(My least-favorite narrator was for the novel Swamplandia!, which was entirely too young.

It takes me about, oh…a minute of listening to know if I like it or not, if it fits well with how I tink I’ll “hear” the story in my head (or if I’ve read the book, how I did hear it), and if it doesn’t I won’t keep listening. One thing I am hesitant with as far as audio books go is the reader’s voice. (Nathan has read it, and I’m pretty sure Jake has too. And, honestly, even though the main character is a girl, it also has such great male characters that boys will like it too. It’s intensely romantic without being overtly sexual in its descriptions, so it’s a good recommend for my conservative community’s preferences for their daughters. Ours is shelved in the YA section, but I think this reads just as well for adults. (Alas, I only wrote a book note about the last one, Dreams of Gods and Monsters.) It’s also a series I love recommending to many different kinds of readers at the library. She’s one of my favorite authors, so of course I’ve read these books before. As I had just received my Illumicrate edition of Laini Taylor’s novel Daughter of Smoke and Bone AND as it was available on my Overdrive app, I decided to listen to it. Something I’d read before, so if I didn’t pay exact attention I wouldn’t be totally lost. In December, when I started wrapping Christmas presents, I decided I wanted to listen to an audio book. She had to be her own strength, complete unto herself.

No crossbar in the world could protect her from what lay ahead, and neither could a tiny knife ticked in her boot - though there her tiny knife would most certainly remain - and neither could a man, not even Akiva. Be your own place of safety, she told herself, straightening.

Smoke and bone book