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Audiobook Review : Dreams Of Gods and Monsters

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  • Release Date: April 8th 2014
  • Genre: Fantasy
  • Length: 18 hours 11 minutes
  • Publisher: Hachette Audio

IT IS  FINISHED. I started listening to this series 3 years ago  and  have finally finished this sweeping epic fantasy and love story. Taylor’s use of language and creativity have me waiting eagerly to see what she will come up with next.

The Daughter of Smoke and Bone series starts off with a whimsical art student in Prague and free falls into a fantastical epic conclusion. While I enjoyed the world-building and conflict Taylor created, the ending fizzled just a bit for me. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it;  it just came and went just a little to swiftly. But despite this, all these book have me sold. They are all plotted perfectly and follow an even pace.

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Audiobook Review : Reboot by Amy Tintera

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  • Release Date: May 7th, 2013
  • Pages: 365 
  • Genre: Dystopian/Thriller
  • Publisher: HarperTeen

I’ve been in a bit of a fictional hangover. Which is to say I binged watched Nickelodeon’s The Legend of Korra series and was searching for a book to fill this void. I wanted adventure, world-building and action girls so I immediately started browsing YA dystopians. I settled on Reboot after getting a rec from a regular reader….

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Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed

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  • Release Date: July 10th 2012
  • Genre:  Essay Collection / Self Help
  • Hours: 9 hours and 41 minutes
  • Publisher: Random House Vintage
  • Triggers: Child abuse

Cheryl Strayed is probably best known for Wild, the story of her journey hiking the Pacific Crest  Trail, which kicked off Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 and was recently released as a film with Reese Witherspoon. I feel like a couple years ago I heard her name sprinkled through every literary website and podcast I subscribed to, so when I saw this audio on Overdrive I checked it out.

The set up for this book takes some explaining. It’s a collection of advice columns from when Strayed wrote an advice column on the culture website, The Rumpus under the pseudonym Dear Sugar. For each question, he usually picks a story from her past to illuminate her advice. Strayed has had such an interesting and full life and her stories are captivating. She’s brutally honest about herself and doesn’t hold anything back, she shows quite a bit of vulnerability with her readers and I think that’s why the columns were so popular.

I’d heard so much praise for this collection, but I wasn’t sure it would be for me. I didn’t really know what I was getting into when I started, but I really enjoyed this audiobook overall. Strayed’s mix of memoir through advice is fun. Strayed does the audio and I think hearing her voice gets across some of her intention in her responses to advice seekers. Like she calls her readers sweet pea and when you read it it can sound condescending, but the way she reads it it sounds more affectionate.

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Audiobook Review : Fire With Fire by Siobhan Vivian and Jenny Han

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  • Genre :Contemporary/Paranormal
  • Length : 11 hours 15 minutes
  • Release Date : 8-13-13
  • Publisher : Simon Audio

Fire With Fire picks up just a few weeks after the events of Burn for Burn. The main characters have seemingly moved on, however, it’s not long before the girls find themselves working together to once again take down Reeve Tabatsky. Some people never change. . . or do they?

While the first book introduced the world of Jar Island, this book shifts focus on the community and culture of Jar Island. We get a feel for the traditions, events and celebrations of this small town. This level of world-building within a contemporary setting is admirable….

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Audiobook Review : Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead

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  • Release Date : August 16th 2007
  • Publisher : Penguin
  • Audiobook Length : 8 hours 55 minutes

Synopsis : St. Vladimir’s Academy isn’t just any boarding school—it’s a hidden place where vampires are educated in the ways of magic and half-human teens train to protect them. Rose Hathaway is a Dhampir, a bodyguard for her best friend Lissa, a Moroi Vampire Princess. They’ve been on the run, but now they’re being dragged back to St. Vladimir’s—the very place where they’re most in danger…

Rose and Lissa become enmeshed in forbidden romance, the Academy’s ruthless social scene, and unspeakable nighttime rituals. But they must be careful lest the Strigoi—the world’s fiercest and most dangerous vampires—make Lissa one of them forever

Two years ago Rose Hathaway,  a half-human vampire, and her best friend Lissa Dragomir, a vampire princess, ran away from the vampire filled St. Vladimir’s Academy. We don’t know what they’ve been running from, but these girls have their reasons. Only now, they’ve been dragged back to St. Vladmir’s and the darkness has followed them….

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Audiobook Review: Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

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“It’s like being in love, discovering your best friend.” 

― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

  • Release Date: February 6th 2012
  • Publisher: Egmont Press
  • Genre: Historical Fiction
  • Hours: 10 hours 7 minutes

Synopsis: I have two weeks. You’ll shoot me at the end no matter what I do.
That’s what you do to enemy agents. It’s what we do to enemy agents. But I look at all the dark and twisted roads ahead and cooperation is the easy way out. Possibly the only way out for a girl caught red-handed doing dirty work like mine — and I will do anything, anything, to avoid SS-Hauptsturmführer von Linden interrogating me again.
He has said that I can have as much paper as I need. All I have to do is cough up everything I can remember about the British War Effort. And I’m going to. But the story of how I came to be here starts with my friend Maddie. She is the pilot who flew me into France — an Allied Invasion of Two.
We are a sensational team

Wow. Just Wow. Code Name Verity is one of those books that everyone raves about and you know what? They have good reason to. Code Name Verity is an amazing story and the audiobook version does this novel so much justice, I can’t recommend it enough. Between this and Out of The Easy, I just may have a new thing for historical YAs….

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