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    The Toll
    The Toll
    The Toll
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Toll

    Written by Cherie Priest

    Narrated by T. Ryder Smith

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    About this audiobook

    State Road 177 runs along the Suwannee River, between Fargo, Georgia, and the Okefenokee Swamp. Drive that route from east to west, and you'll cross six bridges. Take it from west to east, and you might find seven. But you'd better hope not. Titus and Davina Bell leave their hotel in Fargo for a second honeymoon canoeing the Okefenokee Swamp. But shortly before they reach their destination, they draw up to a halt at the edge of a rickety bridge with old stone pilings, with room for only one car . . . When, much later, a tow-truck arrives, the driver finds Titus lying in the middle of the road, but Davina is nowhere to be found. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJul 9, 2019
    ISBN9781980003038
    Author

    Cherie Priest

    Cherie Priest debuted to great acclaim with Four and Twenty Blackbirds, Wings to the Kingdom, and Not Flesh Nor Feathers, a trilogy of Southern Gothic ghost stories featuring heroine Eden Moore. She is also the author of Fathom, Dreadnought, and Boneshaker, which was nominated for a Nebula and Hugo Award and won the PNBA Award and the Locus Award for best science-fiction novel. She is an associate editor at Subterranean Press. Born in Tampa, Florida, Priest went to college at Southern Adventist University and earned her master’s in rhetoric at the University of Tennessee. After spending most of her life in the southern United States, she recently moved to Seattle, Washington, with her husband, Aric, and a fat black cat named Spain.

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    Reviews for The Toll

    4/5

    164 ratings15 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Great little listen. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Great narration that gave me more than a few out loud chuckles. Worth your time.❤️

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Outstanding book. Just enough creepy vibes. Loved it - great characters too!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Really fun! Spooky Southern Gothic with all The attendant creeping dread. Lovecraftian characters and elements as well as being reminiscent of Stephen King.


      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Exceptionally written and performed! Some have given it low marks for being stereotypical, but this is how I remember people being, growing up in the Deep South. The horror is real, and the humor is hilarious! Read/listen to this book. You won’t regret it.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      End was ok. Book was really good. Worth the listen

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Much better than it had any right to be. Standard American 21st century horror. A pinch of Lovecraft, a dollop of Stephen King, a little bit of swamp gas. But the author has a knack for character and narrative that makes this genre selection add up to more than its parts.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Excellent weird horror story and perhaps the best audiobook performance I have ever heard.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Excellent writing and character development, but the plot line was pandering and wandered.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      If you're a fan of the Tiffany Aching, Discworld series, I think youll find something yo like here. Literally the only way this book would get less than five stars from me is because I want more. I'm hoping it is the start of a series that I can dive into. These characters have ensnared me.
    • 5/5
      Great audio Great story characters and narrator. Will suggest it greatly.
    • 3/5
      I picked this book up on a whim the month after it came out, and it has been sadly sitting on my shelves since then. I think that all bookworms can attest that they have their fair share of backlog book buys. Anyway, when I saw this audio book added to my library system, I knew that it was time to dive in. I’ve been intrigued by Cherie Priest’s blend of southern gothic and horror for a while. The Toll just seemed like something that would be right in my wheelhouse. A mysterious bridge that appears and then people disappear? A tiny town in the middle of nowhere, with a dark secret? What’s not to love?First off I have to say that if you have a chance to pick this up in audio form, please do it! T. Ryder Smith does such an amazing job of bringing this story to life. Cam’s elderly aunts had my heart from the first moment that they stepped onto the page. The book opens on their tiny home, where Cam feels like the walls are closing in around him. Despite his deep love for this adopted family, Cam wonders what is going on beyond his small slice of the world. Nothing happens in his small town. Or does it?Cherie Priest takes the reader through a twisting mystery that is definitely uncomfortably dark at times. I loved how there is hints at the magic that runs through this town, but nothing is ever hammered down. Instead the reader is taken into that gray area between worlds, where things that we are not meant to see lurk in the darkness. In the case of Titus, and his unfortunate wife, these are hungry things that demand a toll. There is so much atmosphere wrapped up in this book. From the bleakness of the town, to the desperation of the townspeople, and back around to Cam being the one shining light through it all.My biggest issue with this book was honestly just the pacing. It takes a good while for things to get going well enough for the story to really take off. While I was happy to follow Cam, with his rebellious little personality, it felt like those “creature” horror movies. You know the ones. Where the creature isn’t revealed until the very end, and even then only for a few seconds? I will say that The Toll doesn’t go that far. The ending of this is actually rather satisfying, if not quite what I expected. Still, I felt like I just wanted a little more forward motion to this story.I had a blast reading it though, so it gets a solid 3-star rating from me! I’ll be over here, eagerly awaiting more.
    • 3/5
      I loved the Eden Moore trilogy, and Cheshire Reds is one of my favorite urban fantasies (too bad that series was abandoned after just two books). Since I don't generally, with a few exceptions, care for steampunk, I haven't been following Cherie Priest that much lately, so I was excited to stumble across The Toll while browsing at Barnes & Noble.Sadly, a real disappointment. Eden Moore this just ain't. At least, though, it's pretty clearly a stand-alone and won't likely become a series. Hoping Priest's next endeavor is a bit more successful because none of the characters in The Toll spark any real interest and the plot just plods along.
    • 3/5
      Newlyweds Titus and Davina Bell are traveling along the State Highway headed for a camping honeymoon in the Okefenokee swamp. They come across a rickety one-lane bridge which they take as a shortcut to their destination. This is where everything starts to go all wrong in the gothic tale The Toll by Cherie Priest.Titus wakes to find himself lying in the middle of the road next to his still idling car. Davina is nowhere in sight. The sheriff and a tow truck show up but Davina still can't be found. Titus decides to stay in a nearby town while they continue to search for his wife. The one-horse town is home to a bar, a motel and little else save for the strange inhabitants who call it home. Among these are a pair of old ladies and the young boy they care for. The ladies are an especially eccentric pair of sisters who are rumored to be witches and are wise in the ways of the swamp.The tension in the story comes more from the moody atmosphere than any actual action. An attractive waitress and her bartender boyfriend are among the other interesting characters. They and the sisters are the best parts of the book. The problem with the book is the amount of time spent with Titus. Titus is a thoroughly unenjoyable and unsympathetic character. He appears to be intentionally written that way however it doesn't make spending time with him any easier.T. Ryder Smith does a good job with the narration. His tone fits the southern setting and the accents feel of the time and place. He does a particularly good job with the elderly sisters who are my favorite characters in the book. This is an interesting tale of gothic suspense which would rate much higher if not for the character of Titus and the amount of time spent with him.The Toll will appeal to fans of gothic suspense and light horror. The audio version is very well done.I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher.
    • 5/5
      Despite the towering to-be-read pile, Cherie Priest is must-buy, must-read. I can confirm I made the right choice. Gothic but also modern, horror but very little slime/spatter, relationships but no happily-ever-after promises.As always, I love the way Priest handles language. The rhythm of the words gives the dialog a southern flavor without resorting to dialect. Little twists are woven in so that they surprise but do not distract. Descriptions of the town and swamp also flow beautifully, never taking me out of the story. I also like that not everything is explained, but can still be understood by inference - I will spend some time looking up haints!If you like spooky, southern mystery / horror with lots of shades of gray, this will suit you fine.
    • 4/5
      A town that is lost in time and a bridge that has a cost to cross come together in this horror tale with some creepy twists!