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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Review of The Scammer, by Tiffany D. Jackson

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Suspense, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Scammer

by Tiffany D. Jackson
read by January LaVoy

Quill Tree Books, 2025. 9 hours, 10 minutes.
Review written December 15, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.

The Scammer is another young adult thriller by Tiffany Jackson featuring a Black girl protagonist. Jordyn has decided at the last minute, against her parents wishes, to defer her Yale acceptance and attend a historically Black university in Washington, D.C. Once there, she quickly becomes firm friends with her suitemates.

But one of her new friends has a brother who recently got out of prison (wrongly accused, of course), and she asks to let him stay with them. Devonte is everything charming. He cooks for the girls, cleans for them, and starts giving life advice.

But the life advice accelerates to controlling every part of their lives, giving them a curfew, telling them what they can do, and who they can be around. What’s more, it spreads to more people on campus turning to this charming older man to know how they should live. And then he starts asking for money, so their new family can build a community together.

I have to say that the middle of this audiobook when Devonte was getting more and more controlling was difficult even to listen to. Jordyn does make at least one friend who helps her get her head clear – but of course it all leads up to a dangerous crisis. As has to happen in any good thriller.

So yes, here’s some gripping escapism with a side of cautionary tale. And a thriller with a less typical heroine in the spotlight.

writeinbk.com

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Review of Bridget and Gabe Are Not Okay, by Lex Croucher

Audiobooks, Fantasy 0

Bridget and Gabe Are Not Okay

by Lex Croucher
read by Kishore Walker and Theodore Taylor

Macmillan Young Listeners, 2026. 12 hours, 4 minutes.
Review written August 26, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.

This book is a sequel to Gwen and Art Are Not in Love, where we’ve got an alternate-reality medieval England featuring descendants of King Arthur. You should read the first book first, and then, like me, you’ll be delighted that there’s a sequel and you can spend more time with these characters.

But the events of the first book have left their mark. Gabe is now king, and he doesn’t feel up to the task, and he keeps having panic attacks that get him hiding in a closet. And Bridget has what amounts to PTSD – except of course there’s no name for that in medieval times. And both of those conditions are messing up the budding romances from the end of the first book. On top of that, there are rumblings in the country about the “Lancelot Laws” – that it’s okay for men to love men and women to love women. Not everyone’s happy about that, and I’m afraid the Catholic church hosts the main opposition.

In this book, they go on a quest. Gabe has an aide who amounts to a publicist, and she convinces him to assemble his own Round Table of knights and go on a quest to verify the reported sightings from Arthurian legend – a Questing Beast, a person purporting to be the Green Knight, another said to be the Lady of the Lake, and of course the Grail. This way, Gabriel’s subjects will get to know him.

So the quest throws them into a company that includes the two couples in question, and they track down each reported Arthurian legend. Most of them indeed have a natural explanation – but there’s a touch of wonder thrown in before the book ends that I did enjoy.

I hate to say it, because I loved the book, but this one felt a bit long. The couples went back and forth on being harmonious or at odds with one another, and the quest didn’t feel very focused, kind of wandering from one thing to another. On the other hand, I enjoyed the characters, and it’s not like mental health issues would have been easily resolved in medieval times – these are handled well.

Bottom line: Read the first book first. If you enjoy it, and want more from those characters, I’m happy to report that you can read on.

lexcroucher.co.uk

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Review of Brigands and Breadknives, by Travis Baldree

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

Brigands and Breadknives

by Travis Baldree
read by the Author

Macmillan Audio, 2025. 8 hours, 25 minutes.
Review written July 13, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Brigands and Breadknives is the third cozy fantasy novel for adults that I’ve read from Travis Baldree, and now I’m sad that I’ve read all three he’s written so far. I’m happy, though, to discover an author whose books I love so much and who seems to be young enough to write lots more.

This is not a romance – it’s a tale of friendship and adventuring and navigating a sort of midlife crisis.

Do read the other two books before this one, because there are hints dropped of what went before. This one features Fern, the Ratkin who sold her bookshop in the seaside town where she first met her friend Viv the Orc lady to move to Thune and start a new bookshop there, right next to Viv’s coffee shop, Legends and Lattes.

But after Fern moves and her new bookshop in Thune is doing fine, she’s still discontented. It still feels like there’s a hole in her life. She doesn’t know what she wants, but it’s not this. She gets drunk and makes a promise to tell Viv how she’s feeling and apologize for all the trouble Viv had to set Fern up here.

But instead of telling Viv that night, Fern falls asleep in a cart – and a day and a half later wakes up to find she’s in a cart driven by a fabled adventurer known as the Elf Maiden. She’s 500 years old, and Fern has sold books about her. She’s got a chaos goblin in the cart and is currently on a mission to deliver the goblin to another town in exchange for a very high bounty.

And one thing leads to another, and Fern ends up going along on the quest, and even helping during life-threatening situations. Because the bounty is so incredibly high, there are many other adventurers who want a piece of the action. Even more threatening is the orc who doesn’t want any bounty but just wants the goblin dead. Along with anyone who will keep them from killing her.

So there’s lots of adventure, including fixes you’re afraid they really can’t get out of. (When I find myself reminding myself it’s a book and there’s no way the author will let that character die – will they? – I know the author has done a great job of raising the stakes.) But it’s also an exploration of friendship and life purpose, and simply a wonderful story.

I’ve decided that the new label of “cozy fantasy” is exactly what I was looking for when I started reading young adult fantasy as an adult – but now YA fantasy has moved away from. It’s not super dark, isn’t bogged down with world-building details, and has the feeling of ordinary people doing ordinary things – with a dash of magic involved. (In this case, there’s no obvious magic, but the fantasy characters make it firmly a fantasy world.)

Oh wait, did I say no magic? The elf maiden has a sword, an Elder Blade that was forged with the spirit of a warrior, and which talks. Well, after meeting this sword, we then discover that the chaos goblin has somewhere picked up an Elder Blade that’s now a breadknife. An Elder Blade in Reduced Circumstances, so to speak. So yes, there’s plenty of humor in this tale as well.

Why is it for adults and not teens? For starters, Fern is over forty years old and has adult concerns. I still find this refreshing in a tale. But there’s no need for content warnings if a teen picks it up. Nice and cozy – and a joy to listen to.

Oh, and the author was already an audiobook narrator before he wrote his own books, so he does a fantastic job reading his own work.

travisbaldree.com

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Review of Beauty, by Robin McKinley

Audiobooks, Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Old Favorites, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

coverBeauty

by Robin McKinley
read by Charlotte Parry

Recorded Books, 2013. (Print book originally published in 1978.) 7 hours, 5 minutes.
Review written July 29, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

As part of #Sonderbooks25, celebrating my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks, I’ve been rereading books by one of my very favorite authors, Robin McKinley. When doing so, I was surprised to discover that I’d never written a review of several of her books – turns out I read them before I began writing Sonderbooks in 2001. Now, I do own copies of every one of them – but the easiest ones to fit into my queue were the ones my library has as eaudiobooks. I’m happy to say that, even after all these years, Beauty still has a holds list.

Beauty is a sweet retelling of the fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast” – and is one of the books that made me realize I love fairy tale retellings. This was Robin McKinley’s debut book, and is a totally positive take on Beauty and her family. Even her sisters – who in the fairy tale are selfish and grasping and lazy – are wonderful and kind. After the family’s financial disaster, one sister’s fiance takes the family away to his home town by a magical forest – and they all build a good life together there. The other sister’s fiance was lost at sea along with their father’s ships, and the family has nothing but love for Beauty, the youngest.

This book was written long before it was acceptable to put sex into young adult novels, so the romance between Beauty and Beast is built on shared activities rather than blistering attraction – and indeed Beauty must overcome repulsion at the idea of him even touching her. This Beast is honorable and says he never would have killed her father – Beast would have sent him home if Beauty had refused to come – but he tells her that she would have been eaten up with guilt over sending him to what she thought was his death.

The book does not even broach the subject of Stockholm syndrome or how maybe Beast isn’t all that honorable if he’d deprive someone of their freedom. It doesn’t broach the vast disparity in their ages.

But what we’re left with is a sweet fairy tale with a heroine we can’t help but love. Yes, like the Disney version, Beauty loves to read. She also has a magnificent horse that only she can handle. And she’s someone who makes the best of things.

Read this book for a feel-good Happily-Ever-After tale. And it’s a great introduction to the grand mistress of fantasy’s work.

Note: It doesn’t look like the audiobook is currently available, but do check your local library.

robinmckinley.com

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