Are You Listening? Audiobook review: The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking #1) by Patrick Ness

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness


The Scoop:


On New World, in the town of Prentisstown, Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men. But Prentisstown isn’t like other towns. Everyone can hear everyone else’s thoughts (including animals) in an overwhelming, constant stream of Noise. Just a month before the birthday that makes Todd a man, he and his faithful dog, Manchee, whose simple, loyal voice he also hears happen upon an area of complete silence. While Todd tries to keep thoughts of the silence out of his Noise he fails. He knows that the silence is part of an even larger secret the powerful men of Prentisstown are trying to hide from him and ends up on the run from them with only Manchee as his companion. Todd and Manchee return to the location where they first heard nothing and the two stumble upon the strange and eerily silent creature: a girl. Who is she? Why wasn't she killed by the germ like all the females on New World? They convince her they mean no harm and encourage her to join their escape. And, so, Todd, Manchee and Viola must try and escape from their pursuers who can hear their every thoughts.

Are You Listening? Audiobook review: The Indigo Notebook by Laura Resau

The Indigo Notebook by Laura Resau


The Scoop:


Zeeta and her free-spirited, wanderlust, ESL-teaching, Rumi-quoting mother Layla have lived in 15 different countries. That's one country for each year that Zeeta has been alive. And for each of those countries, Zeeta has kept a notebook (well, since she could write, at least) that holds her observations, thoughts and the stories of the native people. This year, the year of living in Otavalo, Ecuador, Zeeta has an indigo notebook.


Now, more than ever (she's just three years away from going to college) with the year-after-year of moves and making new friends and learning new customs Zeeta wishes for her mother to finally grow some roots and just "stick." And, maybe, Zeeta's wish is going to come true in Ecuador. Even while enlisting her newfound friends at the local market to find a potential suitor for her mother Zeeta notices subtle changes in her mother. Because, after a near-death experience at a waterfall her mother is beginning to morph into somebody who could be more tradtional, more grounded, more parental. Layla goes from having a boyfriend that is a surfing clown (even down to making making balloon animals) to one that is more stable and has a career in the business world. During this time Zeeta has met an American teenager named Wendell who has traveled to Otavalo to find out the identities of his birth parents. Zeeta agrees to become his translator and they set out on a journey to learn of the Otavalenos and the Quechua Indians that might hold an answer to Wendell's heritage. And, Zeeta, besides being tasked to help Wendell to find answers to his own life (and mysterious abilities) might be finding out that maybe the life she's always been dreaming about isn't exactly what she wants after all.

Are You Listening? Audiobook review: The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams

The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams


The Scoop:
Kyra Leigh Carlson is almost 14 years old. Kyra loves books. Kyra is in love with Joshua. But those two loves don't matter because Kyra is one of The Chosen Ones. The Chosen Ones are a isolated, polygamous cult. And, Kyra, along with her 21 brothers and sisters, her three mothers, her father and everybody else in the Compound are under the rule of the Prophet Childs. Under his "reign," any book except the bible has been outlawed and removed from the Compound. It is also forbidden to be seen with, let alone touch or kiss, a sect member of the opposite sex. With her secretive trips to the Ironton County Mobile Library on Wheels for contraband reading and her clandestine midnight meetings with 16-year-old Joshua, Kyra is already wallowing in the guilt of her sins. When her family is family is visited by the Prophet and his Apostles it is assumed that it is to announce that her father will become a new apostle for The Chosen Ones. They are all stunned, none more than Kyra, when the announcement is that Prophet Childs has had a vision and it is of Kyra becoming the seventh wife to her 60-plus-year-old uncle. With the books from the Mobile Library (like Harry Potter and Bridge to Terabithia) opening her eyes to a bigger world than what she experiences closed off in her compound and Joshua's love opening her heart to more possibilities in life as well as the abject horror and repulsion she feels at becoming a wife to her uncle, Kyra begins a struggle within herself on whether she should stay with the family she loves and the life that she knows or run from the horrible future ahead into something completely unknown.

Are You Listening? Audiobook Review: Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Delirium by Lauren Oliver


The Scoop:

Lena and her friends and family live in a world where love is a disease--amor delirium nervosa--and when you turn eighteen you are required to have the cure so you are no longer are at risk of contracting this deadly disease. Lena was looking forward to the cure once she turned eighteen because she believed that her mother committed suicide as a result of amor delirium nervosa. But, as anybody knows, in the life of a teenager things are rarely going to go along as they should.

Things start gradually changing during her interview to determine what she would do and who she would be paired with after her cure--she changes the answers she's been prepping with for ages and she also spies a young man in the observation booth watching and listening to what she says. Her views on life and the cure continue morphing when her best friend, Hana, becomes interested in finding hidden locations where "underground" bands are playing and she ends up tagging along. Lena and Hana later come across the young man she spied watching her interview, Alex, on one of their runs. After a few more coincidental run-ins and Alex saving Lena from being captured during a raid her eyes are really opened to what it means to be cured and to follow along with the status quo of living, working and not loving. Knowing Alex, who turns out not to be who (and what) Lena thought him to be, she learns more about what is forbidden by her government, what she has been (and will be) missing out on by blindly following the dictates of her society and, maybe, that she wasn't told the truth about what happened to her mother as a result of amor deliria nervosa.

Are you Listening? Audiobook Review: Bossypants by Tina Fey

Bossypants by Tina Fey

The Scoop:

The life and times of Tina Fey. Written and narrated by Tina Fey. What else can I say that can't be said so much better by comedic writer extraordinnaire, Tina Fey? Nothing, really so I'm going right into what I thought of the audio version of the book.

Are You Listening? Audiobook review: Columbine by Dave Cullen

Columbine by Dave Cullen


The Scoop:


Ok, forget what you heard in the media during the initial break-out of the shootings at Columbine. Forget that Dylan and Eric were thought to be part of the Trench Coat Mafia. Just forget all of the media hypothesis and hype.


Dave Cullen, with almost 10 years of researching the tragedy, brings a compelling and astonishing story of two boys who had plenty of friends, got good grades and were hopeful about finding love. He tells how Eric had psychopathic tendencies and Dylan was distraught and suicidal for need of love. From the book annotation, and I couldn't agree more, Cullen draws "on hundreds of interviews, thousands of pages of police files, FBI psychologists, and the boys' tapes and diaries, (to) give the first complete account of the Columbine tragedy."

Are You Listening? Audiobook review: Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride

Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride

The Scoop:


Meet Sam LaCroix, college drop-out, fast food worker, and, oh, yeah, necromancer. Meet Douglas, head of the Council and all-around powerful necromancer. As we start the story Sam doesn't know he's a necromancer until he gets busted for smashing the tail light of Douglas's car during a rousing game of potato hockey. Douglas threatens Sam because he hasn't "registered" with the Council for the region. Sam is clueless about having any powers because his mother, a witch, and his uncle, a fellow necromancer, had his powers bound when he was a baby. Douglas doesn't care and decides to take matters into his own hands by kidnapping Sam, throwing him into a cage with Brid, a fellow abductee who happens to be a were-hound, and forcing him to learn the trade of necromancy. How will Sam get out of this jam in one piece? Along the way he is helped by his friends, Ramon, Frank and poor, be-headed Brooke, his mother and sister, and a waffle-loving harbinger named Ashley. Sam learns about his powers and finally finds some focus in his life after drifting along and not really feeling like he had a place in the world.