Six Stories (Six Stories, #1)

by Matt Wesolowski

[zooloo1983]

This audiobook and book demands your respect and your time! I can imagine reading this book was intense but listening to the audiobook was just crazy! As the book is a series of podcasts, each chapter depicting the events from a different person’s point of view with interludes to the past and the discovery of the body. When listening to the audiobook, each character was “played” by a different actor and giving life to them. The fact this was an audiobook, you can not speed through the book, you have to wait for the narration to play out so when the intensity is ramped up you have to wait patiently for it all to play out. So when the fall out happens it shocked me and I think a few time I said Holy frogs in my car. I was forever wishing for traffic on my way to work so I didn’t have to stop listening! I also had to keep googling Six Stories because it felt so real. I felt like this podcast was telling us a story that actually happened, this is kudos to Matt’s writing for sure!

It is great to meet Scott King and his introduction to his podcast, taking us down memory lane to an unsolved murder that happened 20 years ago, not trying to solve the crime and discover the murderer of Tom Jeffries but to understand what happened that fateful day. Scott is there to put the demons to rest, or he is there to stir them up again?

I love the character building in this. You have a podcast episode devoted to the one person and Scott interviewing them. You learn about what makes them tick and slowly but surely they drop bombshells in their interview, revealing things they probably shouldn’t be. Could one of them be the murderer? From the initial interviews, it is clear that not everyone remembers everything clearly that happened that night. Memories get twisted and confused and information is withheld. Information to help us make more informed decisions, every one of them is a liability, and who doesn’t love the unreliable witness!

This book was creepy with the folklore around the marsh and this is one thing that Matt does so effortlessly. He blurs the line of reality and the paranormal, making you question what happened that night with Tom? There were times when I had goosebumps with the more supernatural side of things, two words – Nanna Wrack and this is something I love, I mean who doesn’t enjoy a good scare!

Six Stories is such a compelling read and listen, I loved the format of the podcast, to me, it was refreshing. I was hooked, the parts were played perfectly and everyone got the voices to a T. The fact as well that I was enthralled by everyone’s story, the mystery behind Tom and what happened that night that when there was a big reveal I just DID NOT see it coming! And again those frogs that are holy appeared!! It is creepy and atmospheric, you feel unsettled and cold especially when you experience the nights around the marsh. It gets completely under your skin and I love a book that can do that to you. I am glad I listened to this because one of the main things I loved, which I also moaned about, is the speed at which everything unfurled. The fact it was dictated to me to how fast the book went added to all and trepidation that I felt.

I still have Hydra to read, but after Six Stories and Changeling, I am WAY excited for Beast and to see what is in store for us next!