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Family Likeness

By: Caitlin Davies
Narrated by: Penelope Rawlin, Vivien Rochester
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Summary

In a small Kent town in the 1950s, a bewildered little girl is growing up. Ostracised because of her colour, she tries her best to fit in, but nobody wants anything to do with her. A nanny climbs the steps of a smart London address. She’s convinced that her connection to the family behind the door is more than professional.

And on the walls of an English stately home, amongst the family portraits, hangs an eighteenth-century oil painting of a mysterious black woman in a silk gown. In ways both poignant and unexpected, the three lives are intertwined in a heartbreaking story of prejudice and motherless children, of chances missed, of war time secrets and the search for belonging...

©2013 Caitlin Davies (P)2014 Random House Audiobooks
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Promising start does not fulfill

Would you try another book written by Caitlin Davies or narrated by Penelope Rawlin and Vivien Rochester ?

Yes I would try another book both by writer and narrators. There were flaws but overall they all have promise/talent

Would you be willing to try another book from Caitlin Davies? Why or why not?

I would like to try another book by Caitlin Davies as, overall, I think she is a good writer. Personally, I was just disappointed in the rather contrived and rather unbelievable series of events in the last third of the book. Therefore it would be interesting to listen/read another book written by this author to see if my opinion was likely to change.

Have you listened to any of Penelope Rawlin and Vivien Rochester ’s other performances? How does this one compare?

No, that was my first experience of listening to both of these narrators. They were both very good but I heartily disliked the child " Ella" and I'm not sure if this was because of the way the narrator spoke her lines. She came across as an extremely obnoxious child yet the storyline did not indicate this personality.

Did Family Likeness inspire you to do anything?

Perhaps to seek out another of the authors works to see if I'm going to be a regular listener.

Any additional comments?

I felt this book had huge potential and this was fulfilled in lots of ways. The style of writing. The interwoven storylines. Two good narrators. Yet, in the end I felt somewhat disappointed. It is difficult to review without giving away the storyline but towards the end I just found it all rather unbelievable that things happened the way they did. Also a little too contrived and full of coincidences for my liking.

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