Review of I Don’t Wish You Well, Jumata Emill

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

I Don’t Wish You Well

by Jumata Emill
read by André Santana and five more

Listening Library, 2026. 10 hours, 7 minutes.
Review written June 9, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I Don’t Wish You Well is a novel about a teen journalist digging into an old murder case for a school project. When I realized that, I almost stopped the audiobook right there, because I’ve seen that basic plot before, and often it has felt like artificial motivation. I’m so glad I kept going. This book has lots of heart and plenty of layers of complexity in both the mystery and the multiple social issues behind the murders. Plus, the protagonist, Pryce Cummings, was a kid I grew to love – and his deeper motivation quickly became clear.

The novel opens as Pryce is on his way home after his Freshman year of college, where he’s a journalism major and has gotten some good articles published. He’s a little sore that he wasn’t chosen as a summer intern in the journalism department, even though that’s unheard of for Freshmen.

But he sees a comment on an article about a five-year-old murder case from his hometown – that maybe Douce, the Black gay teen everyone thought was responsible, didn’t murder the four football players after all. So Pryce pitches to his professor that he’ll investigate the murders while he’s home for the summer and do a podcast in the Fall.

Sure enough, when he interviews the commenter on his way home – he learns that the alleged murderer – who was found dead with a gun in his hand and evidence in his room – actually was hours away on the night of the first murder, but the police would never listen to his testimony.

Pryce has a personal interest in clearing that boy’s name. He is also gay, but not out to his parents. The whole town sees the murders as proof that being gay is depraved and sinful. Maybe if Pryce finds out the truth he can change the narrative.

And so Pryce begins asking questions. And begins finding things out. It turns out that the four football players who were killed had dark secrets in their pasts – and reasons many people may have wanted them dead. But if that happened, why did they kill and frame Douce? And why didn’t the police follow up other leads?

Since this is happening in a novel, we’re not actually surprised when Pryce’s investigation puts him in danger. The original killers wore a Trojan mask (used to celebrate the town’s football team), so it’s unnerving when Pryce starts seeing a shadowy figure wearing a Trojan mask.

Besides that, it’s Pryce’s brother’s senior year coming up – and he’s planning to lead the team to a winning football season. The football fans in town, which is pretty much everyone, aren’t happy about Pryce stirring up old ghosts.

The title? That’s because most people in town don’t actually want to know the truth. So they don’t wish him well in his efforts.

Once again, my summary doesn’t do this book justice. I was a little impatient with the set-up, but the book quickly got rid of all my skepticism. The case was much more than a class project to Pryce and besides the compelling investigation, he uncovered issues about power dynamics in a football town, about racism and sexism and marginalization of gay people. And it’s all woven together in a story about a kid you come to love.

jumataemill.com

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Review of Legends and Lattes, by Travis Baldree

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

Legends and Lattes

by Travis Baldree
read by the Author

Macmillan Audio, 2022. 7 hours, 19 minutes.
Review written April 15, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I discovered Travis Baldree from an interview in Writer’s Digest Magazine. When they described his books as “cozy fantasy,” I decided to try them, and I am completely delighted. When I read this one, I wished I had started with it, instead of the prequel, Bookshops and Bonedust – which in the Epilogue gives away a bit of how things turn out, so I wasn’t in as much suspense. But it was a minor thing and didn’t ruin my complete delight with this book.

Legends & Lattes is about an orc woman named Viv who gives up the sword-for-hire life and settles down to start a coffee shop – in a city that’s never heard of coffee.

In her last adventure with the band of mercenaries, her only payment was an artifact that is supposed to bring good fortune. But she’s got a lot of obstacles – an old shop to renovate, some way to drum up business, and people to work with. The people she does find are what make the book especially delightful. There’s a gnome who does construction, a succubus to help run things, and a ratkin who makes amazing pastries to go with the coffee.

But Viv also has to deal with the syndicate running the city and someone who seems to be after her artifact. Will everything fall apart if she loses that token of good fortune?

I enjoyed the way the gnome called coffee “bean juice” and Viv’s explanation that “Latte” was named after the person who invented it. Viv’s got some insecurities trying to be a business owner after years of using force to do things. And definitely has to deal with other people seeing her as a stereotype. Getting to know all the characters in this book was as delightful as eating a chocolate croissant.

travisbaldree.com

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Review of A Hymn to Life, by Gisèle Pelicot

Audiobooks, Starred Review, True Stories 0

A Hymn to Life

Shame Has to Change Sides

by Gisèle Pelicot
read by Emma Thompson
translated by Natasha Lehrer and Ruth Diver

Books on Tape, 2026. 7 hours, 23 minutes.
Review written May 19, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This book mentions some horrific events – and I’m so glad I read it. I came away encouraged and emboldened and so full of admiration for Gisèle Pelicot.

Gisèle Pelicot is the famous case of a woman who was drugged and raped by her husband and offered up to other men over a period of ten years. When it came time for the trial in 2024, she made the decision not to have a closed court, as most women did. Because, as she’d heard in a slogan before, “Shame has to change sides.” Besides, she didn’t want to be shut in a room with fifty-two men who had raped her and their lawyers. Let public outcry help them begin to face up to what they had done.

The book opens in 2020 when Madame Pelicot and her husband were asked to come to the police station. From here on out, I’ll do as she did and call him Dominique, since he is not her husband any longer. Gisèle knew that he had recently been arrested for taking video up women’s skirts in a grocery store – and the police had seized his phone and computer.

After they arrived at the station, they were taken to different rooms. Gisèle didn’t realize that Dominique was being arrested. But in the room where she was taken, a compassionate police officer showed her pictures of a woman who looked like she was dead being sexually abused by Dominique and many other men. They confirmed that the woman in the pictures was Gisèle, and no, she had not consented to any of this and had no knowledge of any of this.

Of course she was in complete shock that first day. The news brought devastation to her whole family.

She also tells the story of her childhood and how they met. They both had tough childhoods – his with a sexually abusive father – and she’d always thought they’d rescued each other. Looking back, there were some red flags, but she’d thought they were just regular bumps in a marriage.

Something I appreciate about her story is that she refuses to give up all her good memories of Dominique. They had decades of what she thought was a good marriage, three children, and plenty of love and laughter between them.

I appreciated this because my own ex-husband had an affair and left me – not anywhere near as big an offense – but I, too, refuse to give up my good memories of him or deny that I was happy in those many years of our marriage. Like Gisèle, I was told plenty of lies – though, again, certainly not nearly as many – but enough to relate to her experience of having to figure out her past and what was real and what was lies.

And she was dealing with at least ten years of deception. Her mother died of a brain tumor when Gisèle was nine years old, so when she started having blackouts, she assumed she was going to die like her mother. She also had strange vaginal discharges. She saw multiple doctors and had tests run, with Dominique solicitously accompanying her – and they didn’t find any problems. But she even stopped driving because she’d had an incident in a car when she couldn’t stay on the road. And when the detectives checked her hair, they discovered traces of the poisons Dominique had been giving her. All her symptoms cleared up when he was in prison.

I was chilled by a story when, early on, she’d teased him, “You aren’t drugging me, are you?” – and he started crying that she would accuse him of such a thing, even in jest! I’ve learned that’s a common self-defense mechanism of liars. My own ex would say “How dare you accuse me of… ” such and so – and I’d always find out later that’s exactly what he’d done. As they say about Donald Trump, “Every accusation is a confession” – but at the time, when it’s your beloved husband making the accusation, it is amazingly effective at making a wife feel guilty for even a fleeting thought that he could have done anything bad.

Another thing that struck me was the compassion and dedication of the police officers who investigated and uncovered the truth of what Dominique had done. They had to go through graphic videos to compile the evidence. Would American authorities have shown the same diligence and care for sexually assaulted women or girls? The way they’re handling the Epstein files makes me not at all sure. So I appreciate that it was law enforcement who got this man – and his many recruits – put behind bars.

There were many stages in Gisèle’s healing journey, and of course she will always have work to do. But I was happy to see her spirit lighten when she found a home of her own on an island (instead of living with her kids, who were also traumatized) and made new friends in the neighborhood. And then she found a loving and compassionate man to be her new partner in life. (Or rather those new friends set them up.)

And then the biggest turning point was when she decided not to have a closed court case after all. She decided not to be ashamed of what they had done to her. Let the world know, so that these men would be ashamed. Shame has to change sides.

She knew she’d made the right choice when she started getting a flood of letters from other women. And women showed up in throngs around the courthouse to show her their love and support. Women across the world felt that she was standing up for us.

And I appreciate the title of the book. Gisèle Pelicot is a woman who celebrates life. She has not let the bullies win. Despite what was done to her, she refuses to be ashamed, and she refuses to let that ruin the rest of her life. The book ends with a joyful relishing of life – not a life without difficulties, but still a happy life.

Oh, and I love that they chose Emma Thompson to read the audiobook. I know her British accent is not a French one, but her cultivated voice gives Gisèle the elegance and grace she deserves as she tells her story of standing up for the truth.

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Review of Love at Second Sight, by F. T. Lukens

Audiobooks, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Love at Second Sight

by F. T. Lukens
read by Kevin R. Free

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2025. 11 hours, 41 minutes.
Review written May 29, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I love F. T. Lukens’ books! An Kevin R. Free reading them has gotten me feeling like I’m listening to a story told by a lovable friend.

Love at Second Sight is set in a world just like ours – except magic and paranormal abilities are completely normal. And so is being queer. In fact, queer is probably not the right term to use, because nobody bats an eye at Cam, our protagonist, having a crush on another boy. And everybody is fine with Cam’s best friend Al using they/them pronouns. People are cool with Al’s two moms.

But paranormal abilities, though all around them, are not quite as accepted by people like Cam’s parents. They’re hoping that for Cam’s Sophomore year of high school, he’ll make some new friends and spend less time with Al, who’s a witch. Cam doesn’t tell them about his crush on a werewolf. He’s starting at a new high school that has a much higher percentage of paranormal students than his old one.

And that first day of Sophomore year does not go well. First some little things go wrong, and then he gets stuck in the middle of a large fight between werewolves and sprites in the middle of a hall. He gets thrown against some lockers, and while he’s out cold, he has a vision of a girl who’s been stabbed and seems to be dying, and Cam in the vision is holding a bloody knife in his hands.

As things develop, it turns out that Cam has a paranormal gift that’s incredibly rare – he’s a clairvoyant who gets true visions of the future when someone touches him.

But that brings up the questions: Who touched him in the hallway? Who is the bloody girl? Can he warn her and save her life? And can he keep his parents from finding out?

After a video of Cam having another clairvoyant vision goes viral, Cam gathers a hodgepodge team of friends who help him deal with his new fame and help him identify the girl and try to save her. At the same time, all the various paranormal guilds and factions want to recruit him to form an exclusive relationship with them and give them an advantage over any adversaries.

There are plenty of obstacles and angst along the way, as well as time with that werewolf Cam has a crush on. The book is full of suspense with a mystery to solve, but plenty of humor to go along with it. And you can’t help feeling for a kid who thought he was a normal human suddenly having paranormal powers everybody wants a piece of.

Although the book is completely absorbing as a story and was not written as a parable, there are some parallels between how Cam is treated with paranormal abilities and how queer people are treated in our world. Those added resonance and made some horrible reactions feel all too believable. This also made me all the more satisfied with the lovely happy ending. This book left me smiling.

ft-lukens.com

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Review of The Favorites, by Layne Fargo

Audiobooks, Award Winners, Contemporary, Fiction Review 0

The Favorites

by Layne Fargo
read by Christine Lakin and a full cast

Books on Tape, 2025. 14 hours, 41 minutes.
Review written March 9, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
2026 Alex Award Winner

The Alex Awards are given to ten books every year for the best books published for adults of interest to teens. I placed holds on the ones that our library had in eaudiobook form, and this was one.

This book is the story of a fictional Olympic ice dancing pair whose story is full of scandal as well as pathos. This book is set up to be a documentary of their real story, produced ten years after their final appearance skating together.

As a mock documentary, this was perfect for audiobook. They did use a full cast, so it feels like the actual people – friends, rivals, and officials who knew the pair – commenting on the big events in their lives.

Katarina Shaw and Heath Rocha met when they were children in a small town north of Chicago. When Kat was 9 years old and had just lost her mother, she saw Sheila Lin win gold in the Olympic games as an ice dancer. Kat wanted nothing more than to be just like her. Then Heath Rocha, an orphan in foster care, came along and learned to skate so he could be her partner. They operated on a shoestring budget until they were 16 years old and got the attention of none other than Sheila Lin – and got to train with her one summer in her academy in Los Angeles.

And so their notorious career began. They were recruited to stay on in order to push Sheila’s children to greater heights, the twins Bella and Garret Lin.

This book reads like a gossip magazine. Kat and Heath were obsessed with one another – but not necessarily good for each other. Their relationship, as well as their ice dancing, has many ups and downs as the book goes on.

I’ve never actually been a fan of gossip magazines, and the book felt long (I’m spoiled by reading a lot of children’s books.) – but I still never seriously considered quitting listening. It did have me hooked. Since I started reading it right after the Winter Olympics, it felt timely. (Though I found myself wishing I’d started it before – I would have paid more attention to ice dancing.)

There’s plenty of drama here. Love and obsession. The question of which is more important: people or gold medals? Manipulators out for their own purposes. But by the end, we do see growth and even some wisdom in the characters. I did like reading this after hearing Alysa Liu talking about skating for the love of the art. I think Kat and Heath got there by the end. And the journey is quite a ride.

laynefargo.com

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Review of Everything We Never Had, by Randy Ribay

Audiobooks, Award Winners, Historical, Teen Fiction Review 0

Everything We Never Had

by Randy Ribay
read by Ramón de Ocampo, Jesse Inocalla, Manny Jacinto, and J. B. Tadena

Listening Library, 2024. 6 hours, 42 minutes.
Review written April 29, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
2025 Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature Winner
National Book Award Longlist

Everything We Never Had is a story of four generations of Filipino-American men. The first was Francisco, who came after World War II and tried to make money to send home to his family – but found instead prejudice, hatred, and low wages.

Francisco’s son Emil hated the way his father was never home, always traveling to organize the farm workers. He chose a different path and planned to go to college and make something of himself.

Emil’s son Chris wanted to play football and study history. But his father wanted him to focus on studies that would get him a good job some day.

And Chris’s son Enzo is dealing with anxiety. There’s talk of a pandemic, and his father asks him if he will give up his room so Lolo Emil can stay with them instead of in the retirement community. Enzo knows that Chris doesn’t like being with his father, and Emil doesn’t like being with them, but they can’t let him get sick and die.

I liked the way this book gives us insights into the things each generation had to deal with, including lots of history – and how it led to misunderstandings. The stories are interwoven a bit at a time, so I didn’t get the insights on most until after I’d already seen ways they weren’t a very good father. So this is an interesting exercise in learning to see from new perspectives.

Each man as a father tries to give his son everything he never had. Some are more successful than others. In the present-day pandemic, three generations need to learn to get along.

randyribay.com

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Review of Hemlock & Silver, by T. Kingfisher

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

Hemlock & Silver

by T. Kingfisher
read by Jennifer Pickens

Macmillan Audio, 2025. 11 hours, 50 minutes.
Review written April 17, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

So far, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every T. Kingfisher book I’ve read. This one has the added bonus of a self-described “middle-aged” heroine, and that’s always nice for a change. This is cozy fantasy with a dash of creepiness – if mirrors in the dark already spook you, this could make it worse.

Anja is a specialist in poisons and studies them looking for antidotes. She keeps a venomous snake and regularly milks its venom to use to speed up the heart as an antidote for other poisons. Of course she tests it on herself – after roosters, but before trying it on patients.

And then, one day, the king walks into her workshop.

The king believes that his daughter Snow is being poisoned and wants Anja to find a cure. Snow has been unwell since the day the king killed the queen – when she was cutting their other daughter’s heart out.

Anja doesn’t feel skilled in working with people, and especially not 12-year-old girls. But she is good at solving mysteries and figuring out poisons. So she goes with the king to the palace where Snow is staying, along with two bodyguards, in case the poisoner doesn’t want to be found out.

Anja finds Snow eating a strange-looking apple. Naturally, she tests it on herself – and then falls through a mirror into another, reflected world. It stirs her scientific heart, but there’s still a lot of work to be done to figure out why Snow would effectively poison herself. And how does the mirror world work.

I wouldn’t call this a retelling of “Snow White” – but many of the elements are there, and it does have that fairy tale feel. There’s a dash of romance thrown in as well, along with some mystery and danger. I blame this book for me staying up far too late the other night while working on a jigsaw puzzle.

redwombatstudio.com

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Review of The Heart of the World, by Amie Kaufman

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Heart of the World

by Amie Kaufman
read by Nikki Patel, Homer Todiwalla, Suzie Rai, Vidish Athavale, Mela Lee, and Steve West

Listening Library, 2024. 11 hours, 22 minutes.
Review written March 25, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I have to say that I love the new trend of writing duologies instead of trilogies. There’s still some suspense waiting for the next volume, but you don’t have to do it all over again and wait for a third volume.

The Heart of the World finishes the story begun in The Isles of the Gods, about a prince and a sailor girl involved in international politics, doing magic, and meddling with the gods.

There’s no way to really set up this book without giving away what happens at the end of the first book, so let me speak in general terms. You’ve got five main viewpoint characters all voiced with different narrators. In this book, the gods find a way to show up in the human world, channeling some of their power through our protagonists and antagonist. And the gods are spoiling for a fight.

The last time the gods fought, an entire country was turned into a barren wasteland. Can our heroes stop the gods? Do they even want to, or is the gods’ influence too great?

A nice touch in this volume is that Selly is able to help Leander bear the load of the goddess’s power.

The audio production for both books is outstanding, with all the narrators excellent, and my all-time favorite audiobook narrator, Steve West, voicing the prince. The characters I was getting tired of in the first volume got more interesting when empowered by a god and when planning a double cross. Oh, and there’s a scholar who tries to save the world through research – with several great lines about how awesome librarians are.

This is a tale well-told of magic and power and love. May our characters keep the world from getting blown apart.

amiekaufman.com

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Review of What Kind of Paradise, by Janelle Brown

Audiobooks, Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

What Kind of Paradise

by Janelle Brown
read by Helen Laser and Peter Ganim

Books on Tape, 2025. 11 hours, 42 minutes.
Review written April 27, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2026 Alex Award Winner

Here’s another eaudiobook I only placed on hold because it won an Alex Award. These are given every year to ten books published for adults that are of interest to teens. I almost took this one off my holds list, because the cover didn’t stand out. I couldn’t figure out what the picture was even depicting. (Now I think it’s supposed to have a crack as on an old photo – just of a wilderness, with a lake, forest, and mountains.)

Once I started listening, though – I was mesmerized.

As the book opens, we have an adult woman who’s been tracked down by a reporter after changing her name because her father has been recently in the news. The reporter asks for an exclusive interview, but the woman refuses and tells the listener it would take much more than a magazine article to understand – and then she gives us the book version.

Jane and her father lived on their own land off the grid in Montana starting in 1982 when she was four years old. He tells her that her mother died in a car accident, and he had to get away, but doesn’t tell her much more about her mother. Her father has home schooled her, reading philosophy and learning calculus, and he’s taught her how technology rots the brains of people out there and will bring about the end of civilization. He publishes a zine to spread his views to others, and every few months they go into Bozeman to drop some off at the bookstore there. But readership of his zines is falling off, and in the 90s, the bookstore wants to make room for a tech section.

By this time, Jane is a teen, and getting more and more curious about the outside world. So when her father brings home an old computer and wants Jane to make a website to publish his manifesto against technology, she learns how to do it – but also how to access the internet when her father is gone on one of his mysterious trips.

Jane’s curiosity also extends to her mother. She finds an old photo of her with her mother – but the name of the baby written on the back is not Jane. Was everything her father told her about her past a lie? Her father let slip that they were in Silicon Valley, so she wants to figure out a way to leave, go to Silicon Valley, and find out if her mother is still alive.

I don’t want to give away too much. Even all that I described, which is only the beginning of the book, is full of tension as we watch Jane put together that something’s wrong. When she talks her father into taking her with him on one of his trips so she can escape – well, she does escape, but she’s also an accomplice to a crime.

After that, Jane makes it to Silicon Valley and gets a low-level job with an up-and-coming tech firm. She tries to navigate this new world, find out who she is and if her mother is alive, and at least keep herself from going to jail. Or should she turn her father in?

Another engaging aspect of the book is that tech futurists in the 90s are talking about how we will eventually be able to hold computers in the palm of our hands and how artificial intelligence will be the ruin of us all. You can’t help but think they might be right.

The entire novel had me tense from start to finish, but at the same time, my heart was with Jane trying to navigate adulthood after her extremely unusual childhood. Absolutely brilliant writing, this book is a treat.

janellebrown.com

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Review of Cursed Boys and Broken Hearts, by Adam Sass

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Teen Fiction Review 0

Cursed Boys and Broken Hearts

by Adam Sass
read by Torian Brackett

Listening Library, 2024. 9 hours, 25 minutes.
Review written March 24, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.

Here’s a gay teen romance that’s formulaic and predictable – but completely sweet.

I’m still blaming Annabel Monaghan’s book Nora Goes Off Script, about a writer for the Romance channel finding her own romance, for me noticing when a Romance Novel follows a pattern. But even though I knew where this book was going, I kept listening and enjoyed the ride.

The protagonist is Grant Rossi, a designer who’s been in a funk for a year since his boyfriend left him. He’s convinced that he’s cursed to always be left ever since he made a wish on his family’s legendary Wishing Rose at 13 years old – he’s convinced it doesn’t work for gay boys, especially since after making his wish, his childhood crush Ben got together with his summer boyfriend and dropped Grant. That all happened at Grant’s grandma’s funeral, and Grant hasn’t been back to the family vineyard and B&B since.

But now, to get out of his funk, Grant shows up at the vineyard and spends his summer helping his aunt and uncle bring it back into shape so they won’t have to sell it. There’s a lot of work to do, and Grant’s social media following will help – but then he discovers that Ben is there, working as a gardener, also helping get it all back into shape.

Oh, there’s also a nice thread about mental illness – Grant’s been diagnosed with anxiety – and nice modeling of making contact again with his therapist and restarting his meds to help him function better.

And, yeah, you can tell where this is going. There’s a big Rose Festival at the end to work toward. There are big misunderstandings and years of resentment to clear up. And Grant and Ben just happen to get thrown together and must work together to save the family business.

It all adds up to a fluffy story and a sweet romance. But sometimes fluffy and sweet hits just right.

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