THE OTHER NORMALS

Narrator Andrew Eiden's performance is funny and understated. He delivers the occasional f-bomb without making it feel gratuitous, and, more importantly, his earnest voicing gives the story's humor the perfect edge. Fifteen-year-old Perry is a role-playing game enthusiast and a late bloomer. Perry's parents send him to summer camp in an effort to force him to stop role-playing and start blooming. At camp Perry works on his social skills, fights monsters in an alternate universe, and gets his first pubic hair. His role-playing skills always come in handy, except with girls. Throughout, Eiden is particularly adept at voicing believable female characters, a skill that is important in a book that centers around an emergence of heterosexuality. A.M.P. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine [Published: DECEMBER 2012]