Great book, annoying audio

For the love of god, if you're narrating an audiobook and find yourself smacking your lips and slobbering several times in one session, please take a break, drink sone water, come back to it later! This is a good book so I stuck with it, but it's so frustrating that it's been marred by sloppy narration, lack of editing for errors and stumbles and inferior sound quality.

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Wonderful new insight

I have listened to Richard over a period of three years and have found his books to be encouraging helpful and funny one day we will all go to the place he mentions in his books and not forgetting jennifer shaffer without her these books would not come to life. Pun not intended. Looking forward to your next episodes be it a documentary or a film.

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Love the concept, but the dialogue is often confusing and difficult to follow when there are multiple characters interacting

Overall I’m a big fan of the series, and of the concept in general; “celebrities” who are known to have passed over(inc. religious leaders and well known figures from history) are interviewed in a “classroom” setting on the other side /heaven or whatever you want to call it (the “flip-side”). The idea being that this classroom occurs regularly at a set time and place, and these figures can just show up “in class” if they have an important message for loved ones, or otherwise have something to say, or if they are invited to class by the interviewer and author himself, Richard Martini. These personalities are assisted on their side by a good communicator (Richard Martini’s good friend, Luana Anders, who passed from breast cancer in 1996) and interpreted on this side by psychic medium, Jennifer Shaffer. The idea being that all parties learn from each other how best to communicate between our Earth plane and the “flip-side”.
I will say as a whole, that the books have a wonderful energy about them. I have also grown to like Richard Martini, as we invariably tend to hear a lot about his life and interests. A personal criticism on my end however, is that the interviewees are heavily weighted towards personalities the author knew in life, and also around the US market in general. Being from the UK, I therefore found some of the interviews a tad uninteresting. I also became a bit irritated when Martini dismissed the personality known as “Marilyn Monroe”, telling her that “it isn’t important how [she] died”. I’m sure I’m not the only one who would have LOVED to hear her interviewed about the circumstances surrounding her death. Alas, you won’t find it here as the interaction was never revisited.
On the whole, I found Martini’s narration and his reading of his own parts absolutely fine, especially when I slowed down the speed swing on audible to 1x (for some reason it was set to 1.2). However, as Martini reads all the different roles without actors, the speedy conversations between multiple characters discussing esoteric concepts by way of multiple metaphors, can become very difficult to follow. I gave up on following the conversation / understanding what was going on, on more than one occasion. I found myself wishing the other “voices” were read by actors, so that I might begin to unravel what was happening sometimes. As Martini often points out, the sessions with Shaffer and the flip-side are unedited and included in the book verbatim. So when those on the flip-side don’t directly answer the question asked and/or another personality interjects either sarcastically or otherwise, it doesn’t translate well to have all these quick and different exchanges being read by just one person.
That said, in the later chapters of this third book, Martini seems to become more persistent and pertinent in his questioning of the “Flip-side” personalities. This ”drilling down” into what the personality is attempting to communicate helps clears up the annoying ambiguities and/or contradictions which are otherwise commonplace when interpreting exchanges via a psychic medium (the chapter featuring Jesus and Amelia Earhart is a good example example of this). He also pauses to “unpack” what was said at times in the third book, which again is a welcome addition to the narration.
In conclusion, I very much enjoyed reading this third title, and look forward to the fourth collaboration between Martini and Shaffer. I felt there was enough new content to make up for the sometimes slightly repetitive content, although in fairness some of this repetition is necessary to allow the book to be read as a ”standalone“ title, (ie without the need to have read the previous two “Flip-sides”). It would also be great to see an alternative edited version “per personality” of the exchanges found in the book, maybe as a second half of the same book. Oh and next time, as well as hearing more from figures involved in myths/legends/conspiracies in general, you might let those of us who don’t find the circumstances surrounding Marilyn’s death as irrelevant as you do, know what the icon that was Norma Jean has to bloody say!

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