Elana K. Arnold – The Hub

Amazing Audiobooks (#AA2022) Featured Review of Cinderella Is Dead by Kalynn Bayron

Cinderella Is Dead by Kalynn Bayron; narrated by Bahni Turpin
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Release date: September 4, 2020
ISBN: 9781547605590

In Mersailles, Cinderella is more than just a fairy tale: her story is a guide for how women should behave. All girls are required to attend the annual ball where they are either chosen as a wife or sent away, never to be heard from again. Sophia would much rather marry her childhood best friend, Erin, and makes the decision to flee. She ends up at Cinderella’s mausoleum, where she meets the last descendent of one of Cinderella’s stepsisters and learns the real truth behind the fairy tale while becoming entangled in the movement to topple the monarchy.

Amazing Audiobooks (#AA2021) Nominees Round Up, October 28 Edition

See the current Amazing Audiobooks nominees along with more information about the list and past years’ selections.

Charming as a Verb by Ben Philippe; Narrated by James Fouhey
HarperAudio
Publication Date: September 8, 2020
ISBN: 9780063025622

Henri “Halti” Haltiwanger, a first generation Haitian-American is full of charm and ambition. Excelling at his prestigious New York high school, running his own successful (if slightly misleading) dog walking service, he is determined to get into Columbia, his (or his father’s?) dream school. When his neighbor Corrine blackmails him into teaching her how to be more social, unexpected ventures begin.

2018 Best Fiction for Young Adults List

Have you heard? The Best Fiction for Young Adults list has been released! Check out the top ten below!

Arnold, Elana. What Girls Are Made Of. Lerner/Carolrhoda Lab. 2017. Sixteen-year-old Nina experiences sex, betrayal, loss, and a dysfunctional home life, all while trying to understand what it means to be female in the world and whether love can ever be truly unconditional.
Bardugo, Leigh. The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic. Illus. by Sara Kipin. Macmillan/Imprint. 2017. Traditional fairy tales are refreshingly twisted, re-created, and wrapped in gorgeous illustrations in this stand-alone collection of six short stories. The world-building will be familiar to Bardugo’s fans, and readers new to her Grishaverse have the pleasure of knowing they can take further excursions into this world.
Lee, Mackenzi. The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue. HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen. 2017. Montague, the son of a British nobleman, embarks on a European tour with his best friend (and secret crush) Percy and his sister Felicity. Along the way, they encounter adventure and conflict that leads them to a very different destiny than the one awaiting their return to England.
Moon, Sarah. Sparrow. Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine. 2017. Sparrow has a secret: her closest friends are birds. When she feels anxious, she goes to the roof and flies. One day, this practice lands her in the hospital, facing questions from the adults in her life. Slowly, she recovers, finds her voice, and makes new friends along the way.
Reynolds, Jason. Long Way Down. Simon & Schuster/Atheneum. 2017. Will’s brother has been shot. In this free-verse novel, Will steps into an elevator ready to head downstairs and to follow the rules he’s been taught and avenge his brother’s death, when he encounters the ghosts of victims of a chain reaction caused by a shooting.

Continue reading 2018 Best Fiction for Young Adults List