I’ll be totally honest—as an author, sometimes it’s hard to find time to read. When you spend all day moving your own words around a page, your eyes don’t always want to focus on different words on a different page when you’re off the clock. Thankfully, there are audiobooks. The perfect soundtrack for post-work video games or cooking projects or commutes to the park for a decompressing picnic by the water. Audiobooks give me a chance to still enjoy new stories while taking a break from the page. These are some I’ve enjoyed lately.
This is one of my favorite audiobooks for a lot of reasons—the pure emotion in the performance, the lush descriptions that almost hit ASMR highs when read aloud. It’s also a very strong case for how much a trans story can sing when performed by a trans narrator.
I know we’ve all experienced a million renditions of this particular classic, but you really need to listen to Rosamund Pike do it. She’s performing at least two dozen different voices in different octaves and accents, and each one is distinct and perfect. It’s an absolute treat.
Listening to a memoir read aloud by the author really scratches that attending-a-public-reading itch that Covid has made un-scratchable for the past year. I loved ‘All Boys Aren’t Blue’ in print, but the audiobook really brought it to another level for me.
This audiobook is fun as hell. One of the things that make TJR’s books so compulsively bingeable is their gloriously soapy, glamorous, behind-the-scenes vibe, and this audiobook captures it completely. Immersive, chock-full of cameos, and just a great time. Who doesn’t love Judy Greer?
I’m a huge fan of both Rebecca Roanhorse and ‘The Expanse,’ so when I heard Cara Gee would be involved in the Black Sun audiobook, it was an insta-buy for me. But this is an absolute powerhouse cast across the board. I couldn’t stop listening.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t include one of the many romance novels I’ve loved listening to. Talia Hibbert’s trademark mega-charming style really shines in audio, and you should listen to her entire Brown sisters trilogy, beginning here with the first one, narrated by Adjoa Andoh. Am I just a sucker for having love stories read to me in a soothing English accent? Maybe so.
