I listened to the audiobook of The Cows, expertly narrated by the author herself, Dawn O’Porter, plus Karen Cass and Laura Kirman. It’s a mixed bag of a book for me – definitely held my attention throughout, but when looked at in retrospect a lot of the things that happened were verging on ludicrous.
The story centres around three women – Tara, a tv executive who makes a silly mistake one night and it threatens to ruin her life; Cam, a well known blogger who has a hugely successful career, but her mother and sisters despair of her life choices; and Stella, a young woman mourning the death of her sister, who is driven to desperate lengths to get what she wants out of life. Each in her own way, refuses to follow the herd and this has consequences for all of them.
Without giving away any spoilers, I thought the story was entertaining enough and as mentioned, extremely well narrated. Although I listen to and enjoy audiobooks, I generally prefer printed books. On this rare occasion though, I think listening to the book enhanced its appeal. Some of the events that happened just seemed so unlikely that it was fairly obvious they were simply there to move to story along. Stella’s story in particular, while it achieved the point of showing how far people will go to make their dream come true, seemed so ridiculous that I almost lost interest. I liked Tara, I quite liked Cam, and I hated Stella although I did feel some sympathy for her.
I think I expected the book to be more of a comedy – and it isn’t. It is a drama, firmly set in the current day – the internet and social media play surprisingly large roles in this story.
Overall, I enjoyed it enough to try another book by Dawn O’Porter, but this is a flawed read, which I would recommend but with some caution.
Between the Pages 