The Ghost Bride (Audiobook)

Title: The Ghost Bride

Author: Yangsze Choo

 

Read by: Yangsze Choo

Publisher: Harper Audio (2013)

 

Genre(s): Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Historical Fiction

Length: 12 hours and 8 minutes

Synopsis: "Would you like to be a ghost bride?"  Li Lan is shocked by her father's suggestion.  After all, though marrying off the dead is not entirely unheard of in colonial Malaya, it is rare for the bride to be a living woman who would be condemned to a life of widowhood.  Though Li Lan has no interest in becoming such a bride, she is curious about the circumstances that led to the suggestion.  Her intended, it would seem, was the heir to the Lim family, a young man she had never even met.  Now, however, all of his family is showing a keen interest in her, from the new heir Tian Bai to his dead cousin, who's begun appearing in Li Lan's dreams and is anything but charming.

My Rating: 3 Stars

My Opinion:  I did enjoy this audiobook performance, since it is somewhat rare to find a book read by its author.  Li Lan isn't exactly the most interesting protagonist, but through her explorations, we are treated to an extensive, lushly described, and sometimes fantastical view of her world, both in life and death.  The historical notes Choo includes at the conclusion of the story are nearly as interesting as the book itself.  There's a lot going on in this story, ranging from romance to a sort of supernatural version of Law & Order.  With the historical context in place, that combination makes a lot more sense, but during my first listening, I found it somewhat difficult to work out where the story was going, and why on earth that seemed like a logical option.  Though there were things about this book that puzzled me, I did enjoy the performance overall, and the concept behind it in particular.

Across the Universe

Title: Across the Universe

Author: Beth Revis

Publisher: Penguin Group (2012)

Genre(s): Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopian Fiction

Length: 417

Synopsis: Amy is about to leave everything behind.  Her parents have signed on to help develop a colony on a far distant planet, a colony so far away that they will have to spend 300 years cryogenically frozen aboard their starship in order to survive the journey.  While they and the other "essential" personnel travel in blocks of ice, the ship is crewed by generation after generation as they hurtle through space.  But somewhere along the line, something has gone wrong.  The power structure of the waking crew has changed; now they're led by Eldest, the most senior member of the population, and his teenage successor, Elder, is being groomed to take his place.  But Elder feels that something is not quite right within the ship; Eldest is keeping secrets, and when Elder stumbles across one of the biggest, a room full of frozen people, he'll do whatever it takes to get answers, even if it means asking the girl in the block of ice.

My Rating: 4 Stars

 
My Opinion:This, put most simply, is a good book.  The opening scene was enough to leave me a bit shell-shocked, in the best possible way.  From there, the story launches into a disconcertingly dystopian society that continues to reveal hidden depths of distortion as the book progresses.  It's a quick read with an engaging plot and moderately intriguing characters, though they did seem a bit flat at times.  The story is driven not by character development or growth, but by the swiftly unraveling though delightfully tangled plot.  I did find that I was occasionally confused about the age of the characters.  There was no change in vocabulary between Eldest and his teenage protege, leaving Eldest with turns of phrase that seemed out of character, particularly in a society that's been artificially stratified by age.  Given the chance to continue in this series, however, I certainly will!

The Rook (Audiobook)

Title: The Rook

Author: Daniel O'Malley

Read by: Susan Duerden

Publisher: Dreamscape Media (2012)

Genre(s): Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Crime Thriller, Mystery

Length: 17 hours and 51 minutes

Synopsis: When Myfanwy Thomas awakes in a park, surrounded by corpses wearing latex gloves, she has no idea who she is or how she came to be in such a situation.  Her only clues are several letters in her pocket, addressed to her by the woman who had previously inhabited her body, the personality she'd been born with and which was mysteriously erased.  This is only the beginning of Myfanwy's trip down the rabbit hole.  Soon she begins to realize that there is far, far more to her life-- or rather, the life she's inherited-- than she could ever have guessed.  Her prior self has left her a road-map in letters and documents, but when one awakens to find oneself an administrator in the government's secret supernatural department, there are bound to be some adjustments to make.

My Rating: 3 Stars

My Opinion:  This book started well, but lost momentum before long.  I've read other reviews comparing The Rook with the film The Bourne Identity, but I really think it's really much closer to Ghostbusters.  It may have been Duerden's performance, but instead of playing as an actual thriller, this audiobook came across as a parody of one.  In truth, I can't tell which was the actual intent.  Duerden has Myfanwy sounding like a little girl rather than the competent administrator she is (repeatedly) purported to be, and the voices she adopted for some of her other characters crossed the border into ridiculous.  O'Malley has an interesting concept here, and some really unique ideas, but I did not enjoy this audiobook as much as I had hoped.

The Farm

Title: The Farm

Author: Emily McKay

Publisher: Berkley Books (2012)

Genre(s): Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopian Fiction

Length: 420

Synopsis: Lily can still remember the Before.  Not so long ago, there were no raging, bloodthirsty creatures that used to be human, until a virus turned them into the Ticks.  Teens weren't kept on Farms to serve as blood donors, keeping the Ticks fed and pacified.  And Mel, her autistic twin sister, wasn't communicating only in cryptic phrases of nursery rhymes.  But that was all Before, and now, Lily can only think about how she can get herself and her sister off the Farm and across the desolate United States to the safety of Canada.  The night she plans to escape, however, she runs into Carter, a classmate from the Before who seems to have all the answers.  With so much at stake, can she really afford to trust him?  Or, perhaps more importantly, can she really afford not to?

My Rating: 3 Stars

 
My Opinion: I just don't know what to make of this one.  It seems to be good conceptually, but there were a few wrenches in the works that made it less than a favorite.  I love the idea of the Ticks, and the Farms are suitably grim and dystopian, but there are a couple fantastical twists thrown into the plot that I had a hard time swallowing in McKay's scientifically based world.  I liked the struggle Lily faced in trying to care for her sister in a whole new world, but I found most of the other characters one-dimensional and hard to believe.  There's a lot of dystopian lit for young adults hitting the market right now, particularly with the popularity of books like The Hunger Games and Divergent trilogies.  Some of it is good, and others not so much.  I would recommend many other books over this one.

The Kitchen House (Audiobook)

Title: The Kitchen House (Audiobook)

Author: Kathleen Grissom

Read by: Orlagh Cassidy, Bahni Turpin

Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks (2010)

Genre(s): Fiction, Historical Fiction, Realistic Fiction

Length: 12 hours and 11 minutes

Synopsis: Lavinia was only seven when her family left Ireland aboard a small ship bound for America, a voyage that left her parents dead and Lavinia too sick and weak to protest when she is taken into indentured servitude in payment for her family's passage.  She is taken to the vast plantation house of Captain Pyke and left in the care of Belle, a kitchen slave and Pyke's own illegitimate daughter.  Belle and the other domestic slaves accept Lavinia as a member of their own family, and Lavinia grows to love them, standing with them even as the fortunes of the family in the plantation house begin to fail.

My Rating: 4 Stars

 
My Opinion: This is a beautifully researched, well written, and delightfully performed book.  The characters are brought to life by performers who make them distinctive without drawing them as them caricatures.  In her youth, the story follows Lavinia closely and gives  the reader a delightfully innocent view of plantation politics, but the narrative grows grimmer as Lavinia grows up and leaves behind the trivialities of childhood.  The detail in this historical imagining is fantastic.  From fashion and food to architecture and politics, Grissom has clearly done her homework.  My only complaint is that there really seems to be too much story for a single book.  Lavinia's life is divided into multiple parts as she grows older and her circumstances change, which of course is perfectly reasonable.  However, there is not a consistent driving arc of plot throughout the book, which makes sense since the lives of normal people seldom follow satisfyingly dramatic plot lines.  Though the forward momentum provided by tensions between characters is generally enough to keep the story moving, sometimes this falters and leaves the story somewhat stagnant.  Nonetheless, it's a good performance of a good text, making for an engaging overall experience.

Gold

Title: Gold 

Author: Chris Cleave

Publisher: Simon and Schuster (2012)

Genre(s): Realistic Fiction, Sport, Fiction

Length: 324 pages

Synopsis:  Zoe and Kate have been rivals and competitors, bitter enemies and the best of friends throughout their entire careers.  They're Olympic level cyclists who've spent their lives training with the goal of gold always on the horizon.  But now, with her daughter Sophie fighting cancer and her final shot at an Olympic medal coming up, Kate has to make a decision about where her priorities really lie.  Zoe is forced to acknowledge that the effort she's poured into her training since childhood will no longer matter after the next Olympic games.  Facing pivotal points in their lives, will they find themselves once again fierce rivals or the friend that each so desperately needs?

My Rating: 5 Stars

My Opinion: This book was one of those stay-up-until-two-in-the-morning  It's not really a book about sport.  Yes, cycling happens, but it's not what this book is about.  It's heart and soul and breath and body can be found in the little cast of characters that plays out their stories in these pages.  The people of Gold are vividly constructed, and their stories interwoven and poignant in their own ways.  There are no saints and sinners in this book, just people coping with what their lives have handed them in the best ways they know how.  I loved hearing Sophie's story from her own point of view, and watching the pasts and presents of each character unfurl from multiple perspectives.  There are twists and turns and unexpected revelations that would have kept me reading even with less fully realized characters, but Cleave's craft was evident in every aspect of this novel's construction.  From my previous experience with Cleave's work (The Other Hand, published in the U.S. as Little Bee), I had high expectations, and they were completely fulfilled.

Gone Girl (Audiobook)

Title: Gone Girl

Author: Gillian Flynn

Read by: Julia Whelan and Kirby Heyborne

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group Limited (2012)

Genre(s): Fiction, Crime Thriller, Mystery, Crime

Length: 19 hours and 11 minutes

Synopsis: On the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary, Amy Dunne goes missing.  The living room of her house shows signs of a struggle, and the front door stands open when her husband, Nick Dunne, returns home.  As the investigation begins, the story unfolds from Nick's perspective, and in Amy's own words through her diary entries.  But things may not be as they seem, and halfway through the book, a whole new perspective on the events surrounding Amy's mysterious vanishing begins to emerge.  In a twisting, down-the-rabbit-hole, mystery, Gone Girl explores the complexity of human emotion and motivation, and the lengths to which we'll go for love, or hate.

My Rating: 5 Stars

My Opinion:  I had no idea what to expect when I started this book, and as I listened, I began to realize that even partway through the book, I was still not sure what to expect.  Just as I began to think I had this story figured out, a new chapter would begin and the layers would peel back in unexpected (and occasionally horrifying) revelations.  The characters are intelligent, and aware of it, which makes them intriguing if not particularly likeable.  They're manipulative, of each other and the reader, spooling out the story in calculated doses designed to keep us guessing.  Whelan and Heyborne are delightful performers given the unenviable task of bringing these faintly distasteful characters to life, and they do a marvelous job.  More than once, while listening to this book, I found myself pausing in the midst of whatever I was doing, completely absorbed in the story.  As mysteries go, it's one of the most enjoyable I've read in a long time, and though I am generally wary of mysteries as audiobooks (I find it's easier to recall the details and nuances in print, this performance and story make it worth the extra attention.  To me, it's the equivalent of a summer blockbuster film: a popular, well-known story performed well, and while it might not get critical acclaim, it was a fun way to spend my time.