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All of a Sudden

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On April 21, 2016, three vastly different individuals of different ages woke up on top of their graves. Each of them died on April 20th but in different years, and each of them had not aged since their untimely deaths.

One of them was Beverley Smith, a maid for the Bartons, a powerful Dallas family. The Bartons raped and murdered her in 1969. Her husband and son searched for her for over forty years. Another was Frank Prescott, a wealthy owner of a famous restaurant chain, who died in 2010 from a heart attack after a confrontation with his son, who was embezzling money from his company. The third person was Madison Keller, a fourteen-year-old girl, who died in a fire in 2007 along with her parents and other younger siblings.

The three struggled to acclimate themselves into a society that doubted their identity. People didn’t believe them. People thought they were nuts. Beverley and Frank sought revenge against their tormentors who were responsible for their violent deaths. Madison, who feared being sent to an orphanage, searched for someone to care for her.

Like all of R.P. Wolff’s novels, All of a Sudden is a page turner with unexpected twists that keeps the reader guessing.

367 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 19, 2017

44 people are currently reading
441 people want to read

About the author

R.P. Wolff

6 books50 followers
The seventh of eight children, R.P. Wolff was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1962. He and his wife moved to Dallas, Texas in the 1990s where they now reside with their teenaged daughter.

R.P. Wolff is an author of four, action-packed, page-turning novels. Unlike most authors, R.P. Wolff never had a desire to write novels, but he wrote legal memorandums on his day job. Then, one day, he started writing a science-fiction story, and, unlike the legal memorandums, he enjoyed it. It wasn’t a chore. He showed a sample to a respected co-worker, and that person thought it was excellent. This encouragement led R.P. Wolff to write multiple novels.

After struggling with his science-fiction story, he decided to read Stephen King’s book: On Writing - A Memoir of the Craft. In King’s book, King gave an assignment to write a short story about a role reversal where the ex-wife tries to kill the ex-husband. R.P. Wolff took on this assignment. It began as a short, five-page project to learn how to write without an outline. Well … 300-plus pages later, R.P. Wolff composed Father Forgive Me: For I have definitely sinned. He didn’t stop there. All of a Sudden is now R.P. Wolff’s fourth novel in less than two years. His daily goal is to write 1,000 words.

Thank you for taking a chance on a new author.

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5 stars
41 (49%)
4 stars
17 (20%)
3 stars
15 (18%)
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7 (8%)
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3 (3%)
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
Profile Image for Michelle .
219 reviews41 followers
June 13, 2017
This audiobook was given to me for free at my request and I am providing a voluntary review.

SPOILERS AHEAD! The premise of the book was intriguing, people coming back from the dead to fix the loose ends they left behind. A woman fights for her murderers to be prosecuted, a man tries to fix his legacy, and a girl brings closure to the man who saved her. The dialogue was pretty repetitive, and the narrator was a bit awkward with her phrasing and emotion at times, but overall it was interesting plotwise.

The sexual content felt forced. I find it hard to believe that a 20-something year old woman would see her now almost 80 year old husband and the first thing they want to do is have sex? Not talk about everything she's missed in their lives, not take a second to process the fact that her husband is old enough to be her grandfather, but just hop into bed with him? I dunno, didn't seem realistic. I also thought the rape scene at the beginning was slightly awkward, sounding almost like a porn scene instead of a traumatic experience. But that may just be my personal bias.

With more experience I think this author has some promise, he just needs a better copyeditor.
Profile Image for Teresa.
1,900 reviews33 followers
June 28, 2020
An intriguing idea and a good story.

The premise of three people with no connection while living, died in different circumstances, in different years, but on the same day, April 20th. All suddenly all three alive again on April 21, on after over forty years, two after considerably less.

It was a good story, but the dialogue was weak.

I enjoyed the story but found one thing that I had a hard time with. Madison. The 14 year old (who would be 20 or 21). She thinks and acts like a six year old.

I liked the ending.
Profile Image for April.
2,201 reviews58 followers
May 23, 2017
All of a Sudden
by R.P. Wolff

A murder mystery, wrapped in suspense and paranormal intrigue with a touch of romance for good measure. The reader is drawn in from the beginning and will find it hard to put down. I enjoyed this book so much I re-read it twice more.

Good job R. P. Wolff, I look forward to more in the future,
165 reviews
March 9, 2017
What A Unique Book

Can you imagine a loved one who had been dead and buried for many years waking up on top of their grave? What if there had been foul play? How do you justify them being alive? This story really makes you wonder what you would do. Plus there is a wonderful twist to end the book.
3,970 reviews14 followers
July 14, 2017
( Format : Audiobook )
"Somebody help me."
Oh, dear. This is one of those 'if' only' books - great concept and pretty good story, which kept me intrigued and wanting to discover what happens, but poorly written and with the wrong narrator compounding the flaws.
Three people - a black maid of a wealthy white couple who was raped and murdered by her employers in the sixties, a wealth businessman who has a heart attack during a confrontation with his embezzling son, and a teenage girl who dies in a fire - are all resurrected, next to where they were buried, on the same day in 2016. With no knowledge of what has happened in the period between their death and reawakening, they have firstly to come to terms with themselves and then attempt to recover their lives. A clever idea which leads into an equally good storyline.

Unfortunately, the writing does not match the sophistication of the story. The style is simple and childish, with frequent repetition and a high proportion of
dialogue, itself very repetitive of the ideas already given.. Then, too, the constant opening of a sentence with, "Well, ...", became very irritating quite quickly. To be fair to the author, the way in which people talk in real life is usually very different from dialogue in a book, with good reason - rarely are people slickly smart and articulate in everyday conversation so, quite possibly, the way in which these characters talk is far more realistic than is most fictional conversation. But it makes for very tedious listening in a book.

Much of this could have been at least partially disguised by an experienced and very talented narrator with great command of performance skills and multiple voices. Ms.Brown's voice is charming, clear and sweet - and very, very young. She would be perfect reading children's stories. What she was totally unable to do was give credible speech to the characters of this book, although she did try and her interpretation of the owner of the locker in which one of the main protagonist held a secret stash of money was very good. But he had only one line. So, not only was she unable to disguise the annoying "Well..." and other such, she gave the ongoing impression that the fourteen years old girl was a mere child of, say, seven or eight. Sadly, she was totally miscast for this reading.

By a combination of factors, therefore, and, especially, the youthful innocent inexperience of the narrator's voice, and the much too realistic dialogue with all of the flaws that this entails, this became a hard book to enjoy. I had received my copy, freely gifted to me by the rights holder, via Audiobook Boom. My thanks for that. I did appreciate the storyline itself and only wish that it had been better edited, removing much of the unnecessary repetitiveness and tidying the conversations.
Profile Image for Danielle Howe.
27 reviews
Read
August 7, 2017
I received a free copy of this book in Audio form in exchange for an honest review.
I would give this book two and a half stars. Although it wasnt exactly what I expected it to be, it certainly did have its good points that I enjoyed.
The premise of the story was genuinely intruiging. Three people, unconnected in life by blood ties, social circles or class status all died on the exact same day, years apart. Then suddenly, all three inexplicably come back to life on top of their otherwise undisturbed graves on 21st April 2016.
Each of the newly-risen people face the same problem: who could possibly believe that they are who they say they are? Surely it isn't possible for someone to simply come back from the dead? Beyond this shared difficulty however, the three characters all have very different hurdles to face in order to rebuild their lives and find their place in society.
There is a woman, brutally raped and murdered, who's only goal is to convict the people responsible for her untimely demise. There is a powerful business man who is hell bent on taking back control of his finances and empire from his dissapointing son; and most upsettingly, a fourteen year old girl, now orphaned, simply desperate to find a safe place to live and be taken care of.
However I can't pretend that their weren't some issues. I found the dialogue a little wooden, though I would be happy to accept that a large part of this could be due to the narrator of the story. She lacked any real inflection in her reading making it difficult to tell characters apart and remaining impressively monotonous throughout. A particular issue that I had related to Madisons character, because despite the book explaining several times that she was 14 years old, her thoughts and her dialogue all indicated a much younger child, which I found quite jarring.
The ending had a couple of twists that I genuinely didn't see coming. However the first of these (without wanting to give anything away) I remain a little skeptical of, and feel that a stronger 'show don't tell' approach could have been put at play throughout to make the result more believable.
All in all it wasn't really my cup of tea from a literary point of view, but the story itself was enjoyable, the premise origional, and the twists and turns for the most part unexpected.
Profile Image for Lori.
529 reviews3 followers
September 19, 2017
Overall an entertaining story, unfortunately my overall enjoyment was affected by the narration. Really intriguing and interesting concept. The story itself kept my attention and I wanted to know how it was all going to play out. There are parts of the story that were predictable but the final ending was a surprise in some ways. Not sure what I was expecting but it wasn't what happened. Even though there were several things I didn't care for in the story, it was still a very interesting, engaging and enjoyable story.

It was interesting to see how the lives of the main characters interconnected. I liked that they all came from a different time periods. Good cast of characters. Some more likable than others. You can't help but feel for Beverly, her husband and her son.

Some of the writing is repetitive. The same thing repeated several times in a slightly different way in a short period of time.

The racist remarks were grating after a while. For Beverly it's understandable, mentally she's in 1969 but not for Jerome. It's suppose to be 2016 and he's calling them "those whitey's " or these" wicked white people".

The narration sounds hollow like it's being done in a tunnel.

Even though I have some issues with her narration Danielle Brown has the potential to be a good narrator with a little more experience. She does an good job with parts of the narration. Her voice sounds young. Which works well for some of the female characters but not most of the male characters. Pastor Bryant's voice was really good. The voice she used for Madison who is 14 didn't fit. It sounded more like she 8 yr old. The straight out of character narration was good, the "in character" narration needs work. Her narration is a little flat at times especially in the beginning. It has more" character/life" as the story goes on. It also doesn't flow smoothly at times, there are some awkward pauses in between characters. With how young she sounds, she would probably do really well narrating Children/Teen/YA books. Even with my opinions on her narration she is by far not the worst narrator I have ever listened to and would listen to her narrate another book in a different genre.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and voluntarily provided this review.
Profile Image for Ryan H.
232 reviews3 followers
June 28, 2017
This was a really interesting listen and really left me in a weird mood. On one hand I loved the premise and think that I would really like a second crack at changing some things but on the other I felt like the plot and forward movement was forced. There are many adult themes and scenes throughout this listen so it is geared to a more mature audience. One thing I had to keep telling myself is that it is a fictional listen so at times you really do have to suspend yourself from reality to really enjoy the ride. I think once I did that I did get more lost in this listen. There are times throughout the story that this is more difficult than others and there are things I would like to change about the book but overall it was an engaging listen and has a lot of promise. I did, for the most part root for our 3 main characters and wanted them to be happy as well as reconcile issues from the past in their lives. One thing I did enjoy were the twists near the end of the story. I thought the book was going in a different direction and then these hit me. The narration was done admirably. Personally, I would have really liked to see more tone and inflection used with different characters voices. However, once I was a few chapters into the story I could figure out who was speaking. This story had many things going for it but, just seemed to be lacking something to make it great. I would try another book written by this author and I would also try another title narrated by this narrator as well. I was provided a copy of this audiobook at no charge in exchange for an honest review via Audiobook Boom.
Profile Image for Kitty_ranma.
500 reviews11 followers
July 8, 2018
Great premise, delivery not so good.
Audio version.
Normally I hate spoilers, so I'll try not to ruin to much. I actually really liked this until the ending.
It reminded me of the series Dallas, and Bobby's death being nothing but a nightmare. It had me thinking what was the point of it. It never answered how they come back to life nor how they got out of their graves without disturbing the ground... dang I'm saying to much.
The narrator brings the story to life.
Reasons I enjoyed this audio book:
Wonderful characters, Great world building, Unpredictable, Original, Easy-to-read/listen.
Bookshelves/tags:
angst, contemporary, mystery, rising from the grave.
This Audio book was given to me at my request from the publisher, author or narrator and I provided this unbiased voluntary review.
Profile Image for DubaiReader.
782 reviews26 followers
July 6, 2017
Disappointing.
This was an interesting premise for a story, three people awaken on top of their graves on the same day, and although they had all died on the same date, their deaths had been several years apart and their graves were in the same city but not on the same site.

First they have to convince themselves that they are alive, but that the year has drastically changed; then they must convince other people that they are who they claim to be and adjust to their new circumstances.
In their previous existences, Frank had been the millionaire owner of a pizza company, Beverley was the coloured maid for a wealthy family and Madison had been just fourteen years old when a fire burned down her house and killed herself and her family.

So, an interesting idea for a novel, but sadly, this book was poorly edited and the same words and phrases were repeated...and repeated. The dialogue was weak and the narrator was struggling, particularly with the male voices.
I had agreed to review the audio version for Audiobook Boom and so I managed to complete it, but I'm afraid I would not read this author again, nor recommend it to others.
Profile Image for Uma.
218 reviews1 follower
October 14, 2022
A rare, one of its kind, exemplary book!

A scintillating story that deals with three people who die on the same day but different years and are buried, wake up on the same day and same year!!

The story follows these three individuals through their journey after they wake up like from a dreamless sleep!!

Their sojourn through the rest of their lives keeps the readers engrossed, fascinated and riveted to the book until they come to the end of the book!! The emotions they experience are a whole gamut of sentiments the major ones being happiness and gratitude.

A huge thank you to the author R.P. Wolff for an exceedingly enthralling, enchanting and bewitching book!! The reading experience that I enjoyed while reading this book can't be described in words!!
597 reviews6 followers
December 15, 2022
A good story poorly told.

The foundation of this tale is quite solid, but the telling is critically flawed. From language choices to fingerprints found on bullets, it is clunky at best. What it does have going for it is a freshness that is uncommon. In the dark past of publishing, if this tale had been considered by one of the big publishing houses, an editor would have sent it back for rewrites. Today we get the unpolished raw work directly from the author due to the magic of self publishing.

This book is worth reading. It is entertaining. It has significant flaws. It should be enjoyed warts and all.
108 reviews2 followers
November 25, 2022
A book like no other I've read

The professional reviews described R. F. Wolff is author whose books are the same genre of Stephen King. I've read several of King's books and I wholeheartedly agree. The plot and characters are remarkable. As the book moves along it's one surprise after another. What the characters experienced was horrific and I so wanted them to succeed in their quest for revenge. I won't go any further but I believe you'll find this book every bit as exciting as I did.
Profile Image for Brad Horton.
Author 1 book20 followers
January 17, 2020
Mr. Wolff did a phenomenal job with this book. I actually read this in two days and couldn't put it down. From the very beginning, Mr. Wolff engages the audience with some very "unusual/supernatural" events and he doesn't let up. I especially loved the great ending and loved the sense of justice that prevailed. I am definitely looking forward to reading Mr. Wolff's other works and also hopeful that he has some more in the works!
1,146 reviews7 followers
January 20, 2023
Return from the Dead

Interesting premise done in by amateurish writing.

Three people return from the dead. Two are determined to right the wrongs that led to their deaths and one is looking for safety, security and love. Not as much fun as it could have been. Still worth a read. 2.5 stars
Profile Image for Deedra.
3,932 reviews39 followers
July 20, 2017
I tried,I really did.The premise of this book sounded good.It MAY have been good.Danielle Brown did the worst narration I have heard in awhile.I could not finish the book.I was provided this book by the author,narrator or publisher.
89 reviews
August 12, 2017
Great book

This book was so good I couldn't put it down. The very first page had me hooked. The ending was very clever. I don't want to spoil it for future readers. I hope they had their brain tumors looked into.
Profile Image for angela.
70 reviews2 followers
August 12, 2017
Horrible writing

The premise sounded interesting. However I was only able to slog my way through a few chapters before giving up.
The dialogue is forced and unnatural. Very amateurish. Massive amount of typos.
I would recommend not reading.
25 reviews5 followers
September 19, 2020
This was quite an unusual book. Even though these people waking up on top of their burial sites can't possibly happen, it made a well written and interesting book. There was a lot of suspense throughout. I found it haed to put down.
Profile Image for Linda Anderson.
520 reviews8 followers
January 19, 2023
OMG

I couldn't put it down! Why did it take so long for me to find this author. I just finished this book and it is the middle of the night. I wish that I could get a do over for part of my life. I loved this book!
4 reviews
January 28, 2024
Ok hear me out

So, well written and another new story but as you get closer to the end you can predict the end OR so you think. Then, BAM, I did not see it coming. So, yes excellent surprise ending.
5 reviews
June 18, 2024
The storyline is very interesting! I didn't want to put the book down. I noticed a few inconsistencies in the story but nothing that turned me away. The ending was a little bit of a let down but overall the book was a good read.
Profile Image for Howard Katzoff.
280 reviews5 followers
May 23, 2017
A really neat story!!

What a great experience it was to read this book. It's definitely the most unusual story I've read and I read a lot!! Give yourself a gift and read it.
357 reviews29 followers
June 6, 2017
I thought this was a very good book. Please read what others
have to say, as I am not a good reviewer. But I liked the book.
911 reviews15 followers
March 22, 2018
What a truly wonderful story! I usually don’t read supernatural but this one sounded different so I decided to buy it. What a surprise! I loved it! So different! A great read from start to finish!
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews

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