Honestly, this book was rough to get through.

In summary, Kelsey Grammer had a very weird relationship with his sister and this entire book felt like a stream of conscious thought somehow about her death but also not about her death. He managed to tell so much of his own life story and then occasionally throw in " my sister would have loved to live this" or "I wish she were able to have been there" so this felt like more of Grammer working through his grief in the things she did not get to do.
The writing style was erratic and hard to stay focused on. Grammer jumped all throughout his timeline so he would be 10 one moment and then 35 the next and it added to the lack of cohesion throughout, Grammer mentions several times that he doesn't know why he's writing what he's been writing.
Also, I found his comments about his sister a little creepy.

I got this copy from NetGalley in exchange for my review.

Karen: A Brother Remembers by Kelsey Grammer is a heartfelt, poignant memoir that tells of the life and tragic death of Grammer’s younger sister, Karen.

I was touched by Grammer’s personal anecdotes of their shared childhood. His intense love, affection and respect for his sister is very evident in his reflections. Grammer’s writing is sincere, emotionally raw and offers an intimate look at how personal loss can shape one’s identity.

While I was quite impacted by the story I found the stream-of-consciousness monologue with its many jumps in timelines and repetition of memories hard to follow at times. It was about 150 pages (or 4 hours listening time) too long for me and I felt a tightening up of the narrative would have made it much more compelling.

Even though the format was a challenge for me, I found it affecting that this book is not just a tribute to Karen’s memory but also an exploration of grief, resilience and the long shadow that trauma casts over a life.

⭐️⭐️ 2/5 Stars (Meh)
Setting: Colorado
Genre: Memoir

As someone who also lost a loved one (not to murder but to a drugged drunk driver), I approached Karen by Kelsey Grammer with deep empathy and a personal connection to the pain of such a loss. I genuinely wanted to find comfort, shared understanding, or even inspiration in these pages. What I found instead was a raw but disjointed narrative that ultimately left me more unsettled than uplifted.

Grammer’s grief is unmistakable, and his love for his sister Karen radiates through every memory he shares. The tragedy of her brutal death is impossible to ignore, and his willingness to revisit those darkest of days takes courage. However, the book often feels less like a memoir and more like a cathartic outpouring of unresolved trauma—unfiltered, wandering, and, at times, weighed down by bitterness.

The heart of the problem lies in its spiritual emptiness. While Grammer touches on faith, the book offers little in the way of genuine hope or redemption. It reads more as the lament of a man drowning in grief, still searching for healing decades later but seemingly unwilling to surrender to the one Source of true peace. His refusal—or inability—to forgive keeps the wound open, and instead of modeling recovery, it often feels like he’s reinforcing despair.

Karen may resonate with readers who need to know they’re not alone in their suffering, but for those seeking healing or spiritual grounding, it offers little direction. In the end, the love is real, the pain is palpable—but the healing feels frustratingly out of reach. #netgalley #karen #booked_this_weekend

This is a really tough one to review... It is a loving tribute, deeply felt - that much is abundantly clear. The narration is extraordinarily heartfelt, and when Grammer breaks down it is absolutely gut-wrenching to listen to. I don't mind a nonlinear memoir, because well life is lived chronologically much of our experiences are, in fact, at least somewhat non-linear in that past and present are so closely tied together when one is considering an event after the fact. But the jumping around in time and topic, pairing more traditional memoir type elements from the actor's life with his experiences after his sister's murder was a little difficult to follow at times. When you pair that with some very uncomfortable expressions Grammer makes about relationships to and thoughts about women, and some of his family members relationships to and thoughts about their lives - particularly in the context of his grandfather and the war - it makes for a very unusual and difficult listen. Ultimately I found it to be too much - it was gruesome in ways that were all the more difficult to listen to because of the obvious emotion in his voice while relating so many details. I hope crafting the book and narrating the audio version helped him process his own emotions and experiences, but as a reader I found it to be an uncomfortable journey.

My usual genre is fiction and leans to romance. However, I do enjoy non fiction audiobooks when narrated by the author. I was prepared for a heavy, uncomfortable, and sad telling of an actors loss of his sister. Although the telling of his sister ranged from the happy memories to the painful details of the end of Karen’s life, the felt like this was more focused on the authors past that didn’t include much of Karen. Timelines would jump around and the stories seemed disjointed.

The author is a wonderful narrator and storyteller but I was having difficulty staying focused with the stories. I enjoyed the first 30% of the book but felt like the remainder of the book was filler.

Thank you HarperCollins and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to Karen by Kelsey Grammer.

I had such high hopes for this audiobook. Kelsey Grammer's voice made for an excellent narrator. I was very intrigued by the story of his sister, Karen's murder. However, this story is a mess that felt like a brain dump rather then a novel. Grammer does an amazing job of describing some harrowing events in his life. His sister's murder and other life changing events were an easy listen. What was difficult is the 70% of this book that was basically a nonlinear, rambling story. Grammer mentions several times that he isn't thinking through what he was writing, and it shows.

I am grateful to Netgalley for the ARC of this audiobook. I sadly do not recommend this book, it was very hard to make it through this 13 hour book.

A disjointed story about a brother’s grief. It’s an interesting insight to how Kelsey Grammer became who he is. Jumping back and forth between his sister’s life before the murder, the actual murder, after and how he still feels his sister with him makes things somewhat hard to stay in the story. Still good and hearing Kelsey read his book and choke up about his sister makes it even more impactful

Karen: A Brother Remembers is Kelsey Grammer's recollection of his 18 year old sister's torture & murder in 1975.

The best part of the audiobook was the actual narration. I could feel the emotion and pain in Grammer's voice.

What I'm sure was a cathartic writing and recording experience for Grammer, ends up being a confusing and frustrating experience for the reader/listener. The whole book is very nonlinear, bouncing back and forth between different ages and timelines. I had a hard time keeping track of what/who he was talking about, or the point of it. He refers to relatives by their first name (eg: Gordon instead of Grandpa) and that gets confusing quickly when many people are introduced. Some of the tangents felt only relevant to Grammer and not his sister at all. I got about 30% in but 15 hours of this is entirely too long.

Recommended only for big fans of Kelsey Grammer.

Thank you NetGalley and HarperCollins Focus for the ALC.

I never knew Kelsey Grammar had a sister who was murdered so all of this information was new to me. Very tragic events, and the emotion in Grammar’s narration makes it even more heart-wrenching. I would recommend this audiobook to everyone.

I love Kelsey Grammer's acting and especially his voice, so I jumped at the opportunity to both learn more about his life story and hear his narration.

Unfortunately, this is a sad, dark story of a tragic part of his family's history- the brutal murder of his 19 year old sister Karen.
I can handle a heavier story, but this retelling was just too gruesome for me. It's admirable of Kelsey to face this story in such a brave way, but I just couldn't listen any longer. I only made it 7% of the way through the book before I had to quit.

The other part of this book that really bothered me is that the story is not told in a linear fashion, but in a stream of consciousness/recollection that bounces all over the place. He goes from 8 to 18 to 10 to present day and everywhere in between. He uses first names for everyone in his life (teachers, friends, grandparents, etc) so it's really hard to keep track of characters.

Sorry Kelsey, I wanted to love this one, but I just couldn't do it. Your voice as the narrator is probably the only part of this book I found tolerable.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

What could possibly have been a very heartfelt memoir about the loss of Kelsey Grammer's sister due to a brutal murder, ended up being more of a misogynistic tale of a man who didn't execute his vision well.

Disclaimer: I read this as part of an audiobook through NetGalley and Harper Select. Thank you to NetGalley and Harper select for the free ALC. all opinions are my own. This is my honest and voluntary review.

I wanna start off by saying I am extremely upset that I did not enjoy this book as much as I thought it would. I am a huge fan of Cheers and Frasier and was super looking forward to reading a detailed description of Kelsey Grammer's experience surrounding losing his sister as well as the aftermath of that particular crime. Needless to say this book was absolutely not what I thought it was.

There was some good information and points about his sister growing up the details of the crime that took her life. As well as Kelsey's difficulty dealing with it all the way through adulthood. Had the book stuck with that timeline and that experience I feel like I would've enjoyed this more because that's what I thought I was getting when I picked up the novel. But unfortunately, this execution was just not what I had intended to read when I picked the book up.

The storyline was in no way linear or had any kind of structure to it. It was a lot of rambling, and even Kelsey Grammer in the narration explained that it was just how things were coming to him and that he wasn't really focused on telling a linear story. This created a few problems for me as a reader because I had a hard time following along with what he was talking about and what period of life he was in. There was no distinction between past, present and future. You jumped around quite a bit even within the same paragraph at times.

While there was periods of absolute heart filled genuineness that came through in the writing, there was also periods where I literally gasped and could not believe the portion of the story that I was listening to. There was a point in the beginning of the novel where Kelsey Grammer details his grandfather figure Gordon telling him a story about the war. He uses an insensitive slur against Japanese people and gives a very detailed description of what Gordon explained was done to the bodies of Japanese soldiers during the war. I did not sign up for that kind of graphic detail. I'm unsure why a war story was included in this to begin with. It did not seem to be at all relevant to the storyline or the plot of the memoir. The book was further devolved for me as Kelsey Grammer, numerous times within the beginning of the the book, sexualized various women that he was discussing. He talked about their bodies in a very blasé manner, and basically brought them down to descriptions of breast and body type. Even after this, I continued to push on, hoping that it would get better and I would get more details pertaining to the siblings childhood and about Karen's death and their relationship because that's what I thought the bulk of this would be about.

I knew for sure that this memoir wasn't going to be for me when Kelsey Grammer started talking about how he was pretty sure he had a "vaccine injury" from the polio vaccine that caused his ankles and knee to hurt. At this point, I realize Kelsey Grammer's memoir just might not be for me and that Kelsey Grammer in general might not be the kind of person that I would necessarily want to read about in detail. I respect his career and the things that he went through with his sister's murder. But ultimately, I do not think that this is a memoir I can learn anything from with the numerous issues that I ran into throughout the narration.

I appreciate the genuine hurt I could feel through Kelsey Grammar about his sister's murder and his struggles with it well into adulthood. Had the story stuck to her early childhood, the detail surrounding her death and his subsequent struggle to deal with the loss of his sibling. I think I would've enjoyed this memoir a bunch more. But it was just too much of other things pertaining to Kelsey Grammer that did not have anything to do with the story I thought I was getting and just really came across as problematic in too many ways for me.

Raw, heartbreaking, and deeply personal, Karen is Kelsey Grammer’s tribute to his sister, who was tragically murdered at 18. With unflinching honesty, he shares the pain, grief, and healing journey that shaped the rest of his life. This memoir is both a powerful story of loss and a moving reminder of the resilience of the human spirit. It’s a gut-wrenching yet hopeful tribute to sibling love and survival through unspeakable tragedy. A must-read.

A powerful, heartbreaking tribute to the sister Kelsey Grammer lost far too soon. Karen is raw, real, and full of hard-earned hope. One of the most emotional reads I’ve picked up this year.

Kelsey Grammer's memoir about his sister Karen is devastating and tender. A story of pain, resilience, and the kind of love that doesn't fade with time. This one will stay with me.
#Karen #NetGalley