When it comes to discovering great audiobooks it always helps to turn to the experts! We are super excited to welcome AudioFile Magazine blogger, Aurelia C. Scott, to share some inspiring young adult audiobooks to add to your TBR pile!
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I Can’t Date Jesus: Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I’ve Put My Faith in Beyoncé
6 hrs and 9 min | Simon & Schuster | Memoir/Essay Collection | 07/24/2018
This memoir caught my eye because well . . . how can you bypass a book with a subtitle like that? I wasn’t familiar with Arceneaux before, but he is a prolific pop culture writer who often writes about the intersection of being Black and gay.
I’ve been kind of meh on memoirs by millennials lately*, particularly the ones around identity, because they feel like they are written specifically for the gaze of White liberal progressives. But Arceneaux’s stories are messier and have a personal authenticity that I enjoyed.
My favorite essays were the ones he wrote about his relationship to Catholicism and the importance of R&B music in his life. At first, it seemed like Beyoncé’s name was put in the title just to get clicks but once you get to his essay about Beyoncé it fell into place.
Arceneaux reads the audiobook, and it didn’t 100% work for me. While it was great to hear his particular southern accent, his affect was flat and stilted at times.
I also just admire Arceneaux’s hustle to become the media personality he’s become. While he doesn’t address it directly, there is an ongoing thread in the background of his essays about the years of hard work he put into building his career.
Arceneaux offers something new to the gay/pop culture essayist genre and I’m sure there will be many more books from him in the future.
*This review of Morgan Jenkins’ This Will Be My Undoinghits on a few the issues I have with some of these millennial memoirs about identity
A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas (Lady Sherlock #1)
Release Date: 10/08/16 | Historical Mystery | 323 Pages | Berkley Books
In this reimagining of Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective Sherlock Holmes is the pseudonym of Charlotte Holmes, an overly practical and hyper-observant member of the gentry who doesn’t quite fit into society’s standards. She spends her time solving everyday mysteries via letters, but when scandal strikes and Charlotte’s life is turned upside down, she finds herself solving her biggest mystery yet–a murder.
This is a fun origin story and functions as a kickoff for the rest of the series. All of your favorite Sherlockian characters are present but are introduced in new and interesting ways that I don’t want to spoil. Thomas gets into the nitty-gritty of the kinds of hoops a Victorian woman would have to go through to get to do any kind of detective work. There is definitely a feminist thread throughout the series, particularly when you look at how the circumstances of the main mystery are changed from the original story.
This is my first foray into the mystery genre and hopefully not my last.
Can we talk about how Sherry Thomas is slaying everything?She writes award-winning historical romances, YA fantasy and mysteryall in English–which is her second language! There are lot of romance authors who write more than romance, but she seems to be the only one to have a name for herself in so many genres.
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
368 pages | Washington Square Press | Contemporary | 07/15/2014
Along with Ikea, The Skarsgard family and fish-shaped candy, Fredrik Backman is the newest Swedish export making money moves in the U.S.
Ove is best described in the novel as “a man with his hands perpetually in his pockets”. He is the human equivalent of the Old Man Yells at Cloud meme. At 59-years old he has a fondness for the way things used to be and fights progress with indignation and a solid hurmph. Ove has a plan for what should come next in his life, a plan that gets turned upside down by the boisterous family that moves in next door, a mangy old cat and a community of unlikely neighbors.
Backman writes with a capricious tone with an infinity for in medias res. This book is translated from Swedish and there were only a few times where I felt like something wasn’t translating
I’m not sure what I expected from this book but it as a lot more fun than I was anticipated. Ove truly becomes an endearing figure, and I really like stories that explore life in all its stages a la The Curious Case of Benjamin Button or Big Fish.
A quaint, heartwarming story that is satisfyingly earnest and has universal appeal for fans of contemporary fiction.
The Supervillain and Me by Danielle Banas
310 pages | Swoon Reads | Sci-Fi YA | 07/10/2018
Crime rates have skyrocketed in Abby Hamilton’s town of Morristown, but luckily their local superhero, Red Comet (who is also secretly Abby’s brother), is always around to save the day. Abby is content just being a theater kid and leaving the saving to her super-powered brother, but when a new super teen known as Iron Phantom starts causing trouble Abby finds herself tangled up with Morristown’s first supervillain–who may not be so villainous after all.
Does anyone remember the movie Sky High? This book gave me a lot of those same vibes as that movie. The Supervillain and Me supers aren’t the angsty complex heroes of Marvel and DC films. The teens in tights are kind of treated like boy bands with their adoring fans, public signings, merch and thriving fanfiction communities–which I guess is a good time to note that although this is a debut novel, Danielle Banas is a prominent Wattpad author.
Also fair warning, despite being from the Swoon Reads imprint there are a lot more super saves than super swoons.
Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
Release Date: 08/20/18 | Science Fiction | 9 hours 45 minutes | Saga Press
The aliens have arrived— and in order for humanity to prove itself as a sentient species worthy of being welcomed into the greater galaxy, they must compete in an intergalactic singing competition.
Luckily, Earth’s been given a leg up as the welcome committee has already chosen the musical group most likely to place; The long defunct and estranged glitterpunk glamrock band Decibel Jones and The Absolute Zeroes. Now, Decibel Jones (aka Danesh Jalo) and Oort St. Ultraviolet (aka Omar Caliskan ) two middle-aged, washed up former rockstars have to get the band back together, travel across the universe and give a performance that will prevent the total annihilation of all of humanity.
This.Books.Is.Bonkers.
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