Cure

Narrator Genevieve Swallow has a strong voice and an authoritative BBC accent: It's a shame she doesn't stick to it throughout this audio. Jo Marchant's fair-minded and deeply compassionate work explores the power of placebos, meditation, hypnosis, and similar therapies to influence our health. She is an outstanding reporter who enlivens her narrative using interviews with patients and medical professionals around the world as she separates the promising research from the quackery. Unfortunately, Swallow gives each of these subjects his or her own accent and distinctive speech style, which is cloying and inappropriate in a work of journalism. It's a regrettable decision because the straightforward narration she uses for Marchant's own words would have been enough to carry her through the whole volume. D.B. � AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine