Red Hill by Jamie McGuire

Narrated by Emma Galvin, January LaVoy, and Zachary Webber

Does love prevail, even when the world is falling apart around you? This is the question Jamie McGuire seeks to answer in Red Hill, the story of a group of people trying to survive a zombie apocalypse.

Let me start by saying zombies have never been my thing. I’ll do vampires, shapeshifters, witches, warlocks, and pretty much anything else, but I’ve never been able to wrap my head around the idea of moaning zombies. When I read the synopsis of Red Hill, it didn’t clearly state that zombies were the cause of the world’s demise. If I had, I probably wouldn’t have bothered reading it. So, I suppose it’s a good thing it didn’t mention the dreaded Z-word.

Scarlet is a divorced mother of two daughters. She works long hours as an X-ray technician, and is trying to give her daughters a decent life. On the day the world ends, the girls are with their father. Scarlet is desperate to find them and make it to the only safe place she knows, a ranch owned by one of the doctors she works with.

Nathan works a dead-end job. The only light in his life is his young daughter Zoe. He and his wife no longer get along. In fact, when we first meet Nathan, he realizes she has left both him and Zoe. Now, as news of the zombies begins to flood the airwaves, Nathan’s only concern is getting Zoe out of danger, but where can they go?

Miranda is a young woman with far too much responsibility. Her mother and older sister are emotionally fragile. Her father, the doctor who works with Scarlet, is distant, leaving everything to Miranda, especially after he divorces his wife. Miranda and her older sister, accompanied by their boyfriends, are attempting to outrun the undead. Miranda knows all will be well if they can only make it to Red Hill. Her father may be emotionally unavailable, but she’s pretty sure he’ll know how to keep them alive.

I first encountered narrator Emma Galvin when I listened to Beautiful Disaster, another McGuire book. She read the part of Miranda, and did it well. She has the perfect voice for a college-aged character. Some listeners might find her to be a bit nasal-sounding, but, if the story is captivating enough, it’s easy enough to ignore it.

Galvin isn’t a narrator who gives characters a wide range of voices. This can make it difficult to tell characters of the same gender apart. For example, Miranda and her sister sounded alike, as did their boyfriends. This makes dialogue tags a necessary part of the listening experience.

Zachary Webber read the part of Nathan. Some of the best scenes in the book were ones he read. He sounds deep and melodic. He portrays emotions in a way that makes the listener feel almost exactly what the character is feeling. I especially enjoyed scenes between Nathan and his daughter. Webber was able to clearly convey the special relationship these two characters share.

Like Galvin, Webber doesn’t have a lot of variety. It seems as though he has a couple of voices for each gender and each character sounds like a variation of one of those two. For example, it was always easy to tell when Zoe was speaking – her character sounds softer, higher, with a more innocent quality to it that is lacking when other characters are portrayed. Scarlet and Miranda sound very similar though, and Nathan and his brother-in-law were almost impossible to tell apart.

I was not terribly impressed by January LaVoy’s portrayal of Scarlet. She has a certain gruffness that made it really difficult for me to like Scarlet, even though the character McGuire wrote was one I normally would have liked a lot. LaVoy made Scarlet sound very brusque, impatient, and overly harsh. The character McGuire created is very worried about her children. She’s angry at the circumstances that have brought about their separation, but this anger doesn’t cause her to be cruel or uncaring. Unfortunately, LaVoy’s depiction didn’t allow the listener to see any of Scarlet’s good qualities.

LaVoy is better than Webber and Galvin at differentiating various characters. Not every character is distinctly performed, but, if I paid close attention, I found I didn’t have to rely on dialogue tags quite as much as I did when the other two were narrating.

Despite the fact that Red Hill is based around the coming of zombies, I found myself enjoying the relationships between the characters. I would have rather they be brought together by a virus or some kind of government failure, but, zombies aside, the story was compelling. I was eager to see how each character would resolve their personal struggles.

If you’re a big fan of zombies, you’ll love this book. If you’re not, but think you can look past them to find the deeper, human story, I think you’d enjoy it. If, however, the word zombie sends you running for the proverbial hills, Red Hill isn’t something I can recommend.

Shannon

Narration:  Emma Galvin – B     Zachary Webber – B     January LaVoy – C+

Book Content:  B

Steam Factor:  You can play it out loud

Violence:  Graphic

Genre:  Science Fiction/Contemporary Romance

Publisher:  Simon and Schuster

Red Hill was provided to AudioGals for review by Simon and Schuster.