Audiobook roundup: summer 2024 edition

The Ministry of Time

by Kaliane Bradley

Bradley’s gripping debut unfolds in a near future where the British government employs time travel, as administered by a clunky bureaucracy. Our unnamed narrator takes a position as companion to the devastatingly handsome Commander Graham Gore, of the lost 1845 Royal Navy Arctic Expedition. She’s hired largely because her mother was a refugee from Cambodia, as her charge is also a refugee of sorts—not from another country, but from history. At once fast-paced and deeply philosophical, Bradley weaves together a spy plot, a love story, and heaps of droll British humor as her characters converse on race, gender, inherited trauma, and imperial legacy. This is one of the weirdest, most original books I’ve read in a long time.

Skin & Bones

by Renee Watson

Piecing Me Together author Watson wows with her adult debut. Things are finally going well for forty-year-old Lena: she has a good job, loving relationships with her parents and daughter, and a handsome fiancé she’s set to marry in just a few weeks. But his shocking confession the morning of her would-be wedding sends her reeling, and destabilizes the once-firm foundation she’s carefully built. Close female friendships and familial relationships feature prominently as Watson unpacks the beliefs surrounding beauty, love, fatness, and faith handed down from each generation to the next. Lyrical and kaleidoscopic, Watson compassionately explores what it means to love yourself, love your body, and love others, while showcasing Portland’s rich Black history.

There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

by Hanif Abdurraqib

Basketball isn't really my thing, or so I thought—but in Abdurraqib’s hands, I couldn’t get enough of Columbus, the Cavaliers, and LeBron James. Who knew? In this inventive, far-reaching work, the poet and music critic shares riveting anecdotes and fascinating details about the game itself. He also uses the ball as a jumping off point to explore a wide (wide!) variety of topics, including heroes and role models, the passage of time, the fragility of life, and the joy of rooting for the underdog. I can’t begin to capture his stupendous storytelling skills, but know this: this is my first read from the author and I’m hooked. Now I can’t wait to explore his backlist this summer.

Funny Story

by Emily Henry

From the publisher: "Daphne always loved the way her fiancé Peter told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it…right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra. Which is how Daphne begins her new story: Stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them? But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex…right?"

Brooklyn

by Colm Tóibín

In this quiet coming-of-age story, set just after the second World War, a young girl from Ireland's County Wexford is offered the opportunity to travel to America to settle in a a Brooklyn neighborhood that's "just like Ireland," with the assurance of an education and a good job. She had no intention of leaving home, but can't say this aloud, and so she goes. A poignant novel with homesickness at its heart, reminiscent of Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance

by Alison Espach

From the publisher: "For much of her life, Sally Holt has been mystified by the things her older sister, Kathy, seems to have been born knowing. Kathy has answers for all of Sally’s questions about life, about love, and about Billy Barnes, a rising senior and local basketball star who mans the concession stand at the town pool. The girls have been fascinated by Billy ever since he jumped off the roof in elementary school, but Billy has never shown much interest in them until the summer before Sally begins eighth grade. By then, their mutual infatuation with Billy is one of the few things the increasingly different sisters have in common. Sally spends much of that summer at the pool, watching in confusion and excitement as her sister falls deeper in love with Billy—until a tragedy leaves Sally’s life forever intertwined with his."

Warrior Girl Unearthed

by Angeline Boulley

I couldn't wait to return to Sugar Island in Anishinaabe author Boulley’s much-anticipated (and standalone) sophomore novel, set ten years after the events of Firekeeper’s Daughter. Unlike her studious twin, Perry Firekeeper-Birch wasn’t initially interested in the Ojibwe summer internship program, but when she incurs a big debt, she has no choice but to get to work. Her job assignment centers on her tribe’s struggle to reclaim the remains and sacred objects of her ancestors from disinterested profiteers. The more Perry learns, the more determined she becomes to right this wrong, with a little help from her friends. A heist novel that’s both thrilling and thoughtful, with a winning protagonist you’ll want to root for.

The Hotel Nantucket

by Elin Hilderbrand

Hilderbrand’s beach reads are always enjoyable but this one is notable for introducing me to a new favorite pen. The titular hotel’s Gilded Age glory days are long gone: it’s a real dump (and in a fun plot twist—haunted!) when London billionaire Xavier Darling buys it sight unseen. The new owner hires local restaurateur Lizbet Keaton to make his hotel the best property on the island, if not the whole Eastern seaboard. And that means The Hotel Nantucket has to wow Shelly Carpenter, the influencer who’s become a national obsession for her blog Hotel Confidential. The influential critic regularly reviews hotels for her eighteen million followers and awards each property anywhere from one to five keys. The staff is energized by this audacious goal, because no hotel has ever earned five keys from Shelly Carpenter. To earn the coveted fifth key, they’ll have to do everything right. Super fun, and I especially enjoyed the ghost story element!

When the Vibe Is Right

by Sarah Dass

This heartfelt YA enemies-to-lovers romance features hugely likable protagonists and unfolds against an equally appealing backdrop: Trinidad’s lauded Carnival celebration. For Beatrice, known as “Tess” to her friends, Carnival is the family business: she’s a talented seamstress who designs costumes for the family masquerade band Grandeur. But after a public incident threatens Grandeur’s future, she’s forced to ask for help from skilled social media influencer Brandon, who also happens to be her nemesis. But the more the two start hanging out, the harder it is for Tess to hate him. A sweet (and chaste) love story, endearing side characters, and a modern riff on Much Ado About Nothing all add up to perfect summer reading. For fans of Dass’s Where the Rhythm Takes You and Joya Goffney’s Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry.

The House of Doors

by Tan Twan Eng

From the publisher: "The year is 1921. Lesley Hamlyn and her husband, Robert, a lawyer and war veteran, are living at Cassowary House on the Straits Settlement of Penang. When 'Willie' Somerset Maugham, a famed writer and old friend of Robert's, arrives for an extended visit with his secretary Gerald, the pair threatens a rift that could alter more lives than one. Maugham, one of the great novelists of his day, is beleaguered: Having long hidden his homosexuality, his unhappy and expensive marriage of convenience becomes unbearable after he loses his savings-and the freedom to travel with Gerald. His career deflating, his health failing, Maugham arrives at Cassowary House in desperate need of a subject for his next book. Lesley, too, is enduring a marriage more duplicitous than it first appears. Maugham suspects an affair, and, learning of Lesley's past connection to the Chinese revolutionary, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, decides to probe deeper. But as their friendship grows and Lesley confides in him about life in the Straits, Maugham discovers a far more surprising tale than he imagined, one that involves not only war and scandal but the trial of an Englishwoman charged with murder. It is, to Maugham, a story worthy of fiction."

Audiobook roundup: summer 2024 edition

Buckle Up!

summer reading starts May 16th