Narrator January LaVoy’s perfect performance enhances this thriller about middle-aged women taking charge despite society’s attempts to keep them down. When Harriet’s husband cheats on her and she is unfairly passed up for a work promotion, she cultivates magical botany skills. Gym owner Jo feels her superhuman strength growing. Nessa’s ability to hear the dead has resurfaced. The women’s paths cross when they discover a teen girl’s corpse and realize many girls in their community have gone missing. The audiobook alternates between the current mission to find a killer and flashbacks to pivotal events in each woman’s life. LaVoy’s range is masterful: A man’s patronizing tone quickly changes to placating, Harriet’s laugh in a CEO’s face sounds genuine, and heartbroken sobs pierce Nessa’s speech. A.L.C. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
The Change: A Novel
Narrated by January LaVoy
Kirsten MillerUnabridged — 15 hours, 25 minutes
The Change: A Novel
Narrated by January LaVoy
Kirsten MillerUnabridged — 15 hours, 25 minutes
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Overview
GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK
""The Change is like a guttural rage scream (and somehow a soft, tearful hug) of a book, and I couldn't have loved it any more."" --Emily Henry
Big Little Lies meets The Witches of Eastwick-a gloriously entertaining and knife-sharp revenge fantasy about three women whose midlife crisis brings unexpected new powers-putting them on a collision course with the evil that lurks in their wealthy beach town.
""A roar of rage, a pacy page-turner, I loved it with all my broken heart. Read it. You'll love it.""--New York Times bestselling author Marian Keyes
""Miller triumphs...THE CHANGE is that rare treat: a suspenseful story with great pacing, memorable characters, and an engaging voice. Fantastic in every way, this fierce anthem against misogyny is a smash.""--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
""A pointed, punchy, and potent thriller...wry and clever, serious and exacting, and masterfully suspenseful.""--Booklist (starred review)
In the Long Island oceanfront community of Mattauk, three different women discover that midlife changes bring a whole new type of empowerment...
After Nessa James's husband dies and her twin daughters leave for college, she's left all alone in a trim white house not far from the ocean. In the quiet of her late forties, the former nurse begins to hear voices. It doesn't take long for Nessa to realize that the voices calling out to her belong to the dead-a gift she's inherited from her grandmother, which comes with special responsibilities.
On the cusp of 50, suave advertising director Harriett Osborne has just witnessed the implosion of her lucrative career and her marriage. She hasn't left her house in months, and from the outside, it appears as if she and her garden have both gone to seed. But Harriett's life is far from over-in fact, she's undergone a stunning and very welcome metamorphosis.
Ambitious former executive Jo Levison has spent thirty long years at war with her body. The free-floating rage and hot flashes that arrive with the beginning of menopause feel like the very last straw-until she realizes she has the ability to channel them, and finally comes into her power.
Guided by voices only Nessa can hear, the trio of women discover a teenage girl whose body was abandoned beside a remote beach. The police have written the victim off as a drug-addicted sex worker, but the women refuse to buy into the official narrative. Their investigation into the girl's murder leads to more bodies, and to the town's most exclusive and isolated enclave, a world of stupendous wealth where the rules don't apply. With their newfound powers, Jo, Nessa, and Harriett will take matters into their own hands...
Editorial Reviews
★ 03/28/2022
Miller, author of the Kiki Strike YA series, triumphs with her adult debut about three women who discover supernatural abilities during menopause, which they use to avenge murdered teenage girls in the New York beach town of Mattuck. Just as retired nurse Nessa James becomes fast friends with gym owner Jo Levison, Nessa realizes she can see ghosts again. When she was a child, her grandmother told her she had a gift, and that she’d be called upon later in life to use it, along with other similarly gifted women. Nessa intuitively seeks out unapologetic Harriett Osborne, a former ad executive who was pushed out of her career and now cultivates toxic plants like wolfsbane. Along with Jo, who can summon her fury and channel it into fiery strength, the trio attempt to bring peace to three ghosts Nessa encounters on the beach near Culling Pointe, where the billionaires live. After a client at Jo’s gym starts leaving clues about one of the ghosts, the trio is let down by police detectives who make their own motives clear. To say anything further would spoil this tightly plotted page-turner. Miller’s book is that rare treat: a suspenseful story with great pacing, memorable characters, and an engaging voice. Fantastic in every way, this fierce anthem against misogyny is a smash. (May)
"The Change is like a guttural rage scream (and somehow a soft, tearful hug) of a book, and I couldn't have loved it any more." —Emily Henry — #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry
“Miller triumphs...The Change is that rare treat: a suspenseful story with great pacing, memorable characters, and an engaging voice. Fantastic in every way, this fierce anthem against misogyny is a smash.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A pointed, punchy, and potent thriller...wry and clever, serious and exacting, and masterfully suspenseful." — Booklist (starred review)
“The novel takes on serious issues but doesn’t take itself too seriously; there’s plenty of mordant humor, a suspenseful plot, and mostly brisk pacing. Crime fiction, superpower fantasy, and sharp satire about sexism and ageism mesh for a satisfying read.” — Kirkus Reviews
"A delicious fantasy full of righteous rage, thorny entanglements, powerful sisterhood, and (wink, nudge) herbal remedies. Forget the teen dabblers of The Craft, or the lovelorn witches of Practical Magic: Joe, Nessa, and Harriet are the dynamic coven that angry feminist dreams are made of, here to remind us that everything gets better with age and experience— especially revenge." — Kat Rosenfield, author of No One Will Miss Her
“Searing and witty and full of so much warranted rage. This was a book I didn’t know I was aching for. I cheered on every page.” — Erin A. Craig, New York Times bestselling author of House of Salt and Sorrows and Small Favors
"A roar of rage, a pacy page-turner, I loved it with all my broken heart. Read it. You’ll love it." — Marian Keyes, New York Times bestselling author
"There is a specter haunting women - the specter of rage. Kirsten Miller has woven a fun, gripping, lush, real fable, a Stepford Wives for the twenty-first century, a Witches of Eastwick if it had actually been written by a woman. THE CHANGE is poisonous as henbane, and twice as delicious." — Katherine Howe, New York Times bestselling author
Searing and witty and full of so much warranted rage. This was a book I didn’t know I was aching for. I cheered on every page.
"There is a specter haunting women - the specter of rage. Kirsten Miller has woven a fun, gripping, lush, real fable, a Stepford Wives for the twenty-first century, a Witches of Eastwick if it had actually been written by a woman. THE CHANGE is poisonous as henbane, and twice as delicious."
"A pointed, punchy, and potent thriller...wry and clever, serious and exacting, and masterfully suspenseful."
"A delicious fantasy full of righteous rage, thorny entanglements, powerful sisterhood, and (wink, nudge) herbal remedies. Forget the teen dabblers of The Craft, or the lovelorn witches of Practical Magic: Joe, Nessa, and Harriet are the dynamic coven that angry feminist dreams are made of, here to remind us that everything gets better with age and experience— especially revenge."
09/01/2022
Three women on Long Island embrace magic that blooms only when their fertile years fade, finding mutual friendship and a craving for vigilante justice. Miller's ("Kiki Strike" series) first offering for adults is a heady brew that overflows with female power and rage. Harriet's foray into vigilante justice is simple—lightly terrorizing the homeowners' association—but she soon grows deadly in her primal wildness. Jo, a straight-talking entrepreneur and mother, uses her inner fury at misogyny to fuel her workouts and channels that rage into incendiary hot flashes. From a multigenerational family of mediums, fellow mother (no maids in this coven) Nessa knows about witches but can't soothe the ghosts who call out to her to rest without Jo and Harriet as back-up. Narrator January LaVoy has a near-magical gift for character voices and casts a spell over listeners through the action-packed ending. VERDICT Though Miller offers a compelling power fantasy for anyone with a uterus facing change, her novel tends to equate menstruation with womanhood, a gender essentialist approach that may upset listeners. Good, but not mandatory.—Lauren Kage
12/01/2021
Widowed empty-nester Nessa James begins hearing voices and realizes that like her foremothers she can commune with the dead. Harriett Osborne remains indoors after both career and marriage crash, undergoing an extraordinary transformation. Former executive Jo Levison has always felt tortured by her body but realizes with menopause that she's found a special power she can deploy. The three join forces, guided by Nessa's voices, to discover the truth about a teenage girl whose body was cruelly dumped on a Long Island beach. From top feminist YA author Miller ("Kiki Strike" series); with a 150,00-copy first printing.
Narrator January LaVoy’s perfect performance enhances this thriller about middle-aged women taking charge despite society’s attempts to keep them down. When Harriet’s husband cheats on her and she is unfairly passed up for a work promotion, she cultivates magical botany skills. Gym owner Jo feels her superhuman strength growing. Nessa’s ability to hear the dead has resurfaced. The women’s paths cross when they discover a teen girl’s corpse and realize many girls in their community have gone missing. The audiobook alternates between the current mission to find a killer and flashbacks to pivotal events in each woman’s life. LaVoy’s range is masterful: A man’s patronizing tone quickly changes to placating, Harriet’s laugh in a CEO’s face sounds genuine, and heartbroken sobs pierce Nessa’s speech. A.L.C. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
2022-05-04
Menopause brings more gains than losses for three women in this entertaining thriller.
When menopause arrives for the three women who are the protagonists in this book, they don’t bother with estrogen therapy or worry about chin hairs. They develop superpowers. Harriett Osborne kicks her high-powered advertising career and her dweeby husband to the curb and lets her gift for botany flourish, growing plants for pleasure and for poison (and to really annoy the head of her homeowners association). Jo Levison is first alarmed by the rage that literally sets fire flowing from her hands—hot flashes with a vengeance—but she learns to channel it and starts a successful fitness and self-defense business. Nessa James’ emerging gift is a somber one that’s been handed down by the women in her family: The dead speak to her, but only the dead who need help. All three women live in the manicured little beach town of Mattauk, where bad things aren’t supposed to happen. But when Jo and Harriett accompany Nessa to a secluded beach, where one of those voices is calling to her, they find the body of a young woman decomposing in a garbage bag. And, Nessa says, hers is not the only ghost there. The response from local police is barely apathetic; the cops seem to be protecting someone, or all the someones who live behind gates at the high-priced end of the island. That just makes the trio push harder to find out what’s going on. What they uncover echoes the Jeffrey Epstein case and too many other cases of powerful men exploiting women and getting away with it—or maybe not. The novel takes on serious issues but doesn’t take itself too seriously; there’s plenty of mordant humor, a suspenseful plot, and mostly brisk pacing.
Crime fiction, superpower fantasy, and sharp satire about sexism and ageism mesh for a satisfying read.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940176255287 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 05/03/2022 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Sales rank: | 670,419 |
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