Audiobook Review Dump Volume 1

You know how there is that trend on instagram of doing photo dumps? Where you put photos that you haven’t yet posted but don’t really have a logical place for them? So, you just dump them all in one spot. I thought I could utilize that concept with my audiobook reviews. I had quite a few reviews I needed to get through, no real place to put all the reviews and no pressing need to do a full long write up for each book. Also, I just don’t know that the internet wants to read full write ups anymore? And so, here we are with these thoughts on five of these audiobooks! Let me know what you think of this format — if you prefer a quick jotting of thoughts or a full out review!

A Taste For Love by Jennifer Yen

I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

A Taste for Love by Jennifer Yen
Narrator: Josephine Huang
Length: 8 Hours 46 Minutes
Published by Penguin on January 11, 2022
Genres: YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Cooking & Food, YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Family / Parents, Young Adult Fiction / Romance / Romantic Comedy
Pages: 352
Format: Audiobook
Source: Publisher
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For fans of Jenny Han, Jane Austen, and The Great British Baking Show, A Taste for Love is a delicious rom-com about first love, familial expectations, and making the perfect bao.

To her friends, high school senior Liza Yang is nearly perfect. Smart, kind, and pretty, she dreams big and never shies away from a challenge. But to her mom, Liza is anything but. Compared to her older sister Jeannie, Liza is stubborn, rebellious, and worst of all, determined to push back against all of Mrs. Yang's traditional values, especially when it comes to dating.

The one thing mother and daughter do agree on is their love of baking. Mrs. Yang is the owner of Houston's popular Yin & Yang Bakery. With college just around the corner, Liza agrees to help out at the bakery's annual junior competition to prove to her mom that she's more than her rebellious tendencies once and for all. But when Liza arrives on the first day of the bake-off, she realizes there's a catch: all of the contestants are young Asian American men her mother has handpicked for Liza to date.

The bachelorette situation Liza has found herself in is made even worse when she happens to be grudgingly attracted to one of the contestants: the stoic, impenetrable, annoyingly hot James Wong. As she battles against her feelings for James, and for her mother's approval, Liza begins to realize there's no tried and true recipe for love.

I have no regrets whatsoever about reading A Taste For Love by Jennifer Yen. Personally, I can always use a cute YA contemporary book about a baking competition that is kind of a retelling of Pride & Prejudice but with diverse characters. Sign me up, count me in for exactly what this book is about. A Taste For Love follows Liza Yang, a high school senior who has a lot going for her. Only, her mom doesn’t really see this. Liza’s dream is to bake — similar to what her parents do. They want her to go to college and make a lot of money, however.

Anyways, Liza tries to earn her mom’s approval when she serves as a technical judge for a baking competition her parents sponsor every year. Only, this year it turns out that her mom set up the competition so that it’s just boys around Liza’s age competing. It almost is like the bachelor. Along the way, Liza finds herself attracted to James Wong and oh, she is FIGHTING it. Friends, I think that you can guess the direction this book goes in and it is just DELIGHTFUL.

I am glad I listened to the audiobook of A Taste For Love. Yen’s book is narrated by Josephine Huang. Huang is a new to me narrator but I LOVED her narration. She has a fun voice that just worked for this story. The audiobook is 8 hours and 46 minutes long and worth all your time.

Notes On Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Narrator: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Length: 1 Hour 27 Minutes
Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group on May 11, 2021
Genres: Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs
Pages: 80
Format: Audiobook
Source: Publisher
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From the globally acclaimed, best-selling novelist and author of We Should All Be Feminists, a timely and deeply personal account of the loss of her father.

"Essential." —Booklist

Notes on Grief is an exquisite work of meditation, remembrance, and hope, written in the wake of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's beloved father’s death in the summer of 2020. As the COVID-19 pandemic raged around the world, and kept Adichie and her family members separated from one another, her father succumbed unexpectedly to complications of kidney failure. 
 
Expanding on her original New Yorker piece, Adichie shares how this loss shook her to her core. She writes about being one of the millions of people grieving this year; about the familial and cultural dimensions of grief and also about the loneliness and anger that are unavoidable in it. With signature precision of language, and glittering, devastating detail on the page—and never without touches of rich, honest humor—Adichie weaves together her own experience of her father’s death with threads of his life story, from his remarkable survival during the Biafran war, through a long career as a statistics professor, into the days of the pandemic in which he’d stay connected with his children and grandchildren over video chat from the family home in Abba, Nigeria.

In the compact format of We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, Adichie delivers a gem of a book—a book that fundamentally connects us to one another as it probes one of the most universal human experiences. Notes on Grief is a book for this moment—a work readers will treasure and share now more than ever—and yet will prove durable and timeless, an indispensable addition to Adichie's canon.

Notes On Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a spectacular, brief, emotion filled read. It also is my first encounter with Adichie’s work. This sparse book is Adichie’s meditations on losing her father. Her father passed away during the pandemic, but due to kidney failure. We see that grief is isolating but it is also something that connects us all — especially in these times. This book is beautifully written and one that I can see myself returning to again when I am grieving. The audiobook is narrated by the author and a must listen. It is short — at 1 hour 27 minutes – but sticks with you.

Well Read Black Girl edited by Glory Edim

I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Well-Read Black Girl by Glory Edim
Narrator: Glory Edim
Length: 5 Hours 6 Minutes
Published by Random House Publishing Group on October 30, 2018
Genres: Literary Collections / American / African American & Black, Literary Collections / Essays, Literary Collections / Women Authors
Pages: 272
Format: Audiobook
Source: Publisher
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NOMINATED FOR AN NAACP IMAGE AWARD • An inspiring collection of essays by black women writers, curated by the founder of the popular book club Well-Read Black Girl, on the importance of recognizing ourselves in literature.

“Yes, Well-Read Black Girl is as good as it sounds. . . . [Glory Edim] gathers an all-star cast of contributors—among them Lynn Nottage, Jesmyn Ward, and Gabourey Sidibe.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

Remember that moment when you first encountered a character who seemed to be written just for you? That feeling of belonging remains with readers the rest of their lives—but not everyone regularly sees themselves in the pages of a book. In this timely anthology, Glory Edim brings together original essays by some of our best black women writers to shine a light on how important it is that we all—regardless of gender, race, religion, or ability—have the opportunity to find ourselves in literature.

Contributors include Jesmyn Ward (Sing, Unburied, Sing), Lynn Nottage (Sweat), Jacqueline Woodson (Another Brooklyn), Gabourey Sidibe (This Is Just My Face), Morgan Jerkins (This Will Be My Undoing), Tayari Jones (An American Marriage), Rebecca Walker (Black, White and Jewish), and Barbara Smith (Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology)

Whether it’s learning about the complexities of femalehood from Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison, finding a new type of love in The Color Purple, or using mythology to craft an alternative black future, the subjects of each essay remind us why we turn to books in times of both struggle and relaxation. As she has done with her book club–turned–online community Well-Read Black Girl, in this anthology Glory Edim has created a space in which black women’s writing and knowledge and life experiences are lifted up, to be shared with all readers who value the power of a story to help us understand the world and ourselves.

Praise for Well-Read Black Girl

“Each essay can be read as a dispatch from the vast and wonderfully complex location that is black girlhood and womanhood. . . . They present literary encounters that may at times seem private and ordinary—hours spent in the children’s section of a public library or in a college classroom—but are no less monumental in their impact.”—The Washington Post

“A wonderful collection of essays.”—Essence

Well-Read Black Girl edited by Glory Edim is a series of essays by famous Black women who are authors. Each essay details when the writer saw herself reflected in the books she read and the profound impact it had. This book is almost a love letter to Black women authors. I loved it. My favorite essay was the one by Gabourey Sidibe — it was touching and funny and just had such a strong voice. The audiobook is narrated by Glory Edim who I thought did wonderfully. It is 5 hours and 6 minutes long. My one regret is that the audiobook I listened to through the volumes app as an ALC did not come with a PDF of all the book recommendations. This book made me want to pick up the various books recommended within — especially Toni Morrison. I think this will be the year I finally read Toni Morrison thanks to this book.

Sex And Vanity by Kevin Kwan

I received this book for free from Publisher, Purchased in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan
Narrator: Lydia Look
Length: 9 Hours 36 Minutes
Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group on June 30, 2020
Genres: Fiction / Asian American, Fiction / Humorous / General, Fiction / Women
Pages: 336
Format: Audiobook, Hardcover
Source: Publisher, Purchased
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A Good Morning America Book Club Pick
 
The author of the New York Times bestselling phenomenon Crazy Rich Asians takes you from Capri to NYC, where Lucie Tang Churchill finds herself torn between two men—and two very different cultures.

On her very first morning on the jewel-like island of Capri, Lucie Churchill sets eyes on George Zao and she instantly can't stand him. She can't stand it when he gallantly offers to trade hotel rooms with her so that she can have a view of the Tyrrhenian Sea, she can't stand that he knows more about Casa Malaparte than she does, and she really can't stand it when he kisses her in the darkness of the ancient ruins of a Roman villa and they are caught by her snobbish, disapproving cousin Charlotte.

The daughter of an American-born Chinese mother and a blue-blooded New York father, Lucie has always sublimated the Asian side of herself in favor of the white side, and she adamantly denies having feelings for George. But several years later, when George unexpectedly appears in East Hampton, where Lucie is weekending with her new fiancé, Lucie finds herself drawn to George again. Soon, Lucie is spinning a web of deceit that involves her family, her fiancé, the co-op board of her Fifth Avenue apartment building, and, ultimately, herself as she tries mightily to deny George entry into her world—and her heart. Moving between summer playgrounds of privilege, peppered with decadent food and extravagant fashion, Sex and Vanity is a truly modern love story, a daring homage to A Room with a View, and a brilliantly funny comedy of manners set between two cultures.

I randomly picked up a copy of Sex And Vanity by Kevin Kwan at a library book sale. Turns out I actually had a review copy of the audiobook via Volumes. I am thinking that maybe I should have read Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians series first just to get a feel for his style. I also should have read A Room With A View as well. You see, Sex And Vanity apparently is somewhat of a retelling of A Room With A View. It’s about Lucy Tang Churchill who is caught between two men. One is a man who she kind of hates – George Zao – but is drawn to and has a small history with. The other man is her fiance, Cecil, who is essentially an oil billionaire and white. Lucy also is coming to terms with her identity.

This was an okay listen for me. It very much revels in the fact that it is about rich people. There’s a lot of name brand dropping and jetsetting. Personally, I never found myself overly invested — but I also did not come in with the context of the inspiration. The narrator of the Sex And Vanity audiobook is Lydia Look. It is 9 hours and 36 minutes long. It was not ever a chore to listen to or anything, just not my favorite so far this year.

African Town by Charles Waters and Irene Latham

I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

African Town by Charles Waters, Irene Latham
Narrator: Cassandra Campbell, Ronald Peet, Andrew Eiden, Cary Hite, Sean Patrick Hopkins, Sandra Okuboyejo, Soneela Nankani, Nene Nwoko, Michael Obiora, Prentice Onayemi, Mark Sanderlin, Mirron Willis, Patrick Zeller
Length: 6 Hours 50 Minutes
Published by Penguin on January 23, 2022
Genres: JUVENILE FICTION / General, Young Adult Fiction / Historical / United States / Civil War Period (1850-1877), Young Adult Fiction / Novels in Verse, Young Adult Fiction / People & Places / United States / African American & Black
Pages: 448
Format: Audiobook, eARC
Source: Publisher
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads

Chronicling the story of the last Africans brought illegally to America in 1860, African Town is a powerful and stunning novel-in-verse.

In 1860, long after the United States outlawed the importation of enslaved laborers, 110 men, women and children from Benin and Nigeria were captured and brought to Mobile, Alabama aboard a ship called Clotilda. Their journey includes the savage Middle Passage and being hidden in the swamplands along the Alabama River before being secretly parceled out to various plantations, where they made desperate attempts to maintain both their culture and also fit into the place of captivity to which they'd been delivered. At the end of the Civil War, the survivors created a community for themselves they called African Town, which still exists to this day. Told in 14 distinct voices, including that of the ship that brought them to the American shores and the founder of African Town, this powerfully affecting historical novel-in-verse recreates a pivotal moment in US and world history, the impacts of which we still feel today.

African Town by Charles Waters and Irene Latham is an audiobook that I very eagerly listened to. After all, I love verse books. I love historical fiction. And I LOVE audiobooks. So, it stands to reason that I would like this book. And well, I did like this book very much. It follows what happens when the very last slave ship – the Clotilda – which was very real – comes to America with enslaved people after the trade has been made illegal. The book then goes into what happens after the enslaved people are set free. They have to decide whether to stay in America or go back to Africa.

Overall, I thought that African Town was a great book at first. Like, my initial reaction was to give it a five star review. Then I decided to sit with my thoughts a little bit longer. I don’t know how I feel about a white woman telling some of the perspectives in this story. The authors note says neither of the authors are descendents of those who came on the Clotilda. It talks about the authors taking on the burden of telling the story so it doesn’t have to fall to the descendents. I don’t know, that just made me feel a little weird while reading. I think there’s a good conversation here to have around Own Voices but I am not sure I am the person to have that conversation, you know?

Anyways, what drove me to my initial five stars was the narration. There are many narrators of African Town. Each is absolute perfection at the parts that they take. The narrators are: Cassandra Campbell, Ronald Peet, Andrew Eiden, Cary Hite, Sean Patrick Hopkins, Sandra Okuboyejo, Soneela Nankani, Nene Nwoko, Michael Obiora, Prentice Onayemi, Mark Sanderlin, Mirron Willis and Patrick Zeller. I was only familiar with two of the narrators ahead of time — Cassandra Campbell and Soneela Nankani. Turns out, these narrators are just phenomenal with their talent. If you do read this book, audiobook is absolutely the way to go.