It becomes even more unlikely when Caroline is able to identify the man responsible for murdering her parents, a man that is also clearly and earlier identified by her mother’s next door neighbour, but the police have really never made these connections, or do so at the speed that Caroline has been able to uncover?
Here’s great big giant spoilers: She goes on to murder this man, and oh! it must be a solid case of southern hospitality played out for Caroline, because the police let her go, saying, hey, it was justified. Right? The murderer was free to roam the streets all these decades, because well, the police didn’t want to really disrupt their southern way of life and he was a respected member of society. Also, everything worked out for Caroline after all didn’t it? She was raised by a great family, a very successful career – what more could you want? And then, to add to the unreal and provide more cheese to the story, oh, convenient, her doctor is actually getting a divorce so they too can live happily ever after. (Sorry, that’s a whole lot of spoilers but I guess you can say I’m saving you from having to spend time with this book.)
I sent multiple text messages to my fellow Hoarder Elizabeth with this picture:
A rather disappointing read. I’ve given it 3 stars because truly, Cassandra Campbell’s narration elevated the telling of this story. It did veer towards the predictable but then truly went off the rails into the land of cheese with that highly unrealistic and silly ending. :-(
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