Sheer Abandon

By: Penny Vincenzi

Narrated by: Susan Duerden

A number-one bestseller from one of Britain’s most popular novelists, Sheer Abandon is an all-consuming story revolving around the consequences of a desperate act.

Martha, Clio, and Jocasta meet by chance at Heathrow airport in 1985 as they are starting off on separate backpacking adventures, and they decide to spend the first few days of their trips together in Thailand. When they go their separate ways, they vow to get together in London the following year. But many years pass before the three cross paths again, and the once-capricious, carefree girls all now have thriving careers. One of them, however, harbors a terrible secret: On her return from her precollege excursion, she abandoned her just-born daughter at Heathrow.

Clio has fulfilled her ambition of becoming a doctor, only to find herself trapped in a marriage to an arrogant surgeon who belittles her and her professional achievements. Martha is a highly paid corporate lawyer, just embarking on a political career. Dedicated to her job, she has had little time for personal relationships and lives a busy, but lonely, life. Jocasta, a tabloid newspaper reporter with an infallible instinct for the big story, is in love with a charming colleague who can’t make the permanent commitment she longs for. The infant abandoned at Heathrow has grown up under the loving care of her adoptive family. Now a beautiful teenager named Kate, she sets out to find her birth mother——a quest that unexpectedly brings the women together and exposes the secret buried so many years before.

Impossible to put down, Sheer Abandon is top-notch women’s fiction.©2007 Penny Vincenzi; (P)2007 Books on Tape

Critic reviews

“It’s time Americans caught Vincenzi fever, because it’s almost a crime she’s not better known here . . . Everything is outsized in Vincenzi’s fiction: sex, money, personality, emotions, plot. And yet she gets all the details—about human behavior and women’s conflicted lives—just right. It’s perfect escapism.”
—USA Today

“She’s the plot-twist queen.”
—Adriana Trigiani, author of the Big Stone Gap trilogy and The Queen of the Big Time

“Vincenzi pulls out all the stops in this orchestral saga. . . . The mystery of who [Baby Bianca’s] mother is serves as the spine of this fat, satisfying novel . . . The various narrative themes crescendo through several all-hands-on-deck scenes . . . the women are, without exception, multifaceted, smart and brave, and their happiness is hard won. A U.K. bestseller, the book offers major escape and abandon for summer.”
–Publishers Weekly starred review

Basically a Romance Novel

The story was surprisingly easy to listen to except for the sex scenes which were embarrassingly ridiculous. I actually listened to the whole thing but found it pretty vapid. Generally not what I was hoping for.

The narration was excellent. I will be searching for other books narrated by her.

Sheer Abandon (Unabridged)

It takes a while to get into this book but it is worth it.

Fabulous!!

I have been 100% absorbed in this book, it deals with real life issues and a wide range of people and their day to day drama's. I completely lost track of my own life, and as this book ended, I lost a friend.
More please!!!!!

Frustrating!

Arrgghh! This book went on and on! I enjoyed some parts of it, but talk about beating a dead horse. We end up knowing more about Martha than we ever care to, and then - poof - well, I won't give it away. It started off well, then went on and on and on, then it ended. Just ended.

Entertaining but not worthy of keeping!

While the story was worth listening to, it just wasn't that meaningful. I figured out who the mother was in the first of the four downloadable sections using common sense. The characters seemed dumber than their occupations and education would indicate. Some information was repeated and the story could have been a couple hours shorter. I also am not a fan of the narrator. Her voice was too sugary sweet making the characters seem even more helpless at times and making the sex scenes sound like an advertisement for phone sex. Overall, the story kept you interested, but in the end I didn't feel all that satisfied with the book.