Medium – Audiobook
About the Book – Sophie Taylor is a young, orphaned, well-to-do girl, who has recently lost her father and has been left in poverty. In desperation, she gets herself a job at the newly established Sinclair’s Department Store – which is a little bit like Harrods. She is looked down upon by the other girls but soon makes friends with Billy, one of the porters, and Lilian Rose, a model at the store who wants to be an actress. One evening, Sophie is tied up in a mystery – an attack on a young employee of the store and the theft of a clockwork sparrow, one of the most expensive curiosities in the collection of the store’s founder. Sophie, Lil and Billy decide that they are going to solve the mystery.
My Rating – 2/5
My thoughts – To be honest, I can’t say I finished this book. The story didn’t grab me, but I did get over half-way, which is my cut-off point for stopping a book (if I haven’t lost interest after the first few pages). I enjoyed the premise of the story, but just found it a little slow-moving for me. That isn’t necessarily because it is a children’s book – a number of the books on my TBR pile and covered in this blog are ‘middle school’ aged books. I think I just found the story very similar to other stories of the same genre, so it didn’t necessarily encourage me to keep reading. I did like the character of Sophie – I thought she was a lovely addition to the narrative, and she was probably my favourite part of the story.
I think another thing which put me off from the book was the narrator of the audiobook – it really does make such a difference. This lady is, I am sure, a wonderful reader, but her extremely posh, clipped accents for both Sophie and Lil really put me off. The ‘voices’ she used for both are voices I have heard for quite comical characters in the past (such as Madeleine Bassett in the PG Wodehouse ‘Jeeves’ stories), so they sounded silly, rather than the strong, independent women that I think the author wanted to include. I am sure the story was better than the audiobook – I just couldn’t bring myself to get past the narrator. Maybe I will try it sometime in the future, and actually read the paper book!
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