And They Called It Camelot

A Novel of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis

By: Stephanie Marie Thornton

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

An intimate portrait of the life of Jackie O…

Few of us can claim to be the authors of our fate. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy knows no other choice. With the eyes of the world watching, Jackie uses her effortless charm and keen intelligence to carve a place for herself among the men of history and weave a fairy tale for the American people, embodying a senator’s wife, a devoted mother, a First Lady—a queen in her own right.

But all reigns must come to an end. Once JFK travels to Dallas and the clock ticks down those thousand days of magic in Camelot, Jackie is forced to pick up the ruined fragments of her life and forge herself into a new identity that is all her own, that of an American legend.

Same old, same old.

Fantastic story, beautifully written and extremely historically accurate. However, Cassandra Campbell’s narration, after listening to a few of her other recordings, is nothing special.

Her Jack Kennedy drawls like a Virginian - identical to her Thomas Jefferson/Thomas Mann Randolph voices in ‘America’s First Daughter.’ Not a trace of an exaggerated Bostonian/mid-Atlantic accent so characteristic of the Kennedy family. JFK had an extremely distinctive voice that I understand must be hard to capture effectively, but with as many books as Cassandra Campbell has narrated, she should be able to attempt one.

Her Jackie Bouvier-Kennedy-Onassis, meanwhile, is a carbon copy of her Eliza Schuyler Hamilton in ‘My Dear Hamilton.’ She seems to only do two voices competently: an intelligent but reserved society woman and a Southern gentleman.

Also, the way she says “I gasped” - which carries across several books - is extremely annoying.

Wonderful

This novel allows you to feel like you know and understand who Jackie Kennedy was and the life she experienced.

Great book

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this book. The narrator really made the story come to life.

Captivating

This fictional loose biography told from the point of view of Jackie is endearing, heartbreaking and charming

Good but not accurate

I thought this was a great listen, but was disappointed to learn at the end it was not historically accurate and the author had changed things. I felt like this should have been shared at the beginning of the book. Very fascinating though!