Narrated by: Jessica Almasy

Length:  8 hrs and 16 mins 8 hrs and 17 mins 9 hrs and 10 mins
Total Length:  25 hours 43 mins

Ok I decided to do a series review because these books really do read just like 1 story.

1st of all,  I have to say… I think this series is expensive.  Why?  Because it really feels like the author wrote 1 book, and then the editors decided to split it up into 3 parts afterwards with the idea of making more money.

So that’s already a bummer.

The 1st book I got in a sale… and then 2nd book I actually bought… but to be honest, if the books are average, or just a little bit above average, ie. Worth listening to, but are purposefully done in this way to get more money from you… then you begin to think that piracy might be the way.

So 3 books which really should be 1 book, that costs 15 dollars?  Or the route that they’ve decided to go in, which is divide it into 3 books each costing 15 dollars.   I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if people don’t feel guilty downloading a pirated copy of this book out of spite.

So… well, that wasn’t a good start to a series review.

After listening to just the 1st 2 books I would have said that this series is pretty decent, and it WAS worth the listen. Even though the main character (Lex) is annoying (we’ll get to that in a moment), the story has potential, and I’m intrigued to hear the ending.  However after listening to the 3rd book, I’m changing that. It’s just not.

Story:

Basically a teenage called Lex is getting more and more aggressive at school, and after a particular event, her Uncle Mort invites her up to his farm for the summer to give her new found but usually uncontrollable outburst an avenue.
Turns out her uncle, is a Grim (a reaper) which collects souls of people that have just died, and then delivers them to the afterlife.  Her Uncle then offers this role to her as well, and states that her previous behaviour is typical for those that would be good at being a Grim.

She is slightly different to the rest, coming from an unbroken family which of course causes the classic amount of tension between the newcomer (Lex) and the others.  And of course arises an antagonist… in this case someone that begins actually killing bad people, rather than being objective and just collecting souls, instead than using such powers to deliver justice.

Intertwined is a story about a ‘chosen one’ or something to that equivalent, and things begin happening with the afterlife which is weird…. Which you can take an educated guess all have something to do with the main character.

The whole series honestly reads a lot like just 1 book of the Harry Potter series.  For example, in Harry Potter each of the books have their own contained story, things happen, good stuff, bad stuff, situations are conquered, things are learned, all characters grow, and then in the next book, same kind of formula but with different situations, different things learned etc. Well, in this all of this happens over the whole series instead of just one book.

The other thing is that in Harry Potter, there is a fairly understandable timeline… you can understand what is just one day, what is a month, when Christmas is.. things like that.
In this book series… you have no idea.  Sure the 1st book apparently happens over the course of the summer, -which I imagine is 3 months in America… however the 2nd book…you have literally no idea. And 3rd book…well at one point the character Driggs say only 2 days had passed since they left Croak, but you would have assumed it’s been at least a month or something.

For the final book, you can read my review on audible here:  Rogue (Croak series part 3), but essentially yeah, I would not have finished the book if I didn’t want that sense of completion.  It was NOT a good book. The last 5 chapters I had to listen to at 1.2x the normal speed, just so I could be done with it.

The 1st 2 books had plot holes, like situations that were raised and then were never really returned to and it was more the case in this book.

Target audience for the book?  + narration

Girls 12-18 I presume.  There are meandering of writings that seemingly go nowhere, but I’m not sure if this is something that this target audience relates to or not, I hope not.

The narrator seems to be able to act Lex’s ‘turn on the tears, emotional outbreaks / fake remorse’ a little too well, and hence you end up really despising the main character.  But again this is maybe something that young women can relate to… but again I hope not.

Lex constantly behaves like a child, in terms of not asking what would seem to be important questions to ask.  And even though her Uncle Mort appears to treat her like an adult at the start…. ends up still treating her like a child, like with-holding information from her that seems crucial to the overall plan, and then wondering why she’s acting like a child.

If you treat young adults like children they will behave like children.
Treat them like an adult and there’s more chance they will act like it.

In my mind, no good parent would ever do this, so I can only imagine this is how a teenage perceives adults do.

Morality in the series?

Well, it’s just truly terrible.  There are 3 types of ‘killing’
1. Killing to retrieve the soul and send it to the afterlife,
2. damning a soul which is what Lex can do….(which by the way is originally considered a rare ability, but it seems many people can just copy the power from her) and then
3. there’s sending the soul to oblivion.

Damning is originally explained as the soul will forever undergo pain and suffering.  And oblivion is as if the soul never existed.  And somehow this latter one is portrayed as worse than the damning.  Something which Lex has apparently been doing ever since she got the ability….which she also expects her friends to forgive her for… because in her mind it‘s just the same as having the thoughts to do it.  But can’t seem to realise that dishing out that kind of punishment is insane.

Only 1 ‘friend’ Ferberus, seems to have a normal kind of morality and states that it is wrong.

The whole moral of the story seems to be: being arrogant is bad, not communicating enough is bad and leads to misunderstandings and general terribleness, treating teenagers like children will ensure they act like children, doing terrible things is ok if you have friends that have unconditional love for you (which is just horrific), and apparently ‘call you parents every so once in a while’.

Writing?

I wouldn’t be so surprised to learn that this book/ series was written by a 13 or 14 year old, and then polished up by an adult to make it more-or-less sensical and a little more grandiose than the original but not by adult that truly cared about the divergent plots lines and had the courage to tell the teenage author… ‘we’ve either got to cut these out, or make them lead somewhere’

Recommendation?

With so many amazing sci-fi/ fantasy books/ series out there at the moment, it’s a shame to get one that is below average.

The series as a whole could be edited and combined into one book quite easily, and the 3-part distinction seems like a money grabbing ploy.
For example, 1 book that was heavily edited in terms of cutting out plot lines that go nowhere, re-writing characters so that they weren’t so annoying, and generally not meandering in the writing and assuming the reader won’t care…that would perhaps make the story well worth listening to for more than a very narrow target audience which I assume must not care about all these things to rate it 5 stars.

After listening to the whole series, I’m honestly considering returning both the 2nd and 3rd book, because…well…it wasn’t a great listen, + it most definitely wasn’t worth the money.

Check out the Croak series here on audible and listen to a sample.   Or…

Get a free trial of audible with 2 free books, listen to books like this or better for free, & then if you want….just quit before 30 days & you get to keep everything… sounds like a pretty good deal to me.