8 best audiobooks of the year so far

The Best Dog in the World: Essays on Love

by Alice Hoffman

I started this collection because of a mistake, but then I didn't want to stop listening! And at just four hours, I didn't exactly have to talk myself into it. In this collection, narrated by Karen Gundersen and Max Meyers, a WIDE array of authors weigh in on their beloved canine companions, sharing the joys, the laughs, the bafflements, the heartbreaks of dog ownership: Isabel Allende, Emily Henry, Roxane Gay, Amy Tan, Bonnie Garmus, Paul Yoon, and plenty more. Above all, as promised, these are essays on love. If you're a dog person in need of a feel-good comfort listen, maybe consider this one?

London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth

by Patrick Radden Keefe

Journalist Radden Keefe’s narrative nonfiction delves into London’s criminal underworld. When Matthew and Rachelle Brettler learned their nineteen-year-old son Zac died by suicide, they were devastated but the story didn’t add up for them. He hadn’t seemed suicidal. They soon learned he had a secret life, one in which he posed as the son of a Russian oligarch and became entangled with a crook and gangster. But Scotland Yard didn’t appear to be pursuing justice for their son and so they continue to seek the truth about what happened to Zac. The ensuing investigation is riveting, as is the exploration of the parent-child relationship. I listened to the audiobook narrated by the author.

Happy Land

by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

I've loved Dolen Perkins-Valdez's work in the past, especially her 2022 novel Take My Hand, which was one of my favorite books that year. I decided to listen to her 2025 release on audio, largely because Bahni Turpin narrates, along with Ashley J. Hobbs. Once again, here she takes inspiration from lesser-explored history that deserves to be better known. Happy Land is about the “kingdom” established in 1873 in North Carolina by a group of freedpeople looking to escape white terrorist violence in nearby Spartanburg County SC, where they lived. This kingdom named a king and queen, formed a communal treasury, and eventually purchased land spread across the NC/SC state line. The story unfolds in two timelines: the first follows Luella, Happy Land’s first queen, and the second contemporary timeline follows her descendant Nikki. The stories are linked by the ancestral line and also by the fuller story of African American land loss in the 20th century. Perkins-Valdez excels at making history come alive through her rich historical details.

In Your Dreams (When in Rome #4)

by Sarah Adams

This is the fourth and final installment in Adams's Rome, Kentucky series (though I think they all stand alone just fine). Each series installment centers one of the four Walker siblings; this last story belongs to wild child Madison, who's moving back to Rome after graduating from culinary school in New York City. Unbeknownst to her family and friends, she was miserable in the city, and didn't do great in school, either—despite what she led them to believe. She's back in Rome to work for her brother's best friend, as head chef at the new restaurant he's opening on the family farm. But, unbeknownst to pretty much everyone, his only reason for opening the restaurant is to bring Maddie back to town, because he's been pining for her for years. Oh, and the farm might go under if the restaurant isn't a success from opening night. I have some quibbles with this story, particularly the lack of detail and texture surrounding the restaurant plot, and one truly terrible "Kentucky" accent on the audiobook. But I have zero regrets: all in all it was an easy-reading delight to go back to Rome one more time.

Finding Grace

by Loretta Rothschild

I picked this up on Ginger's recommendation and enjoyed it so much! What she specifically said was something like, "I have so much to do but all I WANT to do is keep reading this book!" Once I picked it up I could understand why. This was such a juicy pageturner and I don't want to give anything away. In the first chapter we meet Honor, who feels she ought to be enjoying her Christmas holiday with her husband and young child at the Ritz in Paris, but who is instead consumed with her longing for another child. But then everything changes for her family in an instant: plans are derailed, secrets are kept, friendships are strained, relationships are dissolved and reformed ... it's not the story I expected but I enjoyed it so much, especially on audio as narrated by Fiona Button. (Psst—if you want to avoid spoilers do NOT read the reviews!)

Loved One

by Aisha Muharrar

I picked this up on a whim—on audio—and DEVOURED it; I couldn't stop listening. I went in knowing next to nothing and didn't mind that a bit: when the story opens, thirty-year-old Julia is speaking at the Los Angeles memorial service for her twenty-nine-year-old best friend and first love Gabe, who's just died in an accident. The novel revolves around Julia processing her complicated grief. Going back and forth in time, we experience Julia and Gabe's relationship from the beginning, when they met in Barcelona when his mother was her study abroad professor, up through the last time they saw each other weeks before his death. In the present timeline, we see Julia navigating her private grief over the loss of her celebrity friend, and traveling to London to befriend his ex-girlfriend Elizabeth under not quite honest pretenses. I enjoyed the exploration of complex relationships, but the textural details really made the book for me: the Barcelona and London specifics, the intricacies of Julia's jewelry designs and business, the numerous references to art and artists, the food and decor at Elizabeth's Shoreditch restaurant, Gabe's songwriting process and tour norms—I ate it all up. I listened to the audio, narrated by Emma Ladji.

Memorial Days: A Memoir

by Geraldine Brooks

A gentle, lovely, and moving grief memoir. Brooks had been married to fellow writer and journalist Tony Horwitz for thirty-five years when he collapsed and died in 2019 while on book tour far from home. He was just sixty years old. She was stunned—and then quickly swept into a barrage of pressing to-dos, everything from finding new health insurance for herself and her sons to finishing her manuscript-in-progress (that would be the 2022 novel Horse) so she had money to pay the bills. Three years after his death, she traveled to tiny Flinders Island, off the coast of her native Australia, to finally give herself time and space to grieve. This book is the result of that experience. I listened to Brooks narrate her own audio and that format served the story well.

Only the Beautiful

by Susan Meissner

I love Susan Meissner and her work. This story unfolds in two threads: in 1938 California, a 16-year-old named Rosie is orphaned and subsequently taken in by the owners of the vineyard where her father worked. The circumstances by which she ends up pregnant are ugly, but she loves the idea of having a child and doesn't protest when she's sent to the home for unwed mothers. But that's <em>not</em> where she's sent: because of her misunderstood synesthesia, she's sent against her will to a hospital for the mentally infirm; she will not be allowed to keep her baby, nor will she be able to have children in the future. Meanwhile in 1940s Austria, Helen, the sister of the vineyard owner, who knew Rosie when she was young, has been working for years as a nanny and witnesses firsthand the brutal impacts of the Nazi regime. When Helen finally returns home in 1947, she is shocked to learn what's become of Rosie, and why. I raced through the story so I could learn how Helen and Rosie's threads would finally converge and it was so satisfying when they did. I enjoyed listening to the audiobook, narrated by Xe Sands and Jorjeana Marie.

8 best audiobooks of the year so far

The MMD Summer Reading Guide

your guide to reliable readerly joy this summer

a gateway

to reliable joy this summer

Buckle Up!

summer reading starts May 16th