The Legend of Sleepy Hollow – Washington Irving

Title: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
Publishing Info: September 9, 2014 by Audible Studios
Source: Audible
Genres: Adult, Classics
Find it on the web: Buy from Amazon // GoodreadsDate Completed: September 11, 2014

    In the secluded Dutch territory of Sleepy Hollow, nebbish schoolmaster Ichabod Crane competes with the town hero for the hand of Katrina Van Tassel, the 18-year-old daughter and sole child of a wealthy farmer. As Crane leaves a party at the Van Tassel's farm one autumn evening, he is pursued by the Headless Horseman, an apparition said to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper snuffed out by a stray cannonball during the Revolutionary War.

I’ve been a big fan of the Sleepy Hollow TV show ever since it originally aired (one of the few shows I’ve actually watched from the beginning) so when I heard that one of the stars of the TV show Tom Mison narrated THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW for a free Audible audiobooks, I immediately went to download it. (I mean, have we heard his voice, friends?)

Obviously I have a basic understand of what THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW is about but I’ve never actually read the original book. For whatever reason, we always used to watch the cartoon around Halloween-time when I was in elementary school so I was pretty well-versed on how it went, but since I was getting a free audiobook, I figured now would be a good time to listen to this classic and actually get the original story written by Irving.

As excited as I was to listen to Tom Mison narrate the book, I have to say I was less than impressed. True, Washington Irving had a fantastic way at describing things but I felt like that was about 75% of the book. I had great visuals on what the characters looked like, what the setting looked like, and how food tasted/smelled/looked, but there was very little plot to the book and that was a bit frustrating. I was honestly over halfway done before any real plot even began to take shape and the ending was a bit of a let down. (Not like I didn’t know how it ended but there have been so many adaptations that I didn’t know which ones were the most accurate.) Overall, it was just a very dull story and the action didn’t really happen until the very end and it really wasn’t much.

Actually, the thing that I enjoyed the most was my personal connections to the legend. I really enjoyed remembering watching the cartoon as a kid and the feelings connected to it as well as pinpointing spots in the original story to plot lines in the Sleepy Hollow TV show. I love what the writers are doing with the TV show and expanding the legend into what I really hoped it would be when I picked up the audiobook.

The narration was quite good too. I just love British male narrators and Tom Mison has an excellent voice. I felt like his diction was a tiny bit overdone at times, but it was very pleasant to listen to for an hour and a half. If I’m listening to a slightly dull story, at least it was from a good narrator.

Kept Me Hooked On: Classics. I don’t often read classics so this was a fun way to do it! I also liked how short it was haha. I wasn’t really enjoying the story so much so it was nice to know that it was on the shorter side.
Left Me Wanting More: Action & Suspense. For such an exciting concept and re-told tale, I felt like there really wasn’t much there. I do like all of the possibilities it holds with the somewhat open ending so maybe that’s the real winning concept here!

Addiction Rating
Try it

If you want to listen to the audiobook, it’s free. Tom Mison was a really great narrator and the audio is short if you’re afraid you won’t like it! Worth a shot, right?

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(Click the cover to see my review!)