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    The Ugly Duckling
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    The Ugly Duckling
    Unavailable
    The Ugly Duckling
    Audiobook (abridged)3 hours

    The Ugly Duckling

    Written by Iris Johansen

    Narrated by Robin Mattson

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    If fate suddenly made you more beautiful that you ever dreamed possible, would it be the beginning of a fairy tale, or your worst nightmare?

    The brutal attack should have killed anybody, but Nell Calder did more than survive. She emerged a woman transformed, with an exquisite beauty found only in fairy tales. Nell Calder deserved a happy ending. Instead, her descent into terror has just begun.

    Her attacker is still on the hunt, determined to finish what he's started. And Nell, protected by a new face, is just as determined to fight back and take her revenge. But to catch her prey, she will have to expose herself-even if it makes her a killer's prime target.


    From the Paperback edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJul 5, 2000
    ISBN9780553751178
    Unavailable
    The Ugly Duckling
    Author

    Iris Johansen

    Iris Johansen is the New York Times bestselling author of Chasing the Night, Blood Game, Eve, and Eight Days to Live, among others. She began writing after her children left home for college, and first achieved success in the early 1980s writing category romances. In 1991, she began writing suspense historical romance novels, and in 1996 she turned to crime fiction, with which she has had great success. She lives near Atlanta, Georgia.

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    Reviews for The Ugly Duckling

    4/5

    233 ratings9 reviews

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    • 2/5
      ....typical....unoriginal. ....sounded good but too predictable.....I like her writing style though and will read others.
    • 3/5
      The back cover of "The Ugly Duckling" asks: "If fate suddenly made you more beautiful than you ever dreamed possible, would it be the beginning of a fairy tale, or your worst nightmare...?" However, that rhetorical question does not even come close to scratching the surface on this thriller by Iris Johansen because by the time Nell Calder is transformed into a beautiful swan she is already living a horrible nightmare. As a little girl it was pounded into Nell's head by her mother than she was never going to be the swan, always the ugly duckling. As an adult Nell is married to a handsome executive and has a four-year old daughter, but the doubts are always there. Then there is an attack on a party at which her husband and child are killed and Nell is horribly scarred. Yes, she emerges as a stunning beauty, but inside is that creature of doubt, transformed not so much by the amazing surgery but by the brutality of events.

      "The Ugly Duckling" is not great fiction, but it is a first class, fast moving thriller where the psychological dimensions of survival are given as much play as the physical. Of course, if you stop and think about it, most fairy tales have their nightmarish aspects, so maybe that back cover blurb was not off as much as we might have thought.
    • 4/5
      This is the story that shows the transformation of a woman from an unattractive, submissive wife, into an assertive and lovely woman who knows what she wants and how to achieve it.Nell Calder wasn't born beautiful, a fact that her unfeeling mother had informed her about. How Nell was able to grow normally in a home with such an unfeeling mother was a tribute to an inner strength that Nell didn't know she had.Nell married well but at a party on an island in the Aegean Sea, her husband, Richard, a banker, and her precious four-year-old daughter, Jill, were murdered. Nell fell from a balcony during a struggle with a killer and was so badly injured that she needed plastic surgery.After her surgery, Nell's appearance changed to that of a beautiful woman, but inside, she was still a shell. When she learned that her family had been murdered, she went into a depressed state.Nicholas TAnek was at the party and felt somewhat responsible that he couldn't stop the murders. He tells Nell that the man responsible for the killings is Philippe Gardeaux and that the killings were carried out by Gardeaux's man, Paul Maritz. Nicholas informs Nell that Gardeaux is a criminal and is attempting to win favor and position with the Columbian drug lords. After learning of the man who ordered her family murdered, Nell has a new reason to live, revenge.The author does a nice job in describing Nell's progress into a woman possessed with the desire for revenge. We witness her vigorous physical training and learning how to use weapons to use against the killer.I enjoyed reading this fast moving novel and reading of the interesting characters.The novel was enjoyable.
    • 4/5
      Johansen, like Roberts and Coulter, is one of those that has made it onto the bestseller lists and can be found in other than the romance section--in this case, this novel was found in general fiction and works as a thriller and mystery, and it has a fairly clean style that can hold point of view. It fits in the standard revenge plot, as the titular heroine, Nell, works to avenge her family's death--plastic surgery upgrades her from ugly duckling to swan. Well-paced, often suspenseful, this story zipped along and I cared about the characters, including and especially Nell and her love Nicholas, who works with her against the villains of the story. Nice twist too at the end.
    • 4/5
      This isn't a book that I was dying to read. It was one that I had kind of left behind because it didn't sound that great. However, I was pleasantly surprised to have really liked it! In fact, I liked it enough that I read it in 2 days.Tanek is the perfect savior for Nell. He's determined and driven, but soft and caring when he's needed to be. Nell is also driven and a little stubborn to boot. They work well together once they lay it all out there! There is one part of the story that Nell takes into her own hands, and I thought that it worked well for the story.Overall, I'm really glad that I went back to read this one.
    • 5/5
      it kept me all glued. I wished it was longer
    • 4/5
      The best Johansen's book I read so far!!

      Even if some general traits of this book are quite common among other books of the same genre and, most of all, other books of the same author, I think in this case the storyline and the characters were developped with more care and attention to the details and it really paid off! All the secrets machinations and intrigues that linked one character with the others made this book even more enjoyable and intriguing.
    • 5/5
      Recommended by a student, my students and I loved it, but my reading group was not impressed. I still recommend it, and most reviews are positive.
    • 5/5
      I love it when a shy helpless woman learns to get strong and then in turn gets freedom from her monsters!