The Nature of Fragile Things by Susan Meissner


This weeks’ library audiobook was pretty good and I highly recommend it. If you listen to audiobooks before bed, you might not get your full nights sleep when listening to this book. The setting is early 1900s when a huge earthquake happens in California & San Francisco burns for days. In short, it’s about a “mail-order bride” (Irish immigrant living in New York, her life is a shambles and she finds a newspaper ad placed by a wealthy widow in CA looking for a wife to be a mother to his 5-year-old daughter). Of course, everything is not as it seems and you’ve got yourself a page turner. 

The Irish accent for our main character, Sophie, is wonderful and mesmerizing. Every few chapters there’s an interviewer (cop) speaking with Sophie in what I can only describe as a “Dragnet” style which I really enjoyed and helped to accentuate the time period of the story. Great audiobook narration!

Sophie’s narrator: Alana Kerr Collins

Cop Narrator:  Jason Culp 

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