Amazing Audiobooks (#AA2024) Featured Review: Promise Boys by Nick Brooks

  • Promise Boys
  • by Nick Brooks
  • Narrated by Renier Cortes, Christopher Hampton, Alfred Vines, and a full cast
  • Macmillan Audio| Macmillan Young Listeners
  • Publication Date: January 31, 2023
  • ISBN: 9781250877253

The Urban Promise Prep School is determined to create responsible, upstanding, college-bound young men out of all of its students. Principle Moore, the founder of the school, says that following the school’s unyielding discipline is what it takes to escape the violence of the students’ neighborhoods and to make it to college.  When Moore, a beloved pillar of the city of Washington D.C. turns up murdered in the school, three detention students are immediately suspects. J.B., Trey and Ramón. Each maintain that there is no way they could have committed the crime, no matter how much it may look like they did. The students and their friends are soon working together to discover who really murdered Principle Moore and why.

Nick Brooks has written a compelling mystery that will appeal to lots of different readers. The short chapters and constant change in point of view helps create urgency in the plot making this a fast read, even for reluctant readers. This is produced to great effect in the audiobook due to a full cast of narrators and sound effects. Readers who love crime or mystery and gravitate toward the television version of One of Us is Lying, the books of Karen McManus or Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé’s Ace of Spades will enjoy Promise Boys.

-Natalie LaRocque

Other Nominated Titles

Release Date: November 29, 2022

The Selected Lists teams read throughout the year in search of the best titles published in their respective categories. Once a book is suggested (either internally or through the title suggestion form), it must pass through a review process to be designated an official nomination.

Each week, the teams feature a review of one of the officially nominated titles. Additional titles to receive this designation are listed as well. At year’s end, the team will curate a final list from all nominated titles and select a Top Ten.