
The Beginning of Everything
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Hannah Curtis
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By:
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Jackie Fraser
About this listen
An irresistible friends-to-lovers novel of resilience, hope, and new beginnings from the author of The Bookshop of Second Chances
“A charming book about hope for a new life full of love!”—Nancy Thayer, New York Times bestselling author of All the Days of Summer
After escaping a bad relationship, Jess Cavendish is running and leaving it all behind, carrying just a few treasured belongings in her knapsack. She needs to start over, but that means sleeping where she can and making the most of her slim savings. Luckily, she comes across a recently sold, unoccupied house. It couldn’t hurt to stay there while she saves up enough to get her own place, right?
Gethin Thomas is also looking to move on after the end of a long-term relationship. He’s returned to his hometown, anxious to renovate the fixer-upper he bought and move out of his sister’s cramped guest room. When he walks through the door one morning, he finds Jess, who’s ready to run again, and surprises them both by offering to let her stay. It feels like the right thing to do, but Jess doesn’t want a handout. They strike a bargain: Jess will help with the restoration, furnishing, and decorating in exchange for room and board.
While they peel wallpaper and shop for new furniture, an unexpected friendship develops as they bond over music and food, and slowly open up to each other about their pasts. When it’s time for Gethin to move in, he convinces Jess to be his official housemate and she agrees—so long as he lets her pay rent. The connection between them soon shifts to an attraction that seems both inevitable and overwhelming, and Jess must decide what she wants. With so much hurt in her past, can she risk loving again? She was brave enough to reach for a new life—and now a future she hadn’t even dreamed possible could be just within her grasp.
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I couldn't do it
- By Josie on 06-23-17
By: Jane Green
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Recipe for a Charmed Life
- By: Rachel Linden
- Narrated by: Traci Odom
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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American chef Georgia May Jackson has one goal—to run her own restaurant in Paris. After a grueling decade working in Parisian kitchens, she is on the cusp of success. But in one disastrous night, Georgia loses her sous-chef position, her French boyfriend, and her sense of taste! Renowned for her refined palate and daring use of bold flavors to create remarkable dishes, Georgia is devastated to discover her culinary gift has simply...vanished. When she receives a surprising invitation from her estranged mother, Georgia flees to a small island near Seattle.
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a little magical realism
- By Donna A on 02-27-24
By: Rachel Linden
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A December to Remember
- By: Jenny Bayliss
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Sastre
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Wildly different half sisters Maggie, Simone, and Star have hardly seen one another since their sprightly summers at Rowan Thorp, their eccentric father Augustus’s home. Known for his bustling approach to the knick-knack shop he ran, Augustus was loved by all and known by none, not even his daughters. Now, years later, the three estranged women are called upon for the reading of Augustus’s will and quickly realize he's orchestrated a series of hoops through which they must jump to unlock their inheritance.
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great audio
- By Morgan on 12-02-23
By: Jenny Bayliss
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Children of the Stars
- By: Mario Escobar
- Narrated by: Zach Hoffman
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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August 1942. Jacob and Moses Stein, two young Jewish brothers, are staying with their aunt in Paris amid the Nazi occupation. The boys’ parents, well-known German playwrights, have left the brothers in their aunt’s care until they can find safe harbor for their family. But before the Steins can reunite, a great and terrifying roundup occurs. The French gendarmes, under Nazi order, arrest the boys and take them to the Vélodrome d’Hiver - a massive, bleak structure in Paris where thousands of France’s Jews are being forcibly detained.
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Innocence can only be lost once
- By Kenny Russell on 09-01-21
By: Mario Escobar
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The Secrets She Keeps
- A Novel
- By: Michael Robotham
- Narrated by: Lucy Price-Lewis
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Agatha is pregnant and works part time stocking shelves at a grocery store in a ritzy London suburb, counting down the days until her baby is due. As the hours of her shifts creep by in increasing discomfort, the one thing she looks forward to at work is catching a glimpse of Meghan, the effortlessly chic customer whose elegant lifestyle dazzles her. Meghan has it all: two perfect children, a handsome husband, a happy marriage, and a stylish group of friends, and she writes perfectly droll confessional posts on her popular parenting blog.
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High praise!!
- By Getshotzi on 08-05-17
By: Michael Robotham
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The Roanoke Girls
- A Novel
- By: Amy Engel
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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After her mother's suicide, 15-year-old Lane Roanoke came to live with her grandparents and fireball cousin, Allegra, on their vast estate in rural Kansas. Lane knew little of her mother's mysterious family, but she quickly embraced life as one of the rich and beautiful Roanoke girls. But when she discovered the dark truth at the heart of the family, she ran...fast and far away. Eleven years later Lane is adrift in Los Angeles when her grandfather calls to tell her Allegra has gone missing. Did she run, too? Or something worse?
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Ick, ugh, yuck! Spoilers ahead!
- By NMwritergal on 03-12-17
By: Amy Engel
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The Last Dress from Paris
- By: Jade Beer
- Narrated by: Tamsin Topolski
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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London, 2017. There’s no one Lucille adores more than her grandmother. So when her beloved Granny Sylvie asks for Lucille’s assistance with a small matter, she’s happy to help. The next thing she knows, Lucille is on a train to Paris, tasked with retrieving a priceless Dior dress. But not everything is as it seems, and what Lucille finds in a small Parisian apartment will have her scouring the city for answers to a question that could change her entire life.
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The Last Dress from Paris
- By Mona-Alisa on 07-01-22
By: Jade Beer
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A Bridge Across the Ocean
- By: Susan Meissner
- Narrated by: Kim Bubbs
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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February, 1946. World War Two is over, but the recovery from the most intimate of its horrors has only just begun for Annaliese Lange, a German ballerina desperate to escape her past, and Simone Deveraux, the wronged daughter of a French Résistance spy. Now the two women are joining hundreds of other European war brides aboard the renowned RMS Queen Mary to cross the Atlantic and be reunited with their American husbands. Their new lives in the United States brightly beckon until their tightly held secrets are laid bare in their shared stateroom.
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Don't like ghost stories
- By connie nance on 03-18-17
By: Susan Meissner
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Stay with Me
- A Novel
- By: Ayobami Adebayo
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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Yejide and Akin have been married since they met and fell in love at university. Though many expected Akin to take several wives, he and Yejide have always agreed: Polygamy is not for them. But four years into their marriage - after consulting fertility doctors and healers, trying strange teas and unlikely cures - Yejide is still not pregnant. She assumes she still has time - until her family arrives on her doorstep with a young woman they introduce as Akin's second wife.
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Do better
- By Adetoun Kolapo on 01-29-18
By: Ayobami Adebayo
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The Editor
- By: Steven Rowley
- Narrated by: Michael Urie
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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After years of trying to make it as a writer in 1990s New York City, James Smale finally sells his novel to an editor at a major publishing house: none other than Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Jackie - or Mrs. Onassis, as she's known in the office - has fallen in love with James' candidly autobiographical novel, one that exposes his own dysfunctional family. But when the book's forthcoming publication threatens to unravel already fragile relationships, both within his family and with his partner, James finds that he can't bring himself to finish the manuscript.
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Great story
- By Amazon Customer on 04-18-19
By: Steven Rowley
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We Are Not Like Them
- A Novel
- By: Christine Pride, Jo Piazza
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Shayna Small, Kevin R. Free, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Jen and Riley have been best friends since kindergarten. As adults, they remain as close as sisters, though their lives have taken different directions. Jen married young, and after years of trying, is finally pregnant. Riley pursued her childhood dream of becoming a television journalist and is poised to become one of the first Black female anchors of the top news channel in their hometown of Philadelphia. But the deep bond they share is severely tested when Jen’s husband, a city police officer, is involved in the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager.
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These Author’s UNDERSTOOD the assignment!
- By Queenwdg on 10-25-21
By: Christine Pride, and others
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The Winemaker's Wife
- By: Kristin Harmel
- Narrated by: Robin Eller, Lisa Flanagan, Madeleine Maby
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of the “engrossing” (People) and “poignant” (Booklist) international best seller The Room on Rue Amélie comes a remarkable and moving story of love, danger, and betrayal: two women in France in the darkest days of World War II and another in present-day America on a quest to uncover the secret that connects them.
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The narration was like nails on a chalkboard!
- By Diane on 08-20-19
By: Kristin Harmel
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A Spark of Light
- A Novel
- By: Jodi Picoult
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin, Jodi Picoult
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The number-one New York Times best-selling author of Small Great Things returns with a powerful and provocative new novel about ordinary lives that intersect during a heart-stopping crisis. The warm fall day starts like any other at the Center - a women’s reproductive health services clinic. Then, in late morning, a desperate and distraught gunman bursts in and opens fire, taking all inside hostage. After rushing to the scene, Hugh McElroy, a police hostage negotiator, sets up a perimeter. Then he finds out that his 15-year-old daughter, Wren, is inside the clinic.
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✫✫ 4 Stars ✫✫
- By ❤️Cyndi Marie❤️🎧Audiobook Addicts🎧 on 10-05-18
By: Jodi Picoult
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The Business of Lovers
- A Novel
- By: Eric Jerome Dickey
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman, Amir Abdullah
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Unlike their younger brother, André, whose star as a comedian is rising, neither Dwayne nor Brick Duquesne is having luck with his career - and they're unluckier still in love. Former child star Dwayne has just been fired from his latest acting role and barely has enough money to get by after paying child support to his spiteful former lover, while Brick struggles to return to his uninspiring white-collar job after suffering the dual blows of a health emergency and a nasty breakup with the woman he still loves.
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I absolutely adore the author
- By Karena Allen on 04-28-20
What listeners say about The Beginning of Everything
Highly rated for:
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- Susan Ry
- 08-03-24
Learning to trust
It’s the kind of book you snuggle up with on a rainy day. I kept worrying that something else bad was going to happen to Jess so I went back and read the other reviews. When I found that nothing would, I stopped worrying and settled back into Jess’s journey. I enjoy the way Jackie Fraser writes dialogue, especially the tougher conversations. It’s a story of an intelligent woman learning to trust others and value herself after escaping a bad relationship. It’s a slow and sometimes agonizing process. Something many can relate to. The narration was excellent. I’m not familiar with a Welsh accent but loved listening to Curtis’ performance.
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- Linzleh
- 04-03-24
Engaging story
Well written & very well voice acted. A pleasant afternoon listen. A compassion filled story that explores a woman's response to abuse and a man's gentle nurturing to assist her recovery.
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- Celia
- 08-01-24
Heartfelt, lovely
Jackie Fraser’s books are comfort reads for me. Already have and love the audiobook for the first book, The Bookshop of Second Chances, and this one didn’t disappoint. I literally check once a week to see if she has anything else on the horizon. It’s a different vibe than the typical popular cartoon romances, and I own and enjoy plenty of those, but these are the ones I re-read and re-play. Narration was very good as well. 10/10 recommend.
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- Valerie L.
- 09-30-24
Endearing
Nice story with interesting characters. A little slow at first, but soon picked up, so stick with it, for it is so worth it. Lovely story and narration.
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- Vvvillus
- 01-12-25
Lovely Read. Not a Great Listen.
I absolutely loved Bookshop of Second Chances and love to re-listen to it. Ell Potter is one of my favorite narrators, and that is how I found Jackie Fraser. After finishing the first, I had high hopes for this story, but I couldn't even make it through the first chapter. The narration is just so off, and I initially thought the main character, Jess, was a much older woman because of it. I decided to read this one instead and got hooked straight away. The characters are lovely, engaging, and believable. What a fresh take on love/romance. I returned to the audiobook at the end as I was excited to finish the book, but I had a drive ahead. It was easier the second time since I already had a picture of Jess in my head, but I still couldn't help but be distracted by the narrator's voice again. I hope Ell Potter returns for Jackie's next book.
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- Placeholder
- 11-05-23
A rare gift
Adults finding their way with kindness and patience: imagine! well-matched narrator, engaging, unusual, and fun.
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- Gliknis
- 11-05-23
Lovely Story Awful Narrator
This was a nice love story although slow at times. The narrator however was awful. She makes the characters sound significantly older than they are and she does a poor job of distinguishing her voice between characters so at times it’s hard to tell which character is the one speaking. This makes the story dull and confusing.
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- John
- 02-11-24
Loved it
I loved The Bookshop of Second Chances, and I loved this story as well. Better, really.
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- Jan
- 09-15-24
Worth it
I just wanted more of the story. I wanted to know what happened. It was an interesting fun, read.
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- Jason Mark
- 01-02-25
Not as good as her other book.
The story was fine, but it rambled a bit too much and there was some kind of unnecessary drama near the end. It just felt dragged out and unnecessary.
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