Review of Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World, by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, read by Lin Manuel Miranda

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
read by Lin Manuel Miranda

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2021. 10 hours, 3 minutes.
Review written April 30, 2022, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World is the sequel to Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe and yes, you should read them in order. So if you haven’t read the first book, please don’t read more of this review as it may give you some spoilers.

If possible, I loved this second book even more than the first. It’s from Ari’s perspective as he navigates his senior year of high school. He’s accepted that he’s in love with Dante, and he’s figuring out what that means.

But why I loved this book so much is that Ari also learns to develop many meaningful relationships. In the first book, Dante was his first friend. But now, as well as being in love with Dante, he develops deep friendships with some fellow students, with his parents, and with some teachers. All of those relationships help him get through when hard things hit.

And it’s definitely not all sun and roses. Some major life events happen that are hard to face. Ari goes to visit his older brother, who is in prison. And Ari and Dante have been accepted into colleges far apart from one another, so they both have anxiety about what comes next.

Also, the book is set in the 1980s during the height of the AIDS epidemic. Both Ari and Dante are coming to terms with what it means to be a gay man in a culture that hates them.

But they encounter beautiful people in their journey, and all the difficulties they face in this book are faced with a community of supportive friends, which makes all the difference.

benjaminsaenz.com/

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of A Magic Steeped in Poison, by Judy I. Lin

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

A Magic Steeped in Poison

by Judy I. Lin
read by Carolyn Kang

Listening Library, 2022. 11 hours, 12 minutes.
Review written September 19, 2022, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

The first thing I need to say about this book is that it’s one of those where the story doesn’t finish at all. In fact, it ends right at a point where things are looking bad for the main character. However, the good news is that the second volume is already out, and the literature says it’s a duology. So I plan to finish the story soon.

But the story is a good one — magical and imaginative, all about magic inherent in tea as well as the skills of the person making and pouring the tea.

The book begins as Ning is preparing to go to the capital city to compete to be the court shennong-shi — the best in the art of wielding the magic of tea. The winner of the competition will be granted a favor from the princess. And Ning thinks this is her only chance to save her sister Shu, who is desperately ill, having been poisoned with the same tainted tea that killed their mother.

Shu was the one who trained to be their mother’s apprentice in the arts of shennong-shi. But Ning learned many of those skills, as well as some of the art of their father, a physician.

When she gets to the palace, there’s plenty of contempt among the other competitors for girls from a rural province, but Shi befriends another like herself. She encounters a handsome stranger who turns out to be part of the imperial family — the part that is in rebellion to the emperor.

Besides the competition, which is full of creative and challenging ways for Ning to use her gifts, the book is full of court intrigue and danger. Ning wants to find out who was responsible for the poisoned tea that killed her mother. And then she needs to combine her physician skills with shennong-shi to save a life. But her skills may put her in grave danger.

I’m glad I listened to this audiobook, because I wouldn’t have known the correct pronunciations for many words, and the narrator did a nice job pulling me into the story. The original magic made this a fantasy tale that stood out, and Ning’s a character who’s resourceful and unstoppable. This book left her in a bad place, and I very much want to read on and discover how she gets out of it.

judyilin.com

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Review of All Boys Aren’t Blue, by George M. Johnson

Audiobooks, Biography, Teen Nonfiction, True Stories 0

All Boys Aren’t Blue

A Memoir-Manifesto

by George M. Johnson
read by the author

Macmillan Audio, 2020. 5 hours, 12 minutes.
Review written November 9, 2020, from a library eaudiobook

In this book, George Johnson talks about what it was like for him growing up Black and queer, even in a loving and supportive family.

His storytelling style is interesting and engaging, though a little repetitive in spots. He had me on the edge of my seat when I listened to him tell about getting his teeth kicked out when he was five years old. His stories of his family, especially his grandma, are warm and loving.

When he talks about sexual coming-of-age, he gets way more detailed than what this middle-aged heterosexual white woman wanted to hear. But this book isn’t written for heterosexual middle-aged white women. It’s written especially to other Black and queer folks to find out they aren’t alone. He even talks about how little information he had about gay sex and how he hopes he can help others go beyond trial and error with a few less errors.

I’m glad this book is out there, and even for those not in its target audience, it’s a story of a boy growing up as an outsider and finding his way with the help of community.

iamgmjohnson.com
us.macmillan.com/audio

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Girl, Serpent, Thorn, by Melissa Bashardoust

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Teen Fiction Review 0

Girl, Serpent, Thorn

by Melissa Bashardoust
read by Nikki Massoud

Macmillan Young Listeners, 2020. 10 hours, 6 minutes.
Review written December 12, 2020, from a library eaudiobook

Girl, Serpent, Thorn is a modern fairy tale rooted in Persian folklore. The story is told from the perspective of Soraya, twin sister to the young shah, but who is kept hidden from all outsiders. She has been cursed to be poisonous to the touch. If anyone touches her, they die instantly. She is even deadly to insects. So she travels the palace in secret passageways and wears gloves at all times.

But then she meets a young man who’s not afraid of her. When she finds out a way she may be able to remove her curse, he is willing to help her. There’s a little problem, though – She would have to put out the royal fire that protects her family.

I thought most of the book would be about Soraya trying to lift her curse, but it turns out there’s a lot more that happens, because there are consequences.

The narrator brought the story to life with her lilting accent.

I did enjoy this tale, and loved the Persian flavor. The story was a little convoluted for me – I didn’t completely buy Soraya’s motivations at every point. And there seemed to be coincidences at others. And I wondered at how easily she found out a couple of things – like how to discover an old criminal in hiding, long ago condemned to die.

But the concept – a princess who had been cursed to be poisonous, wondering if that makes her a monster – that concept was worth building a fairy tale around.

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Review of As Good as Dead, by Holly Jackson

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

As Good as Dead

by Holly Jackson
read by Bailey Carr with a full cast

Listening Library, September 2021. 15 hours, 4 minutes.
Review written July 20, 2022, based on a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

Big thanks again to my coworker Lisa, who recommended this trilogy to me. She was anxious to read an Advance Reader Copy of the third book, and I had never read any of them. So I was lucky and didn’t have to wait long in between books, because they were all published by the time I got to them.

In my review of the second book, I’d said that they stand alone okay, but now I say No, not at all. You absolutely need to read the other two books before you read this one. For one thing, you’d find out some major events of the earlier books, but mostly you’d understand the ins and outs of this one better.

Things escalate tremendously in each book. In the first book, Pip is a Senior in high school and takes on a 5-year-old murder case because she doesn’t think the dead boyfriend was actually the murderer, despite a texted confession. In the second book, Pip stumbles into an immediate case where a friend goes missing, but the police don’t think there’s anything to worry about. That case bumps up against another long-ago case of a serial killer.

Well, in this book, Pip gets involved again in an old case involving a serial killer. But this time, a person keeps commenting on her podcast episodes, “Who will look for you when you go missing?” and then some things happen to her that are eerily similar to experiences reported by victims of a Connecticut serial killer from years ago. But there’s someone in prison for the crimes, and there haven’t been any more since he was arrested. So when Pip gets a message from the mother of the convicted man, Pip doesn’t actually want to see the evidence that he is not the serial killer after all. Because that means he’s still out there and may have taken an interest in her.

I won’t say any more about the plot. There was a big turning point about a third of the way into the book, and I really disagreed with the decision Pip made. It had to do with not trusting the police.

As I kept listening and thought about it more, I had to admit that Pip had many, many reasons not to trust the police, and even though I wouldn’t have made that choice, I could believe that Pip would have.

And that choice contributed to an incredibly tense story from start to finish. I was listening this past week when traffic was terrible after a thunderstorm had gone through and stopped electricity and downed trees, and the audiobook had my nerves stretched tight — but at least I wasn’t bored for a second when my normally 15-minute drive took me an hour!

This trilogy is incredibly good, but be aware it’s extremely intense. And the crimes escalate from book to book and get closer and closer to Pip.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Cold, by Mariko Tamaki

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Mystery, Teen Fiction Review 0

Cold

by Mariko Tamaki
read by Katharine Chin and Raymond J. Lee

Macmillan Young Listeners, 2022. 4 hours, 37 minutes.
Review written August 19, 2022, from a library eaudiobook

Cold is told in two voices, and one is the voice of Todd, a boy who just died. He’s hovering over his body, in a park naked and frozen in the snow, when his body is found by a dog. Detectives come and begin trying to figure out what happened to him and who killed him.

The other narrator is Georgia, a girl who didn’t even know Todd. But as she learns about him, she feels like they have some things in common. They’re both queer and don’t have many friends at their respective high schools. It turns out that Todd was a Senior at the boys’ school where Georgia’s big brother Mark is also a Senior. Mark tells her he didn’t know Todd, but something’s bothering her about that statement.

Meanwhile, while Georgia is thinking about Todd’s death and what might have happened, Todd’s ghost is following the investigation. The detectives are interested in the one teacher who was kind to him. Todd didn’t have a lot of friends, and maybe if he hadn’t wanted one so badly, things would have turned out differently.

This isn’t really a detective story, as the mystery isn’t solved so much as slowly revealed. When Georgia and the reader find out the answer, all the pieces fall together.

Todd’s ghost watching events takes some of the sting out of the story of a 17-year-old being murdered — but not entirely. I was left with a sense of sadness, as Georgia’s left thinking about what it all means.

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of How to Raise an Elephant, by Alexander McCall Smith, narrated by Adjoa Andoh

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Mystery 0

How to Raise an Elephant

by Alexander McCall Smith
narrated by Adjoa Andoh

Recorded Books, 2020. 8.5 hours on 8 compact discs.
Review written October 7, 2021, from a library audiobook

Here’s the latest installment of the adventures of Mma Ramotswe and her associates with the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in Botswana. This audiobook has a new narrator, and I wasn’t crazy about some of her character voices, but I did love the way she rolls all her Rs and of course her delightful accent.

If you haven’t read any other books in this series, I do recommend beginning with the first book, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. That one is better written as a detective story, but the main point of these stories are not the cases the agency must deal with, but the relationships between the delightful characters and their observations on life and human nature.

In this one, there are three main cases to be considered: a distant cousin of Mma Ramotswe’s asking for money, new neighbors moving in next door who seem to be having marital troubles, and Charlie borrowing Mma Ramotswe’s tiny white van for a mysterious purpose.

The cases aren’t solved by figuring out puzzles, but as we see the ins and outs revealed, we gain insights on relationships and approaching life with compassion. Though Charlie’s story – which is not too surprising because of the title – ends up involving an orphaned baby elephant.

I’ve taken to listening to these books on my commute because I don’t quite have patience for the rambling and meditative observations on human nature when reading an actual book. But stuck in traffic, they never fail to make me smile. The books are anchored in Botswana, and I’m starting to feel like the country itself is a beloved friend.

recordedbooks.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea, by Axie Oh, read by Rosa Escoda

Audiobooks, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea

by Axie Oh
read by Rosa Escoda

Dreamscape Media, 2022. 8 hours, 50 minutes.
Review written July 30, 2022, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

This book is magical! Here’s how it begins:

The myths of my people say only a true bride of the Sea God can bring an end to his insatiable wrath. When the otherworldly storms rise from the East Sea, lightning breaking the sky and waters ripping up the shore, a bride is chosen and given to the Sea God.

Or sacrificed, depending on the measure of your faith.

This year, when the most beautiful girl in the village is being offered, Mina sees her brother Joon, who loves the girl, get on the boat with her. Mina follows him to save him from the sea god’s wrath — and then offers herself instead of the intended bride. She will tell the Sea God what she thinks of him for abandoning his people to the awful storms for a hundred years.

But when she gets to the Sea God’s city beneath the sea, nothing is as she expected. The Sea God looks like a boy — and he is asleep. There is a red string of fate between them. But when another young man cuts the red string of fate, he captures Mina’s soul in the form of a bird, so her first task is to get her soul back.

But that’s only the beginning. As Mina finds out what’s going on under the sea she learns that some of the other gods are trying to take advantage of the Sea God’s slumber. So they don’t want her to succeed. Others are loyal, but they don’t know how to help her. And she meets many spirits who have found their way out of the river of souls and help her in her tasks.

And yes, Mina finds love. But how will that interact with destiny? And can she trust herself to choose her own destiny?

A truly beautiful story with many elements of Korean mythology that will enchant you as you listen.

axieoh.com
fiercereads.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Audiobooks, Fiction Review, Historical 0

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

by Taylor Jenkins Reid
read by Alma Cuervo, Julia Whelan, and Robin Miles

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2017. 12 hours, 10 minutes.
Review written August 19, 2022, from a library eaudiobook

I heard about this book on Book Tok and thought I’d give it a try. I’m not completely sure why, because I’ve never been a fan of celebrity tell-alls, and this is essentially a fictional celebrity tell-all, telling the life of a glamorous Hollywood icon, the most beautiful woman in the world.

But once I started, the book pulled me in quickly. Instead of starting with the glamorous Evelyn Hugo, the book begins with Monique, a struggling biracial writer who works for an upscale magazine. Her new husband recently decided to move to the west coast, and she didn’t go with him, because this magazine is her chance and she needs to be in New York. So she’s thinking about her empty apartment and short failed marriage.

But then her magazine tells her to go interview the now-reclusive Evelyn Hugo for a feature article. When she tries to figure out why, it turns out that Evelyn Hugo requested her specifically. And when she begins the interviews, she learns that Evelyn doesn’t actually want to do a feature article. She wants to give her story to Monique to publish in a book after Evelyn’s death — but she won’t give Monique any idea if she has a reason to anticipate that will happen soon. The book will be worth millions, but meanwhile, what does Monique tell her employers?

And as we hear Evelyn’s life story, we get more and more pulled in. Despite the seven husbands, she’s no King Henry VIII. It’s not too much of a spoiler to say that Evelyn is bisexual and the love of her life was a woman. But in Hollywood beginning in the 40s and 50s, that wasn’t something she could let people know and still have a career.

The book does have some raunchy moments. But mostly, you’re pulled into the life of the “most beautiful woman in the world” and come to understand her choices, even the questionable ones. In the middle of the book, I wondered why I’d been pulled into a fake celebrity tell-all, but by the end, I felt like something deeper and more important was going on. Monique gains perspective from hearing Evelyn’s story, and the reader will, too.

Oh, and if you start out by liking celebrity tell-alls, you should enjoy this book all the more!

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of The Downstairs Girl, by Stacey Lee

Audiobooks, Historical, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Downstairs Girl

by Stacey Lee
read by Emily Woo Zeller

Tantor Media, 2019. 11 hours, 32 minutes.
Review written September 5, 2020, from a library eaudiobook

Set in 1890 Atlanta, 17-year-old Jo Kuan gets fired from the hat shop where she’d been perfecting her skills, in favor of a white assistant. The man who’s taken care of her all her life in the absence of her parents gets her a job as a lady’s maid back at the stately home of the family where he works as a groom.

Jo and her caregiver, Old Jin, live in an underground space remaining from the days when escaped slaves went through Atlanta, very careful to hide their presence. Jo indulges herself listening to the conversation of the family in the print shop over her bedroom. When they need something to boost circulation in their newspaper, she submits an advice column, written by Miss Sweetie, giving modern views in a clever way. Her column helps newspaper circulation turn around, but she knows she has to be anonymous because Atlanta society would be shocked if they knew they were listening to a Chinese girl.

Meanwhile, Jo uncovers a clue about the identity of her parents, but she has to deal with an unsavory character to find out more. And the unkind young lady Jo works for has secrets of her own. It all builds up toward Race Day, the social event of the year in Atlanta. Old Jin is keeping secrets of his own. Jo worries that he’s arranging a marriage for her, and she’s not ready to give up her freedom.

I enjoyed this eaudiobook, not sure at first I wouldn’t be sorry to start such a long one – but I finished well before the book was due, interested in the characters and their predicaments. I thought there were a lot of coincidences and things that worked out far too well to be believable, but it did make a fun story, and I was happy with the good outcomes. I especially enjoyed the clever letters from Miss Sweetie that started each chapter. Also, Jo’s voice in telling the story was pleasant, using apt metaphors that gave you the feeling of the time and place.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?