Review of The Girls Who Grew Big, by Leila Mottley

Audiobooks, Award Winners, Contemporary, Fiction Review 0

The Girls Who Grew Big

by Leila Mottley
read by AhDream Smith, Erin Spencer, and Khaya Fraites

Books on Tape, 2025. 11 hours, 50 minutes.
Review written April 15, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
2026 Alex Award Winner

This isn’t a book I would have picked up, except that it won a 2026 Alex Award, which is given to the previous year’s ten best books published for adults that are of interest to teens. The award process ensures that these books are well-written, and I haven’t regretted putting them on hold. (This one is popular enough, it took a long time for the hold to come in.)

The Girls Who Grew Big is about a gang of teen mothers who hang out together in the town of Paduah, on the panhandle of Florida. “Gang” probably isn’t the right word, though that’s probably how the town sees them. More than once the audiobook describes them as a coven – though the only magic is the magic of community.

There are three viewpoint characters. Simone’s the one who started the group when she gave birth to her twins in the back of her red truck. Now the kids are five years old and they live in the truck, parking where they won’t get tracked down by Child Protective Services, and often hosting the rest of the girls in the group. Simone can give tips for getting babies to nurse or other tricks of parenting. The twins’ father is around just enough to pay attention to them now and then – but also to keep the authorities off their backs.

Simone’s brother Jayden is in love with Emory, who recently gave birth to his son. The school counselor wants to push her to a special school with accommodations for teen mothers, but Emory is determined to finish her senior year as valedictorian and go on to college. She brings her baby to school in a sling, and the teachers will just have to deal with that.

And then a new girl comes to town from Indiana named Adela. Her parents sent her to her grandmother’s place when she got pregnant. She can have the baby, give it up for adoption, and their rich friends need never know. She can go back to competitive swimming and maybe regain her hope (or at least her dad’s hope) of swimming in the Olympics. But when she gets to know the girls, life starts looking different.

So that’s the pot this novel starts with, and very soon, the pot gets stirred. These girls that folks from the town dismiss or look down on are figuring out what they really want in their lives and how they’re going to get it. And along the way they’ll learn that they are not people to be dismissed.

leilamottley.com

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Review of The Last Dragon on Mars, by Scott Reintgen

Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Science Fiction, Starred Review 0

The Last Dragon on Mars

by Scott Reintgen
read by Landon Woodson

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024. 9 hours, 10 minutes.
Review written October 13, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

The Last Dragon on Mars is the first in a trilogy about spaceships powered by dragons, featuring a crew made up of thirteen-year-old humans.

As the book opens, we meet Lunar Jones, an orphan who lives on a relocation center in Mars and takes care of the other kids there by working as a scrapper – when a storm goes through, he goes out into the wastes to dig up scrap metal to sell.

That first mission doesn’t go well (though we get to experience all the drama of the attempt), and Lunar takes refuge in a military zone, because the likelihood of being killed there is still less than the certainty of being killed by the other scrappers who are stealing the prize he found.

But in the military zone, Lunar follows some tunnels and discovers a massive underground habitat – and a dragon nobody on Mars knew about.

When the military folks in charge of the hidden base try to kill him (because of course they do), the dragon stops them – he’s chosen Lunar as his dragoon.

But not everyone wants there to be another dragon. The dragon is young, and the kids who were selected and brought up to train with him are about Lunar’s age, all young teens. The man in charge who arranged all this (except the part about Lunar joining them) has reason to believe dragons on other planets may not be happy to hear about another dragon on Mars.

It’s not giving anything away to say that Lunar and his new friends end up flying on a dragonship with their lives at stake.

I won’t even try to explain the whole world-building with a dragon for each planet and each moon and star. But it’s all built smoothly, with no lull in the action – we learn details because lives are at stake. And it adds up to battles in space with spaceships powered by dragons. What could be better?

itspronouncedrankin.com

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Review of The Fall of Iris Henley, by Jennifer Graham

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Mystery, Starred Review, Suspense, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Fall of Iris Henley

by Jennifer Graham
read by Eva Kaminsky

Macmillan Audio, 2026. 8 hours, 32 minutes.
Review written October 20, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I put this audiobook on hold because it was very popular with our library customers, and it turns out that was a good tip. The Fall of Iris Henley is about a senior in high school who’s top girl on her cheer squad – the top of the pyramids and a flyer who does tricks in the air, caught by her squadmates.

But this year, their football team isn’t starting out in great form. They’ve lost a star player, Rocky, who was Iris’s boyfriend, and the cheer squad has lost the former top girl, Lynette, who had been Iris’s best friend. They were found together, dead, with the gun in Rocky’s hand. They’d been sleeping together behind Iris’s back, but nobody knew why Rocky would have killed them both.

And then an anonymous poster on their school’s private social media app comes up with a new theory – Iris did it. And that theory gains traction throughout the school. At first, her cheer team backs her up and sticks by her side, but something happens to challenge even their loyalty.

Iris was at a cheer sleepover the night in question, so she should have an alibi. Trouble is, after Rocky accidentally sent her a text that she knew was meant for some other girl, Iris got so drunk, she has no memory of the rest of the night.

The book is filled with cyberbullies and real-life bullies, constant questions for Iris about whom she can trust, and of course a conclusion filled with danger. Gripping suspense right from the beginning that feels all too realistic as cyberbullying gets way out of hand.

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Review of Blood of Tyrants, by Naomi Novik

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Historical 0

Blood of Tyrants

by Naomi Novik
read by Simon Vance

Tantor Media, 2013. 13 hours, 48 minutes.
Review written May 4, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.

After reading a Naomi Novik book I’d somehow missed when it first came out, The Summer War, I was checking Libby for any other books by her I might have missed – and remembered that I never did finish the Temeraire series.

The reason was that I started the series listening to audiobooks on CDs, and after Book 5, the library no longer had them on CDs. At the time, I wasn’t listening to eaudiobooks, hadn’t downloaded Libby, and was skeptical of ebooks altogether. Well, the pandemic changed that by eliminating my commute for a few months. I discovered that listening to eaudiobooks on my phone could lighten not just my commute, but housework as well. I can even listen while posting reviews I’ve already written.

So I did go back and listen to the next book about Temeraire the magnificent celestial dragon – but other audiobooks that had recently come out or that I was reading for award committees got my attention first. But I listened to Blood of Tyrants, which is Book 8, and am happy to say there was no wait to check out Book 9, League of Dragons, which Libby says is the final book in the series. So I am going to finish this wonderful series at last.

The series is set in an alternate reality during the Napoleonic Wars – where dragons are very real and are used in battle something like ships were during our Napoleonic Wars, complete with crews riding in their rigging. The pattern of the books is O’Brien’s Master and Commander series, but with dragons. Our protagonist, William Lawrence, was even a naval captain before a captured dragon egg imprinted on him. After Temeraire hatched, they became a pair. Since that fateful meeting, in the books they have traveled to every continent except Antarctica. Napoleon has been much more successful than he was in our world, since, after all, he has dragons.

Naomi Novik is no longer even pretending to write standalone books. This installment begins and ends in the middle of the action. Now, I had not remembered how the last one ended, but at the start of this one, Lawrence has washed up on shore after a shipwreck somewhere in Japan – and he has lost his memory of the last eight years and everything about Temeraire.

Now, I am not a fan of amnesia in fiction. I feel like it’s a lot more rare in real life than it is in novels. That did help me with all I didn’t remember about Lawrence’s adventures as it slowly came back to him. But at the start, we’re in two plotlines, with Temeraire desperately wanting to go find Lawrence, but needing to get the ship back in sailing condition and take care of the dragon egg they were transporting. Meanwhile, Lawrence is in a Japan that was closed to foreigners, and he wants to stay alive but get home – he thinks he should get back to his ship, having completely forgotten Temeraire.

Anyway, I won’t say anything about the plot, because you should only read this book if you’ve read the seven others before it. As things continue, they progress to fighting Napoleon in Russia with the help of Chinese dragons.

I do highly recommend this whole series. Simon Vance reads all of them, and brings the world of an English naval gentleman to life. I know when Temeraire is speaking by the voice alone by now. And Naomi Novik has built an incredible world in these books. She’s literally built the whole world, as Temeraire has visited every continent (except Antarctica) and found different kinds of dragons on each one. In fact, a new area of concern in this book is that the Russians treat dragons very badly. So Lawrence and Temeraire don’t want to fight for them unless they stop abusing them – but that ends up in some feral dragons on the loose and a whole new set of problems. And winter is beginning in Russia.

This time I vow I’m not going to take as long a break before I tackle the next book, so hopefully I’ll remember better what’s going on. But I’m sure of one thing: Temeraire is going to continue to fight – both against Napoleon and for the rights of dragonkind. And he’ll continue to try to get Lawrence to wear shiny clothes.

naominovik.com

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Review of Rose Daughter, by Robin McKinley

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Old Favorites, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 2

Rose Daughter

by Robin McKinley
read by Bianca Amato

Recorded Books, 2015. 12 hours, 47 minutes.
Review written September 11, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I’ve been rereading (or listening to) Robin McKinley old favorites because they came up in my #Sonderbooks25 celebration of 25 years of writing Sonderbooks – when I also realized that there are several that I read before I started Sonderbooks, so they don’t have a review.

Rose Daughter is Robin McKinley’s second retelling of the fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast.” I like Beauty, the first retelling, a little better because it is shorter and has more of a fairy tale feel. But both versions are wonderful.

I do love that in both books, Beauty comes from a loving and happy family. Yes, Beauty’s sisters pull her away from the Beast at a crucial time, but it’s because of their great love for one another.

In Rose Daughter, Beauty is a gifted gardener. But she has never seen roses, which can only be grown by sorcery or love. So when there are thorny bushes all over the cottage deep in the woods that the family inherits from an unknown old woman, she doesn’t recognize them until they burst into bloom.

The Beast also has a rose garden, but his garden is dying. When Beauty comes to stay in his palace, she gains a task to revive the roses, and she thinks that’s the reason he brought her to his realm.

This book twists the ending a bit, similar to what happens in Spindle’s End, but from start to finish you’ve got Robin McKinley’s magic spinning a world where love makes roses bloom.

robinmckinley.com

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Review of Ellen Poe: The Forgotten Lore, by Diana Peterfreund

Audiobooks, Paranormal, Teen Fiction Review 0

Ellen Poe

The Forgotten Lore

by Diana Peterfreund
read by Marli Watson

Hachette Audio, 2026. 7 hours, 19 minutes.
Review written September 11, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.

I love Diana Peterfreund’s books, especially For Darkness Shows the Stars, so I was happy when the library got this new series on audio. This book begins the story of teen Ellen Poe Reynolds. Her family claims that they are descendants of Edgar Allan Poe and a maid he had a fling with before his death.

Ellen and her father have always been skeptical of the stories. But now Ellen is living with her aunt in the family home in Poe-obsessed Baltimore, while her dad is out west trying to earn some money for a place of their own. Aunt Marie is trying to turn the old family home into a Poe-themed Bed and Breakfast, so Ellen has to put up with things like a stuffed raven in her bedroom.

Is it any wonder she has nightmares? But when one of the dead people in her recurring dreams shows up as a new kid at her high school, her exclamation, “You’re dead!” gets badly misinterpreted. However, the boy is intrigued, because he recently died but was revived. How did she know?

At the same time this is going on, in the clutter of boxes, Ellen finds an old journal with the initials E. A. Poe. When she takes it to school, she starts seeing the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe following her. He talks to her – but only using lines from his writing.

The journal is in code, but when Ellen decodes it using a decryption website, she finds what may be unpublished poems of Edgar Allan Poe. If she can prove it, their money troubles will be over. At the same time, the poems contain clues that lead her to the middle of some kind of treasure hunt involving a mysterious group in the city.

And while she’s working on that, it turns out the dreams may be warning of danger.

This is a fun story with code-breaking and puzzles to solve, with lots of Poe trivia on the side. Ellen’s a likable character in the tricky situation of seeing a ghost who isn’t visible to anyone else. I’m pleased that the next book in the series is coming out in October.

dianapeterfreund.com

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Review of Thornhedge, by T. Kingfisher

Audiobooks, Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

Thornhedge

by T. Kingfisher
read by Jennifer Blom

Macmillan Audio, 2023. 3 hours, 43 minutes.
Review written April 28, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2024 Hugo Award Winner
2024 Locus Award Winner

What if the beautiful princess sleeping in the tower absolutely should not be woken?

This delightful and immersive novella is narrated by Toadling. Toadling was born human, a princess even, but when she was only an hour old, fairies stole her from her crib and replaced her with a changeling. She was brought up by loving water sprites. She learned magic from them, took on many of their characteristics, and can turn into a toad at will.

We first meet her watching over a tower for hundreds of years, hoping against hope that humans have stopped telling stories about it and that the thick thorn hedge and the brambles she set about it will keep all humans away.

But then, after years of quiet, a poor rundown Muslim knight comes and camps near the thorn hedge. He has read about a princess in the tower, and his curiosity compels him to find out if it’s true. But then he meets Toadling and becomes the first person to speak to her in hundreds of years – and he won’t be warned away.

As Toadling deals with this unexpected and hard-to-dissuade intruder, we learn more about her story and why she’s guarding the tower. And we, too, come to hope that the princess will not be woken.

Yes, there’s some danger and darkness in the middle of this tale, but we come to love the characters and the way it wraps up in the end is absolutely perfect. This is a tale to treasure.

redwombatstudio.com

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Review of The Otherwhere Post, by Emily J. Taylor

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Otherwhere Post

by Emily J. Taylor
read by Barrie Kreinik

Listening Library, 2025. 11 hours, 22 minutes.
Review written January 23, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I placed The Otherwhere Post on hold because I wanted to see why so many other people had done the same. (My job is to select books for a large public library system, so I see what’s popular and often get curious.) Sometimes I’m disappointed by that method, but not this time. The Otherwhere Post pulls us right into the action, as Maeve Abenthy has a ticket to another city, to adopt another identity, because she’s been in her current position, working in an ink shop, too long, and people might realize who her father is.

The whole world, including Maeve, believe that seven years ago, her father was responsible for the living death of every person in Inverlea, one of the three known worlds. But then the Otherwhere Post finds a way to deliver a batch of old letters from shortly after the tragedy – and Maeve receives an anonymous letter from an “old friend” of her father who claims he was innocent – and they have proof. Only Maeve has already missed the meeting he proposed for seven years ago.

All magic in the three known worlds is done through scriptomancy – messages written with special ink by talented, trained people. Maeve’s father was a skilled scriptomancer and courier and lived at the Otherwhere Post, with Maeve in the keeping of her aunt after her mother’s death. So Maeve decides that the obvious way to find this “old friend” is to train to be a courier. Good thing her father grounded her in the basics of writing. Now if she can just pass the admissions test.

Of course, once Maeve gets to the academy, she’s going to have trouble finding the old friend, when she doesn’t dare reveal who she is. But someone knows and starts sending her magical threatening letters.

I shouldn’t have liked this book, because the plot is pretty chaotic, with some drastic turns at various points. But I liked Maeve immensely (despite the unethical way she got into the school), and I liked the young man assigned to be her mentor, and the world-building was creative, so I forgot to be nitpicky and enjoyed the ride.

emilyjtaylor.com

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Review of The Neverfear, by Katherine Rundell

Adventure, Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

The Neverfear

by Katherine Rundell
read by Samuel West

Listening Library, 2026. 8 hours, 4 minutes.
Review written September 4, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This is the third book in the series that began with Impossible Creatures, and in my opinion, it continues to be the best currently ongoing fantasy series for kids. Katherine Rundell has a skill that J. K. Rowling also possessed of inserting delightfully imaginative magical details. She’s got a bestiary in the back of each book that has many creatures you will have heard of before, such as dragons and unicorns, but plenty of unique creations of her own.

You will want to read these books in order, though I’m finding I’m not too lost if I’ve forgotten many of the details from the earlier books. Listening to this one reminded me just how much I have enjoyed them all, and I’ll be wanting to reread them from the beginning.

In this volume, Christopher is now living most of the time in the magical world of the Archipelago, studying to be a good guardian, and Anya, the one-time princess from the second book, is living on the same island with her father, the berserker Nighthand, and Irian, the beloved of Nighthand.

On an errand with Christopher and Anya, Irian is kidnapped by a sinister band of outlaws who wear Ouroboros bracelets. The children are told they must perform three progressively more difficult Herculean tasks or she will die. After they perform amazing exploits to complete the tasks, a new threat arises to everything they care about.

In the progress of carrying out these tasks and defeating these challenges, against all odds, both Christopher and Anya uncover new skills within themselves. There’s lots of danger here, along with love, loyalty, humor, and plenty of magic. Samuel West’s voice is perfect for narrating these adventures, matter-of-factly presenting the magical details with his proper British accent.

Reading these books makes me wish my kids were young again, as they would make splendid family read-alouds.

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Review of King of the Neuro Verse, by Idris Goodwin

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 1

King of the Neuro Verse

by Idris Goodwin
read by the Author

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2025. 3 hours, 2 minutes.
Review written August 12, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This is a young adult novel in verse, so it’s short, and perfect for neurodivergent thinkers like the protagonist.

Pernell is stuck going to summer school for his third time in high school, and all his nerves are jangled. Fortunately, a friend gave him a digital voice recorder, so he’s letting off steam by telling all his difficulties to “the future.” It’s 1999, so he’s not sure if the world will end when Y2K hits.

He’s got to take English – and then it turns out that the very teacher who made him go to summer school is teaching the class. She’s made up her mind about Pernell and is portrayed as a bully who humiliates him regularly. Though Pernell honestly has trouble paying attention.

Fortunately, at lunch time, every year a group of students do a rap circle they call the Cypher. Last year’s Cypher King graduated, and Pernell is determined to win the crown himself.

So why does playing with language in rap make so much more sense to him than writing essays in class?

My one little quibble with this audiobook is that a couple of times Pernell refers to ambient noise, and I wish the production had gone to enough trouble to simulate that, since it pulled me out of the book when I didn’t hear it. Supposedly, he’s recording the whole thing. In a print book, we don’t miss the ambient noise and trust that it’s there, but in an audiobook, I wish they’d attempted to make us think this was Pernell’s actual recording. The author is a rapper himself, so he reads the words well.

But that was a minor quibble. The story itself helped me understand how it feels to be a teen with ADHD just trying to do his best – and be King of what he actually cares about.

idrisgoodwin.com

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