New Reviews: Young Adult

Narrated by a talented cast, 12 stories in verse by various well-known authors explore the topic of love. Young people ponder the meaning of love, illuminating the glories and complications of love in its various forms: romantic love, familial love, love for oneself, and love for animals. The collection ranges from twelfth-century India to late-nineteenth-century Germany and to... Read More

Stevie Henry, a Cherokee teen, is running out of time to survive impending world disasters unless she takes up the offer of a mysterious stranger from the future. DeLanna Studi's narration carries a quiet gravity that immediately sets the dark tone of this dystopian novel. Her nuanced performance captures the weight of Stevie's struggle as she is drawn into a secret mission to... Read More

Renée Watson narrates her semiautobiographical collection of free-verse and short-form poems, which introduce listeners to the lyricism of her writing. Her delivery features repeated rhythmic patterns, haunting repetitions, and startling imagery. Race, class, and gender are eloquently rendered in poems on possibility, resilience, celebration, and the power of womanhood. Topics... Read More

Based on Hough's YouTube text-based horror series, this production is one wild ride as performed by the full cast. When Chloe, voiced by Mecca Rogers, misses her school bus because her math teacher, Miss Langley, voiced by Christina Hendricks, held her for detention after school, she hops on the "backup bus" and soon realizes she's been kidnapped. Classmates Kaitlin (Dacey... Read More

Stone's final entry in the Dear Martin trilogy is made more powerful with this compelling performance by James Fouhey. Jared's plan to run for junior class president hits a bump when a Black transfer student named Dylan adds her name to the slate. Fouhey captures Jared's conflict over his white privilege, which lingers after the death of his best friend, Manny. It shows up in... Read More

With his versatile voice, narrator Paul Van Dyck takes listeners to the magical world of Lake Mallion. The second book in the Brindlewatch Quintet explores the world of 15-year-old Dunstan Cord. Dunstan has just been diagnosed with macular degeneration. Determined not to let his diagnosis quash his dreams, he decides to run away to become a singing sensation in the theater.... Read More

This audiobook is set in a dystopian future in which a powerful megacorporation enforces debt repayment through a brutal death match known as the Lamb's Gauntlet. The story revolves around Inesa, who is unwillingly offered as a sacrifice by her mother, and Melinoë, a cybernetically altered assassin who is sent to kill Inesa. As the two journey across a wasteland, something... Read More

Diane Bustelo and Krysta Gonzales narrate this YA story of two friends, each of whom is hoping to fulfill her deepest desire. Bustelo embodies Mayte, who is threatened by debt collectors because her father has lost the family fortune. Her best friend, Lo, portrayed by Gonzales, lives with her abusive father. The girls decide to visit Fortune's Kiss, a magical gambling den that... Read More

Golden Voice January LaVoy clearly differentiates the many characters in this story and smoothly transitions among them. She gives the deepest portrayals of the two main characters and their developing relationship: sullen, angry 14-year-old Ruby, who is accused of murder and is facing being moved to an adult women's prison, and compassionate Cadence Ware, the calm social... Read More

Sara Matsui Colby is the main narrator of this audio adaptation of a graphic novel, and various narrators chime in as minor characters. Japanese-American author Christine Mari recounts her study abroad experience as a time of culture shock, depression, a feeling of lack of belonging, microaggressions, and, eventually, self-discovery. To supplement the lack of visuals, various... Read More

Narrator Rong Fu returns in the next audiobook in the Iron Widow series. Zetian has awakened Qin Zheng, legendary emperor of Huaxia from centuries past. He desires a complete overhaul of Huaxia to eliminate corruption and misogyny, but despite a common goal, it is still one Zetian is forced into. Fu skillfully adjusts her accent when voicing Qin Zheng, using a British accent... Read More

Allison Sweet Grant portrays 19-year-old Elisabeth Amos, who has fled her home to live quietly in an isolated Wisconsin town. The audiobook moves back and forth in time. Surviving brutal medical procedures done to lengthen Elisabeth's bones takes place at home, and enduring a snowstorm and power outage takes place in Wisconsin. Time shifts are differentiated through chapter... Read More

Tony Keith, Jr.--poet, rapper, and hip-hop educator--uses his cultural observations, edgy politics, and sharp ear for concise wordplay and fast rhymes to get the attention of the audience that needs him most: disenfranchised Black school kids he affectionately calls "knuckleheads." With brash and evocative poem titles like "If You Fail to Plan, Then Plan to Fail," "Because When... Read More

Henrietta Meire shows remarkable vocal range in this audiobook featuring multiple human and dragon languages and accents. Vivian aims for an internship studying dragon languages, but when her parents are arrested as rebels, she sets free a dragon that starts a civil war. Desperate, she accepts a job as a code breaker to help the war effort and is tasked with deciphering the one... Read More

Narrator Bailey Carr introduces listeners to Liz, a 17-year-old who is taking sanctuary in the bookstore she worked in before a cataclysmic storm left her one of the few survivors in New Jersey. When she catches a girl named Maeve breaking into the store to find shelter from another impending storm, Liz needs to balance the difficulties of having a relationship with the... Read More

Ivan Mok, Quyen Ngo, and a full cast narrate this award-winning 2020 graphic novel. Mok portrays 13-year-old English-speaking Tien, and Ngo portrays his mother, Helen, a Vietnamese refugee. Mok shows Tien's confusion as he crushes on a male classmate. Ngo conveys Helen's despair at losing her own mother and her longing for the past. Mother and son have always bridged language... Read More

How can we let go of the one we loved and lost? That's the central question that Frankie Corzo so expertly poses in her enthralling narration of this YA fantasy-romance. By day, Estrella "Noche" Villanueva is a 17-year-old who is mourning the death of her first love, Dante. But by night, Noche transforms into a Lechuza, a beautiful black owl who guides spirits to the sky.... Read More

Atkins's historical audiobook novel-in-verse shines a light on an important chapter of American history, beginning with the 1913 Women's March and ending with the 1920 ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Chanté McCormick gives the historical, mostly forgotten, Matilda Young a compelling voice. Matilda's voice gains confidence and strength as she grows from a shy... Read More

Author Harry Trevaldwyn's perfectly pitched, slightly sibilant, and very funny narration puts listeners up close and personal with British teenager Patch. Patch begins the school year with the goals of getting his new nickname to catch on (his name is Patrick) and getting his first boyfriend. Trevaldwyn's Patch is haplessly, sometimes disastrously overconfident, and he's both... Read More

Joe Pitts narrates a queer teen horror novel with some supernatural and romantic elements. Sixteen-year-old double amputee Charlie Frith doesn't have any friends except for ghosts only he can see. But when those ghosts begin disappearing, he's forced to work with the mysterious new boy, Sam, to save them. Pitts captures Charlie's grumpy wariness at his awkward situation--he's... Read More

Jefferson White shows remarkable skill balancing a youthful cast with the sobering reality they must face. Twenty-four years before Katniss's games, Haymitch, from District 12, must compete in the Hunger Games--with twice the tributes (competitors). White's perfect pacing adds intensity to the brutality of the games and lingering melancholy as Haymitch struggles to maintain his... Read More

Narrator Maggie Thompson immediately captures the difficult relationship that resentful Noni Reid has with her forceful mother, Dr. Radiance Castine. When her mother is appointed president of a Virginia college, she insists that Noni give up a coveted summer internship in costume design in Boston to move to Tangleroot, the plantation built by her ancestor. Thompson's use of... Read More

Brittany Pressley portrays a character who, at first, seems like an over-the-top heroine. Eleanor, a senior in high school, was abandoned by her father, Hugo, when she was born. Emotionally abused by her mother, she dreams of living with her father and his family. In response to a job ad, she does just that, hiding her identity and becoming a nanny for her toddler half-brother... Read More

Amanda Stribling's Southern accent evokes the Ozarks background of 17-year-old Dove Warner. Stribling also captures the horror Dove faces when she--like others affected by her family's curse--hears the bones of murdered people calling out for her to discover their burial places. Stribling's tone becomes calmer when Dove spends time with her best friend, Lo, until he expresses... Read More

Golden Voice Ramón de Ocampo, who narrated each of the author's memoirs, delivers this hard-hitting YA novel in verse. De Ocampo guides listeners on its emotional journey, using the genre's rhythms to illuminate the relationship between high school seniors Diego and his best friend, Lawson. De Ocampo's poignant delivery highlights the contrast between anxious, rule-following,... Read More

Sophie Jo Wasson transports listeners to Ireland in 1847 with her poignant performance. Like many throughout the country, Nell's family's potato crop is infected with a black rot that makes the potatoes inedible. Farmers are forced to choose between paying their rent from the sale of their oat crops, or feeding their families and facing eviction. Amid those tragedies, Nell and... Read More

Narrator Jaime Lamchick's bright, engaging performance is a great fit for this young adult audiobook about humanity's complicated space age relationship with planet Earth's moon. Listeners are launched into the competitive race to the moon between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the 1950s-60s, setting the stage for technological and scientific advances, and the complexities of... Read More