Holly

Finally had some time to come back and leave some thoughts. I absolutely love Holly Gibney as a character. She's one of the best characters Mr. King has created in recent memory. You can tell he thinks so too, since she has evolved from a supporting character in the Bill Hodges Trilogy and the [b:The Outsider 36124936 The Outsider Stephen King https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1524596540l/36124936.SY75.jpg 57566471] to being the protagonist in first a novella ([b:If It Bleeds 46015758 If It Bleeds Stephen King https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1571399830l/46015758.SY75.jpg 70552618]) and now a full novel.I found this book uneven. There were parts where I was really engaged and wanted to keep listening, but there were others where my attention started to wander.This is also set during covid. That's somewhat important to the plot, but not really that important in my opinion. Mr. King has an author note about how If It Bleeds should have covid in it too, but doesn't because he wrote it before we knew about covid. Personally I think that's part of why I liked that novella better.I read as recreation/an escape. I prefer not to have to be reminded of that stuff. For me that impacted my overall enjoyment of the book.Overall I'd give this 3.5 stars. I liked it, but not as much as past stories with her. I found it slow at times, and the case/mystery just wasn't as interesting to me as some of the others.I hope we get another Holly Gibney story though, because I really love her and the supporting characters (the Robinsons mainly) and I've enjoyed having some mystery/thriller books to consume in between all the fantasy and sci-fi I typically read.With regards to the audio. As strange as it sounds, I missed Will Patton. He was a great fit for the other novels. I got used to his Holly voice. He's narrated all the previous Holly Gibney stories, including the novella, so the change of narrator caught me off guard. That said, if you're going to replace him with a more appropriate female narrator, picking one of the two actresses to portray her on TV is a good choice.I think Justine Lupe does a good job, although it's been a few years since I watched the Mr. Mercedes TV show, so I didn't really recall her portrayal of the character very well. Once I got used to the narration swap, I enjoyed it. I hope that they keep her for any future Holly stories for consistency, because I really hate when narrators change for series/characters.