Don't Listen to the Intro

Any additional comments?

The intro goes over all the main events from the story and compares them to the author's real life which pretty much ruined the book for me.. why am I spending this many hours listing to a book where I already know what happens... just skip the intro (ch1) and listen to in after.

10 people found this helpful

Great book

Touches on all the emotions of losing somebody close to you. It's a great story and great character development. I really enjoyed it!

3 people found this helpful

Meh. The characters just weren't likable

Be incredible? Really? I wish ALL the characters of this book would have taken that advice. The first part of the story is good. Meeting Teresa, the mom who has cancer is great. The characters around her and her relationships are great. But I lost interest during the rest of the 3/4 of the book.
If you are like me, you are interested in this book because you loved Wild. Strayed's style is in here. It's in here in the shocking, raw things that the characters do because they are flawed and because of their grief. I liked those moments. Where this book failed though was redeeming those characters and making them likable. In Wild, Cheryl obviously is super likable and does things and shares things that made me like her including and because of her flaws--I liked her because of her complete-ness.
The characters in Torch were selfish and narcissistic and shallow and single faceted in their flawed-ness. I had no reason to cheer for them, they were just kind of lame.
The end of the story was the worst part. It just fizzled as the characters continued to have things happen to them and as they just stumbled through their mediocrity.

I also did not like Cheryl as the narrator. She had an annoying lilt in the way she finished each sentence that got tedious.

I hope Strayed writes more books. Fiction or non-fiction, I'll read (listen to) it, because I like her style and I think she'll only grow as a writer.

I don't recommend this book.

13 people found this helpful

Authors Should NOT Narrate

Couldn't make it through this book.The narration was monotonous. Every sentence felt like a bland staccato of downward lilts at each comma, with upward lilts at the end of each sentence. I found my head bobbing to the repetitive robotic rhythm. Also not a fan of the overly wordy writing style that seems to stock pile adjectives just for the sake of doing so. The Prologue was like Reader's Digest version of the book to come.

4 people found this helpful

Not what I expected

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I loved Wild, so I was really looking forward to this book. I just didn’t enjoy it, although the final chapter had the feel of her style in Wild and almost won me over. I’m still a fan and still plan to read Dear Sugar and will watch for other books from Cheryl Strayed, but this one felt like there was something missing.

1 person found this helpful

High expectations

I had high hopes after listening to"Wild" but this fell short. The story was entertaining enough but lacking something....plot? The narration did not help at all. So monotone, one dimensional, sounded like she ended most sentences with an inflection that made me think of a melodramatic amateur poetry reading.

1 person found this helpful

Great! Exactly what I expect if Cheryl Strayed

After reading Wild, Cheryl did not disappoint me when I backtracked to Torch. Great story and very true to who she is as an author and person. The book itself felt intimate.

1 person found this helpful

Great book!

Another great book by Cheryl Strayed. Grief come in many forms. This books depicts love, loss, and grief of a family broken apart by the loss of a loved one.

good story....

.....I liked the story and performance but I felt there were too many sex scenes for a book about someone's mother dying of cancer.

Beautiful story

Exquisite writing and you really feel with how the characters are feeling. Having lost my father to cancer this year, I could relate to Joshua and Claire. Cheryl strayed did an amazing job of putting into writing what can only be felt. The story is a lot of missed connections, and you wonder why they feel like they can't share their feelings with one another. They are pretty alone in their grief. It's irritating to see what the characters cannot, and they don't really resolve any of their internal issues, they just stuff them down and move on. That was why I didn't give the story 5 stars. It doesn't have to have a happy ending, but I would have liked to have left with some wisdom. It was them I did leave with was my own inspiration to be more in touch with my feelings and not treat people the way that this family treated each other. So I guess that is something. The reason I gave the performance three stars is because it is narrated with an upward inflection. I would get distracted because I would wait and braced myself to see if there would be another one. But the narrator did a good job with the voices, changing her voice in subtle ways.