This one took me about two months to get through as I listened to it, but I needed to be able to be somewhat present while listening, so I had to pick and choose when I could dedicate time to it. Poignant and eloquent, this is a beautiful telling of his sister Karen’s life and death by murder, and his story of becoming and forgiveness along the way. Kelsey is a beautiful author, and an educated and compassionate speaker/narrator. I loved his apology for using profanity at one point—an outburst anyone would understand given his circumstances, but he explained that using profanity diminished him—reduced him—because he knows better and can do more with his words. His writing style is poised and flowing, even when he repeats himself or goes back and forth on his timeline—writing as things came to him. I loved that he wrote it as he thought it, and didn’t feel the need to clean those parts up for public consumption—rather, we get a glimpse into his raw feelings, emotions, and real-time experiences. His relationship and testimony of God is beautiful, his experience with abortion is incredibly sad and vulnerable + a man’s perspective which we don’t always hear about, and so much of the book had me smiling and/or in tears. I took a LOT of notes. He seems like the type of guy you could easily sit down and have dinner with and find a quick connection because he loves people so much and so well. I highly recommend the audio version as listening to him reading the book made it that much better.

My husband & I are both big Frasier fans and when I mentioned he had a new book about his sister’s murder, I knew we had to listen to the audio. If you love Grammer’s voice, this narration is obviously perfect - raw and full of emotion - which made it a good listening experience. But overall, Karen, is a meandering train of thought style memoir that feels disjointed and hard to follow. I appreciate Grammer’s grief and desire to know every detail of his sister’s murder and continue to fight for justice, but this leaned a little too gruesome for me at times.
It didn’t evoke much hopefulness either, even all these years on, which is a reality I know all too well as someone who will forever mourn basically any loss, but I wasn’t entirely sure the point at time. Grammer talks about an abortion his girlfriend had and how he regrets it. He talks about his family and childhood and it’s all drenched in such longing and pain, the endless torture breaks my heart for him. He talks about his career a bit (which is not what this book is about, so I didn’t expect much, and I already own his old memoir), but it’s mostly just really introspective and heartbreaking.
I love a memoir and I rarely give them star ratings and this one feel especially in appropriate to rate. Grammer lays his grief out for the reader and narrates it with passion. And which I didn’t find a ton of enlightenments, I still appreciate his efforts and his story.

I had a hard time with Karen. The problem was not with the writing but with the subject matter and the emotions that came out of me because of that. I had to stop reading at times and pick it up once more. I commend the author for his courage in showing the darkness in his life because of his sister's death.
I think that Karen is memoir that people will enjoy. I liked the audiobook because the author himself read the book. I think he added to the experience with his calm narration.

Thank you to Kelsey Grammer, HarperCollins Focus, and NetGalley for a advanced audiobook copy of Karen: A Brother Remembers. I fully enjoyed listening to Kelsey Grammer discussing his sister, Karen, and her senseless & tragic murder. The love for his sister came out strong and clear. as you can hear the emotion and grief that Kelsey feel. I believe Kelsey needed to write this book to bring his sister to the forefront and to start the healing process, as much as possible. The format of the book may be a deterrant to some people as there is no clear structure and goes off on many tangents. I imagine Kelsey sat down and narrated this book as feelings and emothions overtook him in the process. I highly recommend this book as it is very emotional, tragic, but also a lovely tribute in the face of a sibling's death.

I knew nothing about Kelsey Grammer other than that I occasionally caught Frasier or Cheers on TV growing up and that I knew he voiced Vlad in Anastasia (one of my favourite movies), so when I heard the plot for this memoir I was intrigued and wanted to know more. Note that the NetGalley version of the audiobook does not include the PDF he repeatedly urges to download to get pictures (and he says the book will be full of them) and when I contacted Harper Collins directly they very kindly sent me a PDF but it only had five pages which I don't know if adds up.

He starts telling us about his sister Karen and what happened to her, and he reads with affection, clarity and emotion. Some parts really surprised me, like finding out he regularly goes to a medium and she informed him Karen wanted him to tell the story. He has a mix of conservatism and mysticism that flows through his writing and his life.

Unfortunately for me I don't know if this story was told with enough restraint. He jumps back in time constantly, stops to sidetrack about dentistry or about how he likes the sound of a word he has just used. He says it's a story of his own life through the lens of what happened to Karen but so often we spend ages talking about the women and girls he has admired and looked at over the years. He speaks of how early he noticed the female body.

This book is listed as being 15 hours and 2 minutes long on Audible, and it really feels like it towards the end. At one point he goes back and corrects an anecdote from chapters earlier, which feels rough when you are 10 hours into an audiobook with 4 hours to go. Maybe just go back and edit it to be correct in the first place. He mentions the amount of edits the book has had but it could have done with a few more. He clearly has a lot on his mind and a lot to say but he cannot get it out in a succinct manner.

He also cannot hide his politics. He goes on a weird rant about abortion and doctors (quick google confirmed he supports Trump), has several mentions of "oh but you can't say things like that anymore" or mentions to the current -culture-, says that establishments who have signs saying they don't tolerate hate actually incites hates etc. He also swears up and down that he was raised to judge based on character, not on sex, sexuality or race. But it doesn't entirely feel like that aligns in some of his rants. He mentions several fleeting crushes but makes no mention of several marriages. He says Karen was wilder than him with weed and used it more than him but then makes no mention of his own documented battle with cocaine. He paints himself as a different person than what the public will have seen.

He has undoubtably had a very interesting and at times tragic life, and he has amazing insight into a long career and he is a master of his work. But his writing needs work. He goes on a rant about "being a Karen", which is understandable, but maybe a blog post rather than part of a book.

Towards the end you start getting more about Karen and the case for real. He starts investigating himself and trying to piece the story together. Reads the case file. Finds out how the police tried to spare him and how he tried to spare his mother. I think if this had been streamlined and some of his rants reined in this could have been a great book, but unfortunately that's not what you get. You get a lot of rants and talks about cars and girls, weaved around a bigger story of grief and loss.

There's something wrong with my copy of this at the time I tried to listen to it, some chapters worked but others for some reason just dodn't really work very well. Not sure why but because of that I could not finish this read.

I have been reading more autobiographies and memoirs of late, and I enjoy Kelsey Grammer as an actor. He has a great speaking voice, so I jumped at the chance to listen to the audiobook of his memoir about the loss of his sister, Karen. I have such a hard time rating memoirs because it is about someone's life, someone's truth, and I normally rate them high. However, though there a poignant aspects of grief and loss and coming to terms with the brutal murder of his sister, this book itself is disjointed. It is like Grammer sat down at a typewriter (I'm imagining an old school button-type writer here) and just wrote down every thought that came out of his head that could remotely relate to his sister or, more appropriately, what he was doing when his sister was doing something else. There were many tangents; the book is in fact mostly tangents with no real structure. He opens by saying that he will be working backward from her life, then proceeds to not do that. I don't know if it just needed some serious editing or what, but it was not a read that was easy to stick with and didn't seem to understand its goal. Grammar has been through a lot. This is a tragedy I would wish on no one, but also this book needed some structure.

This story was so so so boring. I could not finish it to save my life. I found it to lack engaging dialogue. It might have been better if a different narrator had been used.

I really wanted to love this. The story is very interesting and it gives so much detail. Kelsey’s voice is so soothing, he really does make for a great storyteller.
But it’s very long, and I just feel like I have learned more about Kelsey Grammer than his sister Karen.
Kelsey definitely does a great job of telling who Karen was and their relationship and how she was killed.
But like I said it’s very long and really seems like an autobiography with some details of his sister’s murder.

Honestly maybe it’s my fault a little. Maybe I misunderstood what the book was supposed to be.

It’s a good book and the audiobook is great. Just jot for me

Thank you NetGalley for the copy

I'm a huge fan of Kelsey Grammer and a avid True Crime reader, so when I saw this book I had t request it. The book was interesting. You could tell how much feeling to put into this book, especially because I listen to it. . I did feel that he repeated himself quite a bit, but it wasn't so much so that it was off putting. I would read another book by him. And I hope that writing this book and sharing his sister's story with the world has brought him some peace.

Audiobook. NetGalley. Although I absolutely love Kelsey Grammer I found this story extremely heartbreaking and how sometimes we never really get over the trauma in our lives.

This book was remarkable in the struggle it took me to finish. It is remarkable in how self-absorbed, egotistical, and self-serving this book is.
The book description told of a look at a brother’s grief and longing for answers to his sister’s violent death. What is it is a stream of consciousness, time jumping mess that is confusing. Grammer goes on tangents about the female form, fishing trips, his romantic relationships, and career. He also sprinkles religion and politics in an attempt to sound righteous and accepting. In true boomer fashion, he mentions multiple time that the generations today do not understand that drug use and sexual exploring were normal in his day. There is an uncomfortable number of times he speculates on Karen’s sexual experiences.
Karen is mentioned in mostly passing as an afterthought to these tangents. It was very much, ‘this is what Kelsey was doing, oh yeah and Karen was in Colorado for some reason.’
It is obvious in his style of writing Grammer wanted comparisons to his favorite authors. He even alludes to Henry Fielding as a nudge to the reader to recognize this.
When Grammer does write about his growing up with Karen, their parents and grandparents, her murder, and the related aftermath, it is a very moving book. Unfortunately, there is not enough of these stories compared to the tangents.
If Grammer wanted to write a recollection of his life, then the book title and description needs to reflect as such.

Heartfelt and courageous, Kelsey Grammer’s memoir about his sister’s tragic murder is moving and deeply personal. It sheds light on unimaginable grief and the long road to healing, while paying tribute to Karen’s life. However, at times it felt a bit uneven in tone and pacing, making it harder to stay fully engaged. Still, Grammer’s honesty and vulnerability deserve respect, and those interested in true crime or stories of resilience will find value here.

Very interesting story that covers the death of Grammars sister. It is something I hadn’t known about and was shocked to discover. The details were interesting and surprising to unearth as the novel continued to cast its tale.

Initially I liked this, because Grammer's narration is done in an extremely emotional way, making you feel connected to him almost immediately. However, he's very clearly a 60 year old white man in his writing, and I couldn't handle how he portrayed women. Also, his opinion on the death penalty was brought up too many times for me, a defense attorney, to be comfortable with. Wasn't worth the time, so I DNFed 15% in

This book was so surprising to me. I had not know much about the actor and the story of his sister but I could feel the pain he still carries. You look at celebrities and just assume their lives are prefect. I thank Kelsey for wanting to keep her memory alive. Also, he has a wonderful voice well suited for narration.

#Karen #Netgalley

Kelsey Grammer has the perfect voice for narration! That alone will make you want to listen to this one!

I found the story slightly disjointed and it jumped around a bit. But given the subject matter, as well as the fact that writing this book very clearly was a therapeutic experience for him, it made sense. Grief is evident this whole book, but he also does a good job of showing the person Karen was apart from the tragedy.

Great true crime real world novel in a story I didn't know much about if anything and hearing from such a personal voice expanded my world

I listened to the audiobook and while Kelsey does a great job as the narrator, I didn’t love the book. Part of it felt like it was written as Karen’s story but so much more felt like it was the Kelsey show. I think this would have been better touted as his life story that also included his sister’s as well because that’s how it felt it ended up. This was a very emotional read and I know this had to hard to write and especially self narrate.

Trigger warning: this review mentions rape, murder, grief, abortion.

This is a hard review to write. I don’t like to rate memoirs negatively, especially one about such a difficult subject, however this is my honest opinion.

The book promises to be a poignant tribute to Kelsey Grammer’s younger sister Karen, who was tragically and brutally raped and murdered in 1975, aged 18. I had no knowledge of Grammer’s past and was appalled to find out his family had been through such trauma.

I knew the book would likely be a difficult and emotional read; indeed, when Grammer speaks of his sister, it is. He does not shy away from the details, nor his anger and devastation that surrounds them. He speaks of Karen with tenderness and it’s clear there was a great deal of love between them.

The predominant issue with the book is that Karen barely gets a mention. Instead, the book is a rambling stream of consciousness with no obvious structure or relevance.

The way Grammer talks about women is unpleasant. Men are introduced in relation to their accomplishments and the respect Grammer has for them. Women are introduced with a description of their anatomy, and often whether or not they had sex.

He discusses an abortion his ex had that he later regretted. Considering his ex has since passed away, I found the way he spoke about it distasteful. He apologises to her family and hopes discussing it is okay with them. I would have hoped he’d made sure of that beforehand.

The audiobook is narrated by Grammer himself and he is generally accomplished in doing so. However, when he discusses difficult subjects, he frequently breaks down. He then immediately returns to normal voice without pause or indication of needing any recovery. I’m not sure if this was an editing decision or if it was him acting but it came across as disingenuous.

Unfortunately this book wasn’t for me and it became my first ever DNF. A real shame, it had great potential.

Thank you to very much to NetGalley and HarperCollins Focus for my gifted copy.