Category: Audiobooks

Before I listened to He Who Fights with Monsters, I had no idea that the LitRPG genre existed. Imagine my surprise that my 15-year relationship with World of Warcraft would directly translate to stories featuring characters who are in video games. But last year, I was randomly assigned this audiobook for a review, and I fell head over heels in love with Heath Miller’s rendition of Jason Asano, a Japanese Australian man thrown into a completely different universe. There, Asano finds himself in a video game-like world where he must gain experience by defeating monsters while saving villagers as he moves through the world. I just finished volume seven of the ongoing series, and now have listened to Miller’s performance for more hours than I can count. It’s one I pre-order as soon as I can and download the day it comes out.

I don’t even have words to express my joy when I realized that Rick Riordan and Roshani Chokshi were teaming up as a writer/editor team for the first book in Riordan’s new imprint. Aru is an Indian American girl who accidentally unleashed a terrible evil into the world only to find out that she is a reincarnation of one of the Pandava brothers. That series also made me a forever Soneela Nankani fan as I listened to her brilliantly perform every book in this series over the last five years.

Forever and always, I will love this novel. It’s centered around Esch, a teenage girl who lost her mother as a young girl and who now lives with her dad and siblings in the Mississippi Delta. As hurricane Katrina is headed their way, Esch tries to prepare for the storm and take care of her younger brothers. While I listened to a previous version of the audiobook performed by Cherise Boothe, I love January LaVoy, so it was well worth relistening to. It’s a unique experience hearing the different narrators make their performance their own. They use different voices and interpretation of tone and cadence in the dialogue. Boothe’s edition of the audiobook is now out of print, as it were, so it may be hard to find, but both versions are fantastic.

After listening to her perform Nightcrawling, Joniece Abbott-Pratt has won my never-ending love and support. She perfectly captured Kiara’s narrative voice and voiced the dialogue with such great attention to detail.

The novel begins when Kiara has already dropped out of school and is just trying to pay the rent. Her mother is gone and her dad died years ago, so it’s just she and her brother living in their tiny apartment in Oakland, California. But Kiara’s brother, Marcus, believes his time is better spent pursuing his music career instead of working a minimum wage job just trying to make ends meet. After struggling for months, Kiara feels like she has no other choice than to turn to sex work.

Abbott-Pratt has this incredible ability to create a sense of emotional intimacy between her and the listener, which is a vital part of any audiobook performance. But with her skill with dialogue and understanding of the novel’s main character, Abbott-Pratt creates an incredible listening experience.

Haven is set in 7th-century Ireland, when a priest chooses two monks to travel with him to an abandoned island to create a religious haven of sorts. With as few supplies as possible, the group makes their home with only seabirds and puffins for company. In my mind, this book could be described as Lauren Groff’s Matrix meets Gary Pausen’s Hatchet. Now you may not enjoy survival and religious figure stories like I do, but for me, this novel was an immediate must-listen.

What’s more, I loved Aiden Kelly’s narration. Kelly performs Haven with such skill and sense of atmosphere. I will definitely be looking up what else Kelly has narrated.

All-star audiobook narrator Janina Edwards performs Deesha Philyaw’s stunning short story collection The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. Each one of these stories features a Black woman connected to the church in some way. Some are young women and girls who attend with their mothers and grandmothers. One is the infamous “other woman.” Another is a queer woman who has left the South, and her church lady mother, far behind. Each one of these stories is a perfect, polished gem. They’re full of wit, emotional depth, and just brilliant storytelling. Edwards gives each protagonist such a unique narrative voice, making every story stand out.

Cowney Sequoyah is a 19-year-old Cherokee man who’s just gotten a job as a groundskeeper at the historic Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina. But with WWII ongoing, the inn is being used to hold diplomates from Axis countries. When a young Japanese girl goes missing, Cowney is brought in for questioning. This historical fiction novel is Clapsaddle’s debut, and I loved every second of it. It has family secrets, unrequited love, and a coming-of-age story all wrapped into one. Kaipo Schwab does a great job of performing the story from Cowney’s perspective.

I’d never read Annie Dillard before, so I thought that this was the perfect time to pick up some of her legendary essays. The audiobook is under three hours long, but she packs a lot into such a short amount of space. Her insights about writing and living as a writer seem to flow so effortlessly from her mind. But even while she makes it look so easy, she describes how she often agonizes over a single turn of phrase. Tavia Gilbert performs the audiobook in such a soothing way — I could listen to her read Annie Dillard for hours!

I’ve been waiting for this memoir for SO LONG! Ah! So Alice Wong, legendary disability rights activist and editor of the anthology Disability Visibility, is back — this time, to tell her own story. In her memoir, she shares moments from her life in a scrapbook-like format with photos, transcripts, and illustrations (the audiobook comes with a PDF of those images, which she also describes in the audiobook). Nancy Wu performs Wong’s story and captures the author’s grace, resilience, and wit. This is an audiobook I will listen to over and over again. I’m so happy that it’s now out into the world.

Rita Todacheene works as a crime scene photographer for the Albuquerque police force. She’s the best photographer they have, but there’s a reason for that: Rita can see the ghosts of the dead. Rita was raised on the Navajo reservation by her grandmother, who tried to teach her not to talk to the spirits that she saw. But Rita can’t seem to help it. She just wants them to rest and leave her alone, and the spirits always seem quite persistent. The novel jumps back and forth between Rita working on cases in the present day and her childhood living with her grandmother.

Admittedly, I am a sucker for a story where people can see ghosts. There’s just something delightfully creepy about the set up for me. I loved Rita as a character. She’s not the gung ho type. She’d rather not be solving crime or taking photos of the aftermaths of violent attacks. But she needs a job. She’s practical and down to earth — at least, as practical as one can be when they see ghosts. Charley Flyte does an excellent job performing the audiobook. She perfectly captures Rita’s narrative voice, striking just the right balance between the exposition parts of the novel and the character’s emotional depth.

In the English countryside in the summer of 1950, Flavia finds a dead man in the yard of her family’s crumbling manor home. Soon her father is suspected for the murder and Flavia must solve the crime and clear her father’s name. Jayne Entwistle is the perfect choice of narrator for Flavia, who is far too straightforward and practical for her years. She adores chemistry, especially all things poisons and poison compounds. Flavia imagines herself a woman of science, and Entwistle performs Flavia’s perspective with all the brusk British nature that Flavia’s story requires. If you like this book, then you should definitely check out the other ten books in the series.

In their book about their popular restaurant, Mashama Bailey and John O. Morisano discuss their journey to finding each other and creating their business relationship that is the heart of The Grey. Morisano bought the old bus station in Savannah, The Grey, and became determined to turn it into a restaurant. After a long search, Morisano found Bailey, a Black woman from Queens with Southern roots. Together, they create an incredible institution of Savannah cuisine. In their book, they each write and perform sections of each chapter. This form of narration adds to the conversational style of the book, like listeners are sitting in on a conversation between friends.

While I wait for Michael W. Twitty’s latest book, KosherSoul, to land in my hot little hands, I thought I’d tell you about his previous book, The Cooking Gene. Twitty takes a few genetics tests, compares the results, and plans his trip around the world. He travels around the US, West Africa, and Europe, learning more about his heritage through the food that he encounters. It feels like he’s taking us on his journey as he explores these different cuisines around the world. Twitty performs the audiobook, creating an intimate atmosphere throughout the audiobook.

Vikas Adam performs this story about a Pakistani boy finding his voice and using it to make change. Omar is excited to start at his new boarding school. He managed to get a scholarship to attend and can’t believe his luck. But when he arrives, he discovers that he and the other scholarship students are required to maintain an A average AND do extra chores every week. As Omar and his friends investigate these sky-high requirements, they learn that the system is rigged — they were never intended to succeed. Aisha Saeed has given us an incredible story in this slim novel. And Vikas Adam’s performance captures Omar’s resilience and sense of hope.

Reena Dutt and Jennifer Jill each narrate one of the viewpoint characters, Cora and Quinn. A year before the opening of a novel, Cora’s sister was killed in a school shooting. Ever since that day, Cora and Quinn’s relationship has never been the same. But on Cora’s birthday, Quinn leaves a box on her doorstep hoping that together they can fix their relationship and their mourning families. Jasmine Warga tackles a very difficult topic in such a gentle way while still illustrating the horrific affects a school shooting can have on a community. This book gives adults a way to talk about gun violence with the kids in their lives.

Translated from Arabic by Marilyn Booth

Jokha Alharthi and translator Marlyn Booth won the International Man Booker Prize a few years ago for Celestial Bodies, and now the duo is back with Bitter Orange Tree. This novel follows Zuhour, a Omani woman attending university in the United Kingdom. As we follow Zuhour’s first-person narration, she describes her life in the UK as she struggles to find a way to fit in while also being drawn back to Oman in her memories of her family’s past. The narrative alternates between Zuhour’s present and her sharing her adopted grandmother’s past. Everything in Zuhour’s life leads back to Bint Amir, the woman who was a wet nurse to her father and helped raise him and his children. Raghad Chaar performs the audiobook, deftly moving from chapter to chapter, adding to each character’s emotional depth and personality.

Translated from Korean by Jamie Chang

Born in 1982, Kim Jiyoung quickly learned that boys were more favored in society. When her younger brother was born, she couldn’t help but notice her parents giving him preferential treatment. As Jiyoung moves through her life, she struggles to make a place for herself in a society that only sees women as mothers and wives. She loves her career, but finsd it difficult to progress when she’s denied promotions just because she’s a woman. Jamie Chang’s translation captivates listeners with its no nonsense prose, and audiobook narrator Kathleen Choe does a magnificent job performing the text, capturing listeners’ attention from the first few minutes.

Mike Chamberlain performs this science fiction story about robots trying to take over the world. Daniel H. Wilson, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, has written one of the best fast-paced apocalypse stories that I’ve read. In an alternate near future, an AI program gains sentience and takes over the world, creating a sort of hive mind and controlling other robots and machines. Humans around the world begin resisting the hostile takeover, and Wilson tells their stories in a series of documents, transcripts, and other forms of communication. I loved how fast paced the story is and how each chapter took us somewhere new around the world. Most of the viewpoint characters are men, so Chamberlain’s performance shows a range of different characters just trying to survive and fight back against the robots.

In one of the most beloved recent novella’s we meet Murderbot, a sentient robot contracted to work for a team exploring a new planet. What starts as Murderbot performing its protection duties with disinterest, turns into something completely different. Murderbot must finally choose between obedience or do what it thinks is the right thing to do. Kevin R. Free narrates Murderbot’s perspective perfectly, enhancing Murderbot’s personality and perspective. And like all great series, he returns as the narrator for each audiobook in the series.