Whether you are a big fan of reading mysteries in print or have yet to discover the attraction of this genre, get wrapped up in listening to a pair of free audiobook detection tales from SYNC this week. Thank you to HarperAudio and to Thomas Nelson for giving listeners worldwide the opportunity to put their own investigation and questioning skills to the test—and, perhaps, to discover the thrill of mystery novels.
TRULY DEVIOUS, by bestselling author Maureen Johnson and narrated by Kate Rudd, kicks off a trilogy with a mystery that unfolds across two timelines. The amateur detective here is a high school student who decides to solve a nearly century-old kidnapping. However, is it possible that the kidnapper returned, after all this time, sending threatening letters to the same elite academy where the original crime took place? Take this one along on your morning run, or tune in late at night when you want one more shot of adrenaline. Narrator Rudd makes it easy to keep the girls of Ellington Academy clearly differentiated, and that ramps up the interpersonal tensions in the story.
WE WERE KINGS offers a wild ride of a mystery that takes hairpin turns with frequency. Author Court Stevens and narrator McKenzie Fetters are very much on the same page when it comes to maintaining a fast pace through the nonstop action. Like its SYNC partner title, the plot depends partly on a long-past crime. However, here we have someone who has been found guilty and already sentenced to death and a backstory that includes a mother’s riches-to-rags story that makes her teenaged daughter more than a little curious. Fetters is a musician, among other skills, so she is finely attuned to maintaining the storyline’s beat and the plot’s crescendos. She keeps the plates spinning in the air with her breakneck, nearly breathless, delivery. It might be wise to listen to this one when you can give it your full attention, because we can’t guarantee that both the tale and the clip at which it is told will allow you to also attend to necessary details of driving, using a kitchen knife, or anything else that could turn dangerous at a moment’s notice.
Can you believe we’re already at Week 11 of 2022’s 16-week-long SYNC program? Share your listening discoveries on social media so listeners worldwide can join the conversation about making audiobook discoveries this summer.
Maureen Johnson photo by Heather Weston, Kate Rudd photo by Jennifer Reyes, Court Stevens and McKenzie Fetters photos courtesy of Thomas Nelson.
