Kings County

By: David Goodwillie

Narrated by: Marin Ireland

A Brooklyn love story, set to music: Kings County “crystallizes how it feels to be young and in love in New York City” (Stephanie Danler).

It’s the early 2000s and like generations of ambitious young people before her, Audrey Benton arrives in New York City on a bus from nowhere. Broke but resourceful, she soon finds a home for herself amid the burgeoning music scene in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. But the city’s freedom comes with risks, and Audrey makes compromises to survive. As she becomes a minor celebrity in indie rock circles, she finds an unlikely match in Theo Gorski, a shy but idealistic mill-town kid who’s struggling to establish himself in the still-patrician world of books. But then an old acquaintance of Audrey’s disappears under mysterious circumstances, sparking a series of escalating crises that force the couple to confront a dangerous secret from her past.

From the raucous heights of Occupy Wall Street to the comical lows of the publishing industry, from million-dollar art auctions to Bushwick drug dens, Kings County captures New York City at a moment of cultural reckoning. Grappling with the resonant issues and themes of our time—sex and violence, art and commerce, friendship and family—it is an epic coming-of-age tale about love, consequences, bravery, and fighting for one’s place in an ever-changing world.

New York is where the weird things grow,

Loved the way Marin Ireland sounded. To do all voices, with and without the emotion, is awesome. The story was good, but could've been a bit shorter. Thanks.

Boy does this meander, but I loved it!!

This is literary fiction at its best. And with Marin Ireland reading it. I loved every unnecessary, drawn out inch of it. And I mean that with total respect because how good does a book have to be to still be so engaging, in spite of those things? Excellent.

I felt I got to really know the characters

The author goes very in depth about the two main characters, who they are, where they've come from, and how they landed in NYC... and I enjoyed the buildup of that and how they found one other in such a large landscape as New York City. By the end of the book, I felt I knew them. I also enjoyed all of the nods to places I'm familiar with here as a local resident. I enjoyed the complexities of each character, their flaws and their strengths. It felt clear that his main goal was to tell a love story but not in the most traditional and basic way. I really enjoyed it.

Old love story, (very) new world version

Loved how their young world, albeit light years different from my younger world, becomes fascinating yet comfortable because not only can this guy write (characters developed, subplots tied up, real beginning and real ending etc), but he can write about a world foreign to me and somehow make it feel familiar. Great experience.
And, as always, Ireland nails the performance (although it would have been nice if someone told her how to pronounce names of MA towns!).