While it remained interesting until the end, this seems to be more a story about serious illnesses among the author's loved ones and acquaintances--Pat Conroy's foremost. It presents a very personal picture of an 18 year marriage that succeeded against considerable odds--it was Conroy's third. There aren't that many insights into Conroy as a writer here, except that the book shows us he was Southern to the core. It did inspire me to go to Youtube to watch a speech Conroy gave to a small college in Georgia, as well as his commencement address at the Citadel in 2001. Both are impressive, and the first is hysterical. I guess Cassandra King Conroy has done us a favor at least by reminding us of her husband's greatness and inspiring us to read or re-read his work. But it still went on too long, and some aspects of the story really aren't quite believable. Judge for yourself. The narrator, Susan Bennett, however, was superb. Being from Alabama myself, her accent made me believe I was listening to the South Alabama-born author. ( )

Tell Me a Story, My Life with Pat Conroy. Cassandra King Conroy. 2019. King relates her life with Conroy from the time they met until his death. For die-hard Conroy fans. ( )

Amazing book, it made me laugh and cry. I just adore these two writers as a couple and am so grateful that I have had the pleasure of meeting both of them. I learned a lot about their relationship. I hope she continues to write books and would love to see more from Conroy posthumously. ( )

This is an autobiographical story of noted author Pat Conroy's third wife chiefly from when they met and ending several months after his death. Anyone who loves Pat Conroy's books and wants to know about this gregarious larger than life author. There are lots of touching and humorous anecdotes that will only add to the Pat Conroy mystique. We also learn of Ms. Conroy's background and her development into a great author in her own right. She handles the delicate topics of his illness and death with the taste and sensitivity of a grieving wife. ( )

Tell Me a Story: My Life with Pat Conroy is a gift from the heart. Popular author, Cassandra King Conroy must have intuited that legions of her husband’s devotees wanted his wife to speak. Many of us had incorporated Pat Conroy into our lives. We were on an intimate level with the author who bared his soul through story, so when he died, we were blindsided. We hadn’t been given enough time to wrap our minds around a Conroyless world and were totally unprepared. So, Cassandra King Conroy stepped up. In the age- old tradition of a dyed-in-the-wool Southerner, she put her own grief aside and did for others in the only way Southerners know of: she told the entire story with endless detail and heartfelt panache. She gave us exactly what we wanted.
What strikes me about this memoir is its similarity in spirit to all things Pat Conroy wrote. Many of us heard Conroy explain the magic behind his writing by saying he wanted to explain his life to himself in hopes that readers would understand theirs. He unfurled his life on the pages in an artfully veiled manner, and it worked. In Tell Me a Story, Cassandra King Conroy removed the veil completely. With an honesty that can only be described as sheer bravery, she gave us the unvarnished truth, revealing the humanness of not only Pat, but of herself and those lucky enough to be a part of his orbit. The memoir is spellbinding, engaging, heart-tugging, and hilarious. Parts of it read like a madcap ride through a comedy of errors, for how best to describe a union forged later in life, replete with two cause and effect, complicated backstories seeking a semblance of harmony. And yet harmony was achieved, and that bird of a different feather soared. Cassandra King Conroy’s memoir is the construction of a life cobbled together by two world-class authors. It is deeply confessional and told in a voice you’ll never want to quit. ( )