The Middle Eight by Roberta Stiger Taylor
A Review By: RS
After scoring the interview of a lifetime, blogger Harper Woodson navigates the spotty memory of a soul legend suffering from dementia. What starts as another biopic chronicling the singer’s successful career quickly morphs into a backstory filled with subterfuge.
Harper, orphaned as a child and tormented by her own flawed past, is intrigued, and begins dissecting the singer’s perfectly constructed rags-to-riches narrative, finding it void of any real information. The blogger is determined to find out why.
Then, one night, she witnesses the bedridden superstar in the throes of her neurocognitive disorder. She learns the shocking secret the entertainer has spent a lifetime trying to hide. Now armed with the details of the singer’s family shame, Harper unwittingly becomes part of the story.
Unforeseen danger lurking in the shadows for years uses the blogger to bring the soul legend’s family transgressions to light, putting Harper, the ailing songstress, and everyone around them in the crosshairs of the singer’s complicated past.
Review Notes:
Audio Book Publication Year: 2023
An installment in a Series? No
Narrator (s): Emma Tigan
Harper discovers more than she bargined for when she does research for what could be the story of her career. Her tanacity in the search for the truth leads her down a dangerous path.
The Middle Eight is a good combination of two women's life journeys and a who done it. This story kind of starts off slow but definitely picks up and held my interest to the very end. I really enjoyed listening to the flashbacks and trying to put the puzzle peces together along with Harper to figure out the truth in the stories. Overall, I would recommend this books as a good, rainy day read.
Emma did a good job of narrating this story. At first, I wasn't quite sure because for this to be a story about a young black woman, Emma sounded white. As the story progressed her voice when saying certain words and phrases let me know that she was indeed black. Being that this takes place in California, her voice made sense. I also appreciated that she changed her tone and inflection with each character.
Although I enjoyed the story and grew to enjoy the narrator, I did not like the fact that each character was continuosly referred to as their occupation. Harper was constantly referred to as the blogger or journalist. Literally, whatever the character did for a living was how they were identified.
Note: The author provided a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.
Reading Recommendation? Yes
Rating: 3 (It's aight)
Content Warnings? Human or animal loss, Physical abuse/violence
