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Return to Sender by Vera Brosgol

With a premise like this one - a kid finds a magic wishing mail slot in his new apartment - you're going to need to be prepared for some strangeness. I can't say as I was expecting this one to take quite the direction that it did. Without getting into spoiler territory I'll just say that you need to be prepared for some pretty unique plot points. For all it's strangeness, though, this is a pretty enjoyable read. The characters are strong, their desires understandable and compelling. Brosgol builds a world that we can relate to and get swallowed up by. 

As an audio, the narration is pleasant enough. The voice work can be a little irritating, but as long as you break it up in smaller chunks the squeaky voice never becomes overwhelming.

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Return to Sender by Vera Brosgol

I've enjoyed Brosgol's graphic novels, so when I found she had written a regular novel about a boy with a magic mail slot I figured that would be worth a listen. Let's give it a try.

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What Fell from the Sky by Adrianna Cuevas

When I selected this one I'd hoped that the combination of alien encounters and Cold War era Texas would allow Cuevas to explore some deeper themes and introduce some complexity to a fairly standard plot. I was not disappointed. We have the standard scenes of finding an alien and trying to figure out ways to communicate. And as is typical, the extraterrestrial is a stand-in for the character's sense of isolation, in this case in a racially stratified culture. While the messaging is rather heavy-handed the plot and characters are compelling enough to make this very readable.

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What Fell From the Sky by Adrianna Cuevas

Stories about kids finding and helping aliens can be interesting. Add in a setting of Cold War era Texas and we could have a real winner. Let's give it a listen and find out.

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Our Shouts Echo by Jade Adia

I can't quite settle on how I feel about this book. From the start, when it was clear that the protagonist's prepper tendencies were rooted in a traumatic incident, I was anticipating a dramatic reveal. Because Adia very carefully talks around what happened without ever making it clear. And that reveal never came. There were a couple of other grand dramatic encounters that I expected that were never realized. In that way Adia defies the cliche scenes but it may not be to the book's ultimate benefit. There is no emotional resolution to some pretty significant set up. While the characters are compelling and the line by line reading is engaging, the book on the whole left a little something lacking.

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Our Shouts Echo by Jade Adia

I've read books about kids being raised by preppers, but this may be the first I've read where the teen is the one instigating the changes. This book promises a protagonist responding to climate anxiety and trauma with prepping and a boy who turns her world upside down.

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Tangleroot by Kalela Williams

Consider the set-up here - a girl forced to spend the summer at an old plantation with her high-achieving mother who is searching for details about family history. We're going to expect secrets uncovered about the slave-owning history of the town and probably some modern racism along with a confrontation between the girl and her mother. And all of that is present. There's nothing supernatural here, no ghosts haunting the place (though the early chapters certainly would have allowed for it). Ultimately, it's not even about confronting racism, exactly. Instead Williams has used a town's racist past as a method of exploring identity. Noni picks apart the history of the families that lived at Tangleroot, certainly, but she also ends up examining herself. She's asking what motivates her and the kind of person she wants to be. This is less of a thriller, though it has some big reveals and dramatic moments, and more of a piece that asks us to question behavior and attitudes. Not only is this one worth reading, it's probably worthy of a second or third pass to truly explore the ideas at play.

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Tangleroot by Kalela Williams

Tangleroot promises a tale of a girl unraveling a town's racist past and her mother's expectations. It could be thrilling and thought-provoking. Let's find out.

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Something's About to Blow Up by Sam Blake

When you start a book with an explosion at a school and introduce the idea that the teen characters are investigating, the reader is going to expect a mystery/thriller. But that's not exactly what this book is. Instead, we get more of a slow exploration of the secrets that these kids are keeping. As the girls dig into their memories, find photos, and talk to peripheral characters, they discover just how much about what is going on they don't understand. While that means there aren't car chases or tense stand-offs, it makes for surprisingly compelling reading. Each character brings a different perspective into the mystery and the tight time frame keeps the plot moving even as most of the action takes place elsewhere. It may not be a thrilling book, but it is interesting and well worth the time to read.

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Something's About to Blow Up by Sam Blake

After the rather disappointing experience of our last audio, let's jump into something that promises a little more thrilling with this tale of an explosion at an Irish prep school and the secrets that the affected students uncover.

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Nightmare in the Backyard by Jeff Strand

It doesn't take long for this book to jump into the spooks and jump scares. Mysterious things moving under a tent. Scratching sounds and menacing shapes. Vines that act like tentacles and grab hold of people. Yeah, not only does it get spooky, it gets weird. The strangeness of the threat does not work in the book's favor. Neither does the bickering interplay between the characters. What starts as realistic interactions looses the sense of reality as the danger grows. While there are some interesting elements at play, ultimately the book was a little too far from reality for my tastes.

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Nightmare in the Backyard by Jeff Strand

I've read a couple of Strand's books before and they're typically good for a solid, middle grade friendly scare. And a campout is a pretty standard setting for a spooky story, so I'm curious to see Strand's approach. Let's find out together.

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A Game Most Foul by Alison Gervais

At the outset this is a pretty standard teen mystery. A girl on her own for the summer, studying abroad, who gets caught up in the disappearance of a classmate. But that basic format quickly twists in odd directions as the characters learn that their professor isn't simply named Dr. John Watson - he is the Dr. Watson. As Jules and her friends uncover the truth, we get some solid character development and setting descriptions. The clues for the mystery are integrated naturally into the plot, if a bit heavy-handed. The ultimate reveal, though it makes sense in the world of the book, is oddly unsatisfying and leaves too many questions unanswered. There is no strong emotional release and the tension simply falls apart. In the end, I found it a bit disappointing.

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A Game Most Foul by Alison Gervais

A girl participating in a summer writing program in London gets caught up in the mysterious disappearance of her classmate and the strange behavior of her professor, Dr. Watson. A mystery, even one that hints at supernatural elements, is generally entertaining and a solid choice for an audio book. Let's find out if this one lives up to it's promise.

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Investi-Gators Collection by John Patrick Green

The idea of an audiobook for a graphic novel has always felt a bit counter-intuitive to me. If your story is told visually, if those visuals are essential to fully convey what is happening, then how can it work to tell it aurally? I've listened to a few now and have learned the keys. First is full cast. Each character needs a distinct voice so we can track what's happening. Second is sound effects. Action can be conveyed with sound. A car starting. The "whoosh" of a parachute or "splat" of a cake. And sometimes the dialogue is tweaked or narration is added to make action and other essential elements clear. This audio makes great use of it's narrator, telling us often what Mango and Brash are doing with humor and tongue firmly planted in cheek. It helps that in the original graphic novels are often break the fourth wall or reference the fact that they are comics. The audio follows these same patterns, with characters talking about the fact that this is an audiobook and colors not especially mattering. It's quite silly and playful. And utterly enjoyable. 

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InvestiGators Collection by John Patrick Green

The InvestiGators graphic novel series is a lot of silly fun and I'm curious to see how it is handled in the audio format. Let's give it a listen and find out.

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 The Names They Gave Us by Emery Lord

Given the set-up, this book could easily have turned into a cliche. We have a pastor's daughter who's always been "good" floored by the return of her mother's cancer. She doubts her always-been-easy faith and in this state goes to work at a secular summer camp for kids who have difficult lives. This could have turned into utter rejection of organized religion and easy answers about relationships and grief. But it works hard to go deeper. It explores how relationships shift as people grow, how empathy is at the forefront and guides "goodness". While there are some obvious reveals later in the plot, the strong characters and genuine soul searching make up for perceived weaknesses.

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The Names They Gave Us by Emery Lord

This story of a girl whose whole world has been turned upside down learning to see life through a different lens could be pretty compelling. Let's give it a listen and find out together.

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The Summer She Went Missing by Chelsea Ichaso

 In many ways, this book is an example of what has become standard in a teen thriller. We have: a missing teen; friendships that largely exist in the summer; the power imbalance of the wealthy in a coastal town; a tenuous romance that is affected by grief; secrets that run deep in a community. It's not treading a lot of new ground or pushing boundaries, but sometimes that's okay. We don't always need a thriller to challenge us, just to entertain us. And this book is entertaining. It keeps a strong pace and balances revelations with emotional interest. Characters are strong enough to be engaging though not terribly deep. While some of the events push the bounds of beleivability, it doesn't go too far. This isn't a book bound to be a classic but it is entertaining.

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The Summer She Went Missing by Chelsea Ichaso

It's becoming a familiar premise - a teen investigates the disappearance of her friend (or sometimes a sister) and uncovers secrets in her town. Still, it's a thriller which makes for good listening while running and I'm interested to see how Ichaso handles the concept. Let's find out together.