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.

Review: The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

The Scoop:

It's 1996 and Emma and Josh have been neighbors their whole life and best friends almost as long. Their friendship changed when Josh wanted something more and Emma didn't. Emma's father buys her a computer and when Josh's family gets a free AOL CD in the mail he brings it over for her to install. However, she doesn't only install AOL. When Emma logs in to her AOL account she is automatically directed and logged in to her Facebook page. A Facebook page from fifteen years in the future. After figuring out exactly what Facebook is, Emma and Josh realize that they can see the immediate effect of anything they do in the present on their future. What they have to figure out is if they really want to know what happens or if they want to wait and see what the future holds for them.

Review: Ten Things We Did (and Probably Shouldn't Have) by Sarah Mlynowski

Ten Things We Did by Sarah Mlynowski


The Scoop:


April, a high school junior, gets what probably many teenage kids want from their parents. Complete freedom which comes from living on her own in a different city and different state (or country, even, in the case of her mom). Plus $1000 in a bank account every month with little or no checking up on what that money was used for. So, using a variety of stealthy, teenager-y techniques known worldwide to fool the 'rents, April and her good friend, Vi, set up a couple of fake e-mail (or pmail) address for their respective parents so they are able to moderate the situation. April's dad agrees, after talking to Vi impersonating her mother on the phone and a series of e-mail's sent to Vi's mom's fake pmail address, to allow her to stay in Connecticut while he and the new wife move to Cleveland. Then April and Vi, since Vi's mom is on tour as Mary Poppins and not actually staying in the house with them, proceed to do ten things they probably shouldn't have.

Review: The Eternal Sea (Everlasting #2) by Angie Frazier

The Eternal Sea by Angie Frazier


The Scoop:


When we left Camille, Oscar, Ira and Cassie's newly discovered brother Samuel they had found the mysterious stone of Umandu, brought Oscar back to life using it and killed off their nemesis in the search who also happened to be Samuel's father. What Camille and her co-horts didn't know is that Umandu is part of a set of stones that needed to be united (reunited?) to work properly in their magic of bringing somebody back to life. Not having the two stones meant that Oscar's soul was never returned to his body and therefore he wasn't yet, technically, alive. Camille is determined to travel to the bowels of the neverworld to get the stone and complete Oscar's reanimation. Along the way she must sort out her feelings for him and her "former" fiance Randall, determine where her brother's loyalties lay and try to locate loyal Ira who was abducted by the supernatural creatures trying to stop her in her quest.

Review: The Iron Knight (Iron Fey #4) by Julie Kagawa

The Iron Knight by Julie Kagawa


The Scoop:


When we last left Meghan, Ash and Puck, Meghan had just become the Iron Queen, she had released Ash from his knighthood oath and Puck was his usual goofy self. In The Iron Knight we flip to the point of view of the Winter Prince, Ash who has been banished from the kingdom of Tir Na Nog by his mother, Queen Mab. He decides to take the journey to the End of the World to gain his soul so he can live with Meghan in the Iron Kindgom. Along for the ride are Ash's best frenemy and constant prankster, Puck and the ever enigmatic and disappearing cait saith, Grimalkin. They are joined by The Big Bad Wolf and a surprising blast from both Ash and Puck's past. They all must survive the trip the very scary, but not scarily named River of Dreams so Ash can try his luck at the testing grounds that will give him the ultimate prize of a soul--unless the trip and tests make him change his mind.

Review: Don't Stop Now by Julie Halpern

Don't Stop Now by Julie Halpern

The Scoop:


Lillian is all set to enjoy a relatively peaceful and uneventful last summer in Illinois before college. Until she gets the somewhat cryptic voicemail of "I did it" from her sort-of friend Penny on her cell phone. And from that one short sentence Lil somehow determines that maybe Penny was faking her own kidnapping. And maybe, since the last phone call from Penny's phone (conveniently left behind a the scene of the "kidnapping") was to Lil, she might know something about it. Dodging questions from the local police and eventually the FBI, Lil easily talks her best friend, Josh (he of the mostly absent father and very large, very guilt-sponsored bank account that will ultimately fund their trip) into a road trip to Oregon. This trip is all based on a hunch that comes from a discussion between Lil and Penny about a boy Penny met at Disney World who lives in Portland. Along the way Lil and Josh find out if possibly their friendship might be more than they expected and Penny finds strength to reach for a future beyond overbearing family and boyfriends.

Review: Wisdom's Kiss by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Wisdom's Kiss by Catherine Gilbert Murdock


The Scoop:


Fortitude (known as Trudy) and Tomas (known as Tips) grew up together as orphans in the town of Bacio in the kingdom of Lax. Before they had quite finished growing up a man known as Felis el Gato (or the Booted Maestro) happened upon Tips performing one of his daring feats upon the water mill at the mill house where he was raised. Trudy, having been blessed with the gift of a seer, knew that apprenticing with Felis el Gato for what she thought would be a life of soldiering would be a better life for him than being the go-fer for his over-bearing and lazy brothers who had inherited the mill. Trudy became a kitchen maid in the local inn that her mother worked in before she died.


Wisdom (known as Dizzy), her grandmother, Dowager Queen Benevolence (known as Ben) and sister, Queen Temperance (known as Temperance) live in Montagne in the kindom of Lax. Duke Roger of Farina had come to Montagne with the expressed intent to offer marriage to Queen Temperance but found younger sister Dizzy much more to his liking. Once Dizzy accepted they all (except for Temperance) set off for Farina to meet with Roger's mother, the most deliciously evil and status-grubbing Wilhelmina, Duchess of Farina and plan for the wedding.


All of these main characters ultimately end up in the same town--Farina--with Trudy joining the royal entourage as a lady-in-waiting and Tips and Felis already in Farina. They determine that Roger and Wilhelmina have a nefarious plot planned to take over the ruling title of Montagne and the rest of them have to find a way to stop it. Told by 8 different narrators by way of a play, encyclopedia entries, diaries, memoirs and letters we follow these citizens of Lax in their quest to save their nation by way of magic, insight and sheer will and talent.

Review: Bitter with Baggage Seeks Same: The Life and Times of Some Chickens by Sloane Tanen

Bitter with Baggage Seeks Same:The Life and Times of Some Chickens by Sloane Tanen


The Scoop:


What's there to say? Sloane Tanen creates super cute dioramas featuring super cute chicks in entertaining situations. Since, in this instance, goodreads can explain it better here goes: 


With more personality than most people have to spare, New York artist Sloane Tanen's tiny yellow chickens negotiate the tricky modern world, filled with three-headed blind dates, menacing KFCs, playground popularity battles, and annoyingly crowded yoga classes. They perch amid doll furniture, in scenes photographed in glorious color and brilliantly captioned- and their lives will strike you as strangely familiar...

Charming, spiky with off-kilter wit (or waxing jobs gone terribly wrong), and somehow larger than life, these chickens win the hearts of all who behold them. 


And to intrigue you even further here is a tease of what you can find within the pages.

Review: The Forgotten Locket (Hourglass Door Trilogy #3) by Lisa Mangum

The Forgotten Locket by Lisa Mangum


The Scoop:


As we start with the final book of the Hourglass Door Trilogy Abby has follwed through with her decision to go through the version of the hourglass door she created (built with Dante's blueprints from the time of da Vinci after the original one was destroyed) in order to close the loop to save Dante from blindness and possible death. But, it's not as simple as it sounds. Abby has to battle Zo (Dante's evil equal as a Master of Time), assimilate into a new time period so she herself doesn't get thrown in the dungeon and become useless, make sure the people that are from that time period (Dante and his brother, Orlando) don't run into their present (or past?) selves, and try and keep the river from rendering the (correct)present time non-existent. Will Abby be able to harness the power of time and the river and find out her own magical connection to the river, the bank and time before Zo takes away her one chance to save Dante and her family from a future that is anything but shiny?

Review: My Life Undecided by Jessica Brody

My Life Undecided by Jessica Brody


The Scoop:


At two years of age "Baby Brooklyn" fell down a mine shaft. At 15 years of age Brooklyn (no longer Baby) listens to her best friend, Shayne, and decides to host a party in one of her mom's model homes and it catches on fire. In between there have been other decisions that had unfortunate circumstances and the house fire was the culminating disaster that led Brooks to believe that she was incapable of making good decisions. As her community service requirement for the house fire she is scheduled to assist at a local nursing home and becomes the sole entertainment of Mrs. Moody whose one and only form of diversion from her usually "moody" mood is being read to from the book series Choose the Story. In this series the reader makes various decisions to move the story along all in the hopes of coming to the end of the book as the victorious adventurer (but the majority of the storylines end up resulting in the adventurer's death). During the reading of these books to Mrs. Moody, Brooklyn comes up with the idea of getting other people to make decisions for her by creating a blog and polling her readers. And though some of her polls were unimportant in the grand scheme of things (to read The Grapes of Wrath or The Old Man and the Sea or whether or not to try out for the rugby team) there were some tough decisions that she put on the polls that Brooklyn left up to total strangers. Whether to stick with high-maintenence popularity and her faithless "best friend" by taking the path provided by the sexy new student, "Rhett Butler" or to take a new path of semi-ivisibility by becoming closer with "Heimlich" the debate team boy that saved her from choking. These decisions, plus many others, are on Brooklyn's path to finding out who and what she wants to be and in finally understanding WHO she is means maybe she can have her life decided.

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.

Review: Fins are Forever (Fins #2) by Tera Lynn Childs

Fins Are Forever by Tera Lynn Childs


The Scoop:


We pick up a few weeks after Lily and Quince are have their bond severed after the accidental kiss in the prequel, Forgive My Fins. The bond, however, opened Lily's eyes to how she really feels about Quince and they have become very close in a very short time. In Fins are Forever we are joined by Lily's cousin Dosinia (or Doe as she's called) who has been exiled from their underwater kingdom of Thalassinia by Lily's father, King Whelk. As an exile Doe doesn't have any of her mer-powers and must rely upon Lily for guidance on living in the human world. If you read the first book you will know that there is no love lost between the two girls and it is very begrudgingly that Doe accepts Lily's advice and teachings.


As a result of Lily's relationship with Quince she has decided to forfeit her reign as a mer-queen to live on land with the boy she loves. The life altering decision must also include what she will do with her life (instead of ruling Thalassinia like it was always expected). Along this path of decision-making Lily must find out the reason Doe was exiled and why she did what she did and determine the real reason her guppyhood friend Tellin has sought her out after all these years. Does he really want to just renew an old friendship or is there something more he isn't telling her?

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.

Review: Enchanted Ivy by Sarah Beth Durst

Enchanted Ivy by Sarah Beth Durst


The Scoop:


Lily Carter doesn't know there are two Princetons (as in Princeton University). Two Princetons that exist parallel to each other--one mystical, one normal. All it takes is one step through the FitzRandolph Gateway to get from one Princeton to the other. As long as you have "the key."


Lily and her mother travel with Lily's grandfather to his 50th class reunion. Upon her arrival she is given the option for early admission that is guaranteed without having to submit grades or SAT scores. All she must do is find the Ivy Key. First she must figure out what the Ivy Key is. With the help of the mysterious Tye and his tiger-striped hair and the blushing and beautiful Jake, Lily uncovers the meaning of the key and also her own magical background and the truth behind her father's death.

Review: Hourglass by Myra McEntire

Hourglass by Myra McEntire


The Scoop:


Emerson Cole has been through a lot. She has lost both of her parents in a tragic accident while on a family ski vacation, she had a mental breakdown and was committed to an institution and, oh yeah, she sees dead people. Her brother, Thomas and his wife Dru have taken guardianship of Emerson and her brother has tried specialist after "specialist" to help Emerson with the people that she is seeing. They finally find some help when Michael Weaver from someplace called Hourglass (which is just as mysterious as the people that Emerson sees). Finally, Emerson finds a kindred spirit (literally--their connection is so strong it causes lights to short out) who knows exactly what she what she is dealing with. Michael sees the same people that Emerson does. Michael is able to answer most of Emerson's questions. And, oh yeah, Michael wants Emerson to help him travel to the past to save his mentor. Emerson must trust her delicate state of mind to a vitual stranger who wants her to do the craziest sounding thing.

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.

Review: Frost (Stork #2) by Wendy Delsol

Frost by Wendy Delsol


The Scoop:


Katla Leblanc is a stork--she delivers unborn souls to their rightful womb. Her boyfriend Jack Snjosson is, in the most general of terms, Jack Frost. But we learned all that in the first book of the series, Stork. Katla is still a stork (and second in command) and still head over heels for Jack. Katla and Jack are spending their first Christmas together and it isn't as white as Katla would have expected in Minnesota. As his present to her Jack creates a light snowfall that they take a horse-drawn sleight ride through. During the course of the sleigh ride the light snowfall somehow becomes and all out blizzard. Jack and Katla struggle to make it home and eventually they do. Other families caught out in the storm didn't have such happy endings--a young boy died when the family car he was riding in went off the road.


Jack and Katla felt guilt from this and that was made worse when a weather scientist from Iceland came to explore the global warming "phenomenon" (or lack of global warming in this case) that Jack's blizzard became known as. The arrival of the scientist, Brigid, coincides with the arriveal of Katlas's father to start his new wind turbine factory, her mother planning her wedding while pregnant and the attact on the stork group which resulted in a serious injury to their leader and put Kat in charge. While she is dealing with all of these problems we cam add to them that it appears that Brigid has some sort of mysterious pull over anybody she comes in contact with (except Katla) but more so with Jack than anybody else and Kat's afi (grandfather) is suffering from a very intense case of homesickness for Iceland. Somehow or another (at least until we find out more about what is driving Brigid) high school senior, Jack, gets an internship to accompany Brigid to the weather outpost in Iceland and Kat is coerced into tagging along with her afi to his hometown in Iceland. Where she learns she is also descended from selkies (angels cast out from heaven that can inhabit both land and sea). And this is where Kat must ultimately figure out the mystery of Brigid and her odd hold over Jack.

Review: Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier

Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier


The Scoop:


Gwyneth Shepherd has led a carefree life compared to her cousin Charlotte. She gets to spend time with her best friend, Lesly, watch any movies she wants, basically have a barely structured life outside of school compared to Charlotte who has to take fencing lessons, etiquette lessons, extremely thorough history lessons and other lessons all geared towards a life of time travel because she has supposedly inherited the family gene. For time travel. Through time.


However, we find out that Gwen's mother lied about her actual birth date and she was the one to inherit the family gene. For time travel. Through time. Gwen is unexpectedly swept back in time twice before she tells her mother what is happening. Her mother takes her to the Guardians who have the fancy chronograph machine that will control her time travel once she supplies it with a small amount of her blood. While there she meets her travel partner Gideon de Villiers who has inherited the male line gene. For time travel. Through time.

So, the basic set-up is that the gene inheriters before Gwen and Gideon, Lucy and Paul, had stolen the original chronograph that held blood samples of the ten time travelers before them. Supposedly, when the samples of all twelve gene carriers are finally in the chronograph some secret will be revealed. Somehow, Lucy and Paul learned something of what the secret might be or who it might adversely benefit and took the chronograph and hid somewhere in time, warning past gene carriers that Gideon and Gwen were be coming for their blood (no, this book doesn't have any vampires) to complete the circle of the spare chronograph. The knowledge that Lucy had, and the danger it might bring Gwen, was the impetus behind Gwen's mother lying about Gwen's actual birth date and possibility of inheriting the gene. For time travel. Through time.

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.

Review: Tiger's Quest (Tiger Saga #2) by Colleen Houck

Tiger's Quest by Colleen Houck


The Scoop:


We are back in Oregon with Kelsey after her whirlwind adventure with cursed Indian prince, Ren. She has returned after forcing Ren (who appeared to be desperately in love with her) to let her go so he could explore his options (aka sow his wild seeds or some such nonsense). Upon her return to Oregon she found a duplex that she could live in, an awesome car for her to drive, a bunch of new clothes, her college classes picked out and paid for and anything else she might possibly desire (like classes in the martial art of wushu). She was going to school, taking wushu classes, casually dating and ferociously missing Ren (so much so that she bought a stuffed white tiger to sleep with).

With Kelsey's fondest wish that Ren forget her and move on to more princely diversions she decides to really start dating and decides that her wushu instructor, Li, is the best choice (after going out with some real duds). Her heart isn't really in it, which is good, because on Christmas Ren shows up in Oregon to tell Kelsey enough is enough and he only wants her. But, still, that isn't good enough and because she can't commit, Ren and Li decide that they need to have a competition on who can date Kelsey the best (and they lay out rules). Finally, Kelsey picks Ren as the winner (after torturing him to break one of the rules which was only she could instigate a kiss) and they live happily ever after--for about two weeks.

Ren's brother, Kishan, shows up with news that their long time enemy, Lokesh (the guy who put the tiger spell on the brothers), was getting close to finding them in Oregon. The prepared for d-day and when the hired thugs showed up they raced through the woods to their getaway vehicle. Along their way to the truck Ren was hit several times with tranquilizer darts and we find out that Kelsey can summon lightning from her hands. Ren encourages Kishan to take Kelsey and get her away, sacrificing himself to the enemy (and lots and lots of torture). Kelsey and Kishan return to India where they go on the next leg of the journey to remove the tiger curse from the princes. Instead of only in India this search takes them into Tibet and the Himalayan Mountains.