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Nature Girl
Unavailable
Nature Girl
Unavailable
Nature Girl
Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

Nature Girl

Written by Carl Hiaasen

Narrated by Jane Curtin

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

Honey Santana-impassioned, willful, possibly bipolar, self-proclaimed "queen of lost causes"-has a scheme to help rid the world of irresponsibility, indifference, and dinnertime sales calls. She's taking rude, gullible Relentless, Inc., telemarketer Boyd Shreave and his less-than-enthusiastic mistress, Eugenie, into the wilderness of Florida's Ten Thousand Islands for a gentle lesson in civility.
What she doesn't know is that she's being followed by her Honey-obsessed former employer, Piejack. And he doesn't know he's being followed by Honey's still-smitten former-drug-running ex-husband, Perry, and their wise-and-protective-way-beyond-his-years twelve-year-old son, Fry. And when they all pull up on Dismal Key, they don't know they're intruding on Sammy Tigertail, a half white-half Seminole failed alligator wrestler, trying like hell to be a hermit despite the Florida State coed who's dying to be his hostage….
LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 14, 2006
ISBN9780739332313
Unavailable
Nature Girl
Author

Carl Hiaasen

Carl Hiaasen (b. 1953) is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of more than twenty adult and young adult novels and nonfiction titles, including the novels Strip Tease (1993) and Skinny Dip (2004), as well as the mystery-thrillers Powder Burn (1981), Trap Line (1982), and A Death in China (1984), which were cowritten with fellow Miami Herald journalist Bill Montalbano (1941–1998). Hiaasen is best known for his satirical writing and dark humor, much of which is directed at various social and political issues in his home state of Florida. He is an award-winning columnist for the Miami Herald, and lives in Vero Beach.

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Reviews for Nature Girl

Rating: 3.443243045977012 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

696 ratings50 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I didn't think that I was going to like this book, but after hearing a strong recommendation from my supervisor (to somebody else), I decided I would pick it up and give it a try. The writing is fantastic, the characters are well-developed, and somehow the seemingly disparate storylines all came together beautifully.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Fast funny read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Well-developed, quirky, skewed characters who stayed true to their prospective quirkiness throughout the book. This is, for unknown reasons, my first Hiaasen book, but definitely not my last.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Fun light reading.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Honey Santana is a divorced mom of a 12-year old. One evening, after losing her job, she is interrupted during supper with her son by a telemarketer. After a heated discussion, Honey is determined to track down the guy and pay him back. In the meantime, the telemarketer, Boyd, is having an affair. Back in Florida where Honey lives, a half Indian is trying to get away from white society, but is having some trouble doing so.It was all right. It didn't like it as much as the first (and only other, so far) book I've read by Hiaasen, Skinny Dip. I enjoyed the second half of the book better as all of the characters started interacting and the storylines came together.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A reliable entry. A little short on endearing characters perhaps, but still as whacky as he ever is. Always good to read at the beach.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I wasn't overwhelmed with NATURE GIRL. While it had Hiaasen's usual mix of humor and irony, it suffered from a lack of sympathetic characters, save one and the plot was weak. Not his best.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I'm sure I've read all of Hiaasen's books before, but as I re-read them, I don't really remember them. My last read of his books "Basket Case" was a major disappointment and hard to finish. On the other had, "Nature Girl" is how I remember his books, great characters (although most a little Florida Crazy) and a good plot. While probably a little wordy at some spots, this was an enjoyable read from start to finish.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Mentioned in a previous post, Jenn and I took a road trip recently and listened to audiobooks to break up the drive. We made it through all of th The Ethical Assassin, but halfway into the second book, we rolled into the driveway and crawled seat-sore asses into the house.As I ride a combo of the bus and MAX light-rail to work everyday, the audio CDs stayed in the car for Jenn to listen to. I was far too lazy to put mp3s on my Creative Zen.As a result, I bought a copy of Nature Girl. I skipped right to the middle and picked up where I left off. This was a half and half book. half audio, half text. Nature Girl was worth the time invested and the hoops jumped through to learn how it all worked out.Carl Hiaasen’s Nature Girl is set in Florida. I dont mean Miami or Orlando. We are talking gators, poisonous snakes, fire ants and 10,000 islands wildlife refuge.Sammy Tigertail, blue eyed half Seminole has decided to become a hermit. His first day as a boat guide for the tribe, a tourist has a heart attack and dies. Afraid of the consequences (imagined) he dumps the corps cleans up the crime (imagined) and goes into hiding (for no reason) from the law.Miles away, Honey Santana’s dinner is interrupted by a phone call. It is a telemarketer, Boyd, trying to sell her land in Florida. Unluckily for Boyd, Honey is a bit unbalanced, and happens to have lost her job (that morning).Honey also likes to teach people lessons, especially if they appear to be soulless unethical douche bags who interrupt her mealtime.What ensues is modern Shakespeare-esque comedy of errors. Sarcasm and cheeky humor abound, ultimately culminating in an enjoyable close.Note for Mongo (specific person)Yes, I mentioned Shakespeare. He was influential, even if he is overrated..:)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed it. I haven't read a Hiaasen in a long while and I missed his manic plots and crazy characters.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Well-developed, quirky, skewed characters who stayed true to their prospective quirkiness throughout the book. This is, for unknown reasons, my first Hiaasen book, but definitely not my last.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5

    After seeing Hiaasen's books around for so long, it was high time that I picked one up. I'm glad that I did; it was fun. In a way, Nature Girl is thick with plot -- in another way, there's no plot to speak of. A diverse, wacky cast of characters start out on their own separate trajectories, are gradually brought together through a wildly improbable series of events, and then are set free again to endure or enjoy their various fates. The machinations required to make this happen are tricky and plentiful, but they don't amount to a plot that any sane person can recount in a brief review!


    If you hate receiving calls from telemarketers during dinner, this book is for you. (You'll have to read it to find out why!) If you enjoy colorful characters and silly humor laced with darkly humorous splashes of violence, this book is for you.


    Nature Girl is the best kind of three-star read: it's light and fun, but not substantial at all. I wasn't wowed by the writing or smitten with any of the characters -- they're all too weird and too plot-driven to truly care about -- but I was glad I picked this up. This is something to pass a few pleasurable hours with, and sometimes that's just what we need, isn't it?


  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Carl Hiaasen loves takes the craziness that is Florida (mostly south Florida), exposing it, amplifying it in some cases, and using it to make something funny. You’ll generally find Hiaasen’s books in the mystery section, but they aren’t really mysteries. His writing is more like a literary Three Stooges.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Mentioned in a previous post, Jenn and I took a road trip recently and listened to audiobooks to break up the drive. We made it through all of th The Ethical Assassin, but halfway into the second book, we rolled into the driveway and crawled seat-sore asses into the house.As I ride a combo of the bus and MAX light-rail to work everyday, the audio CDs stayed in the car for Jenn to listen to. I was far too lazy to put mp3s on my Creative Zen.As a result, I bought a copy of Nature Girl. I skipped right to the middle and picked up where I left off. This was a half and half book. half audio, half text. Nature Girl was worth the time invested and the hoops jumped through to learn how it all worked out.Carl Hiaasen’s Nature Girl is set in Florida. I dont mean Miami or Orlando. We are talking gators, poisonous snakes, fire ants and 10,000 islands wildlife refuge.Sammy Tigertail, blue eyed half Seminole has decided to become a hermit. His first day as a boat guide for the tribe, a tourist has a heart attack and dies. Afraid of the consequences (imagined) he dumps the corps cleans up the crime (imagined) and goes into hiding (for no reason) from the law.Miles away, Honey Santana’s dinner is interrupted by a phone call. It is a telemarketer, Boyd, trying to sell her land in Florida. Unluckily for Boyd, Honey is a bit unbalanced, and happens to have lost her job (that morning).Honey also likes to teach people lessons, especially if they appear to be soulless unethical douche bags who interrupt her mealtime.What ensues is modern Shakespeare-esque comedy of errors. Sarcasm and cheeky humor abound, ultimately culminating in an enjoyable close.Note for Mongo (specific person)Yes, I mentioned Shakespeare. He was influential, even if he is overrated..:)
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Book on CD read by Lee Adams



    Once again, Hiaasen takes readers to the Florida wilderness – this time to the Ten Thousand Islands, of Southwestern Florida. Honey Santana is righteous in her indignation, smart, resourceful and possibly bipolar. She’s had it with people’s lack of civility and decides to take a stand when telemarketer Boyd Shreave calls her a “dried up old skank.” She tracks him down and tricks him in to believing he’s won a trip to a lovely eco-resort. Now she’s taken him and his mistress, Eugenie, on a kayak trip into the mangrove thickets. What she doesn’t realize is that she’s being followed by her former boss, the lecherous and obsessed Piejack, who is, in turn, being followed by Honey’s ex-husband, Perry, and their 12-year-old son, Fry. And all of them find they are intruding on the half-Seminole, half-white Sammy Tigertail, who just wants to be a hermit, despite the college coed who’s more than willing to be his hostage.



    This is typical Hiaasen: zany antics, colorful phrases, quirky characters, and women who always outsmart the bad guys (or the good guys, for that matter). The plots are full of twists and turns, and imaginative coincidental meetings that bring these disparate people together. As unbelievable as the story is, it’s all great fun. A fast, enjoyable read.



    Lee Adams does a fine job reading the audio version. She has great pacing and sufficient skill as a voice artist to differentiate the various characters; I particularly loved her Piejack and Gillian.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I had so much fun with this ridiculous story! Okay, Honey Santana, a divorced mom, goes off her meds. She has a peculiar obsession to correct and punish people who she feels are wrong-headed and unethical. So when a rude telemarketer interrupts her dinner with her son, she develops a devious plan to track him down and teach him a lesson he won't forget. She buys a couple of kayaks, paints her mobile home with a jungle motif to pass it off as an 'eco-lodge.' Then she lures the hapless telemarketer and his girl friend on a "free eco-tour" of the 10,000 islands. Once she has them alone in the wilderness, she plans to deliver a stern lecture to her captive audience. Also converging on the island called Dismal Key (a real place, apparently) are a crazed, degenerate stalker in love with Honey, her protective ex-husband, a voyeuristic private detective keeping an eye on the telemarketer, a young Seminole gator-wrestler with an identity crisis, and an airhead college girl on a party weekend. Absurdly complicated good fun.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Very entertaining, with an engaging plot and plenty of twists, turns, and adventures. Honey Santana is a firecracker who deserves her own series of books. Better yet, introduce her to Stephanie Plum and let the sparks fly.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Finished on 19 June 2012. This book has several spots that did get a laugh out of me, the problem is it drags on and on and on. I would not recommend this book unless you are stranded on an Island held captive by a native American with nothing else to do.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Carl Hiaasen writes the best characters in fiction. His descriptions of Florida and the people therein immediately make you start scratching at mosquito bites and smelling rotting everglades. Funny, funny. Plots a bit, um, wild, but you know you are in the hands of a master and it is just like one of those fan boat rides through the swamp. Breezy and more fun than you thought, with the off side view of alligators.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This is not the favorite of Hiaasen's books. There is a will collection of strange characters that all end up on an island off the Everglades. There are two telephone marketers, an irritated (and not stable) customer, a Seminole Indian, A crazed man, plus more. While I liked his others... this one did nothing for me
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    If this is representative of Hiaasen's earlier work, count me in! Great characterization, fast pacing, quite engrossing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Hiaasen writes with a sharp wit that skewers modern society with brutal honestly. He writes about disappointment and selfishness, and how things never quite work out the way you want them to. However, he redeems himself with characters you find yourself actually caring quite deeply about, and cheer when they make the best out very strange situations. I found it very easy to root for Honey, Skinner and Fry - along with Genie and Sammy... even when they weren't making the best of decisions. You really felt where they were coming from, and how badly they wanted things to work out for them in the end. Even tho the story was well put together, I felt that the book was about 75 pages too long. Some story lines were dragged out when they could have come to a quick resolution with just as satisfying a result. This character driven novel will charm, disturb, and make the reader laugh out loud, even if it's a touch too long.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I liked this book much better than the first Carl Hiassen I read. Laugh out loud ridiculous, but you find yourself sucked into the action.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    entertaining fast read. feels like watered down tom robbins.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I read Sick Puppy first (it was my first book by Hiaasen), and enjoyed it much more. The twists in this one seemed much more bizzare and far-fetched, and I know that's much of his style but, it took some of the enjoyment out of it. I will read more of his but, not for a while.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Nature Girl didn't make me laugh out loud like Skinny Dip did. It was amusing enough and certainly kept my attention, but it didn't grab me.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The thing I like about Hiaasen's writing is his painting of his world, with wacky characters that can and do exist in this state's larger metro areas. This trailer park girl kills two birds with one stone -- her revenge on a telemarketer who called her at dinnertime and money to be made on her "ecotours" , complete with kayaks and supplies. watch the SNAFUs unfold in Hiassen's humour.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Follows Honey Santana as the crazy girl attempts to "educate" a manner-less and clueless telemarketer. The first 3/4 of the book is pretty good but towards the end it seemed to lose purpose and was more like a description of meetings and agendas. Also, this book had little substance that might grab us up and make us take notice. Telemarketers? Not enough anger there to call home about, or call anyone else at dinner time for that matter!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Nature Girl is easy, fun reading, perfect for summer days. It is easy to pick up, but it is also easy to put down. Nothing compelling here, just a fun romp. Set primarily amidst islands in the Keys of Florida, the characters are just plain odd, every last one of them. Remarkably, the main character, Honey Santana, is likable, in spite of being vindictive and psychotic, traits I generally do not associate with "charming." Some of the passages were a bit off-putting for me, but a quick skim through them did not seem to interfere with the story, either. Nature Girl is the first adult novel I have read by Hiaasen. Reviewers contend that this is not his writing at its best. I will venture into his world again.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Took about 100 pages before book caught my interest.