Booklovers: A podcast for readers

Summary: During this episode of the Booklovers Podcast, we share six debut authors and summer reads.

Stacy: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Clermont County Public Library’s Booklovers Podcast. I’m your host, Stacy. And I’m joined today by Shayna and Laura. During this episode, they are going to talk about some of their favorite debut authors. The show notes with links and the books will be available at clermontlibrary.org.

Shayna, would you like to get us started today?

Shayna: [00:00:22] Yes. So, the first summer read that I have picked it’s one of my favorite thrillers. It’s a debut by Rose Carlysle. It’s called The Girl in the Mirror. And the title, when I first stumbled upon it (actually a coworker told me about it) and the title it’s just…You don’t expect the book and then once you start reading it, you understand the title. It was thrilling. It was crazy. So full of twists and turns. So, if you enjoy books with mysteries, thrills, and shocking endings, this one’s a great choice. I’m just going to start off with the summary.

 Twin sisters, Iris and Summer are identical on the outside, but on the inside, they are night and day. They are mirror twins, which means when Iris looks in the mirror, she doesn’t see herself. She sees her twin, Summer, staring back at her. Iris has always been a bit envious of Summer…from her good fortune to her personality, her perfect husband, perfect family. Even her name. Summer asks Iris to sail the family yacht for her, since she doesn’t know how to sail and Iris, a natural sailor, agrees.

And then the worst happens. One morning, Iris wakes up and finds that Summer has vanished. Iris finds herself completely alone in the middle of the Indian Ocean and her sister, nowhere to be seen. When Iris finally makes it to land and Summer’s husband thinks that she is Summer, Iris goes along with it.

Now Iris is living the perfect life she always envied her sister for having but, her glamorous life soon turns into a paranoid nightmare…Very creepy.

Laura: [00:01:59] That’s super intriguing.

Shayna: [00:02:01] So the entire time I was reading this book, I just kept thinking “What the heck is going on?!”

Like, from the very first few pages, Iris, she’s in Summer’s closet. And she tries on Summer’s lingerie, and she looks in the mirror and of course they’re mirror twins.

Which is a real thing, by the way. I looked it up. It’s a real condition and it’s rare, but some twins are mirror twins. When they see their reflection, they don’t see themselves, they see their twin.

When you think you have stuff figured out, you don’t. It’s full of twists and turns. It was creepy and thrilling and odd, but in a good way.

I’ve never read a book where I have disliked every single character until this book. But don’t let that deter you. Every person in this book is just horrible, unlikable.

As soon as you start to think, “Oh, well maybe they have some redeeming qualities?”, no…They’re terrible people. On the boat, Summer vanishes. And Iris, she does grieve. She does think “Oh my gosh, maybe she got drunk and fell over, or maybe she passed out and fell. Maybe she did it on purpose. Maybe she just jumped…”. She does grieve for her sister, but then she figures out, well, I’m going to go to jail. And she’s always wanted to be Summer. Summer had this big scar on her thigh – it looks like a hook. Iris purposely gives herself that scar on her leg.

She decides before she sees Summer’s husband, I’m going to be Summer. It’s very creepy. Summer has a step son. He’s like three or four and he knows during the whole book she’s not his mommy. It’s very eerie. The family dog barks at her because it knows she’s not Summer.

The book was just really, really good. Read it if you want to not like anybody and be creeped out the whole time.

Laura: [00:04:00] Sounds really good.

Stacy: [00:04:01] ] Sounds good. A very atmospheric type of read, like really puts you in the setting of the book.

Shayna: [00:04:07] And once, like I said, you think you figure it out and then something happens with a character and you’re like, oh my gosh, like who would do that to somebody or who thinks that way. And it just gets more and more and more crazy as you go through the book. And then, in the last chapter, something traumatic happens. Then the very last few sentences wraps it all up and I had to stop and I was like, wait a minute…?

And I had to reread the last chapter because I thought I’d missed something! That’s how twisty this author wrote it. It’s a complete shell shocker. My mouth dropped open when I read the ending.

Stacy: [00:04:46] Awesome. That’s a good sell of a book.

Laura: [00:04:50] I love domestic thriller fiction that keeps you guessing.  I read enough mysteries that I’m like, oh, I know who did it, and I love it when they prove me wrong.

Shayna: [00:05:03] Right. And especially with this one, because there’s no one else on the boat, but them, so it’s not who did it. It’s more like what happened. And then when Iris pretends to be Summer, it’s like, maybe she did it, but it’s a wild ride.

Laura: [00:05:19] Sounds like it.

I’m going to lighten things up just a tiny little bit, although there is still murder because it’s a cozy mystery.

My first summer read suggestion is Fresh Brewed Murder by Emmeline Duncan. And it’s the first book in a new culinary cozy series set in Portland. So, of course, it features coffee culture. 20-something Sage and her bestie, Harley, have a new coffee cart.

One morning, Sage discovers a murdered customer in front of the cart. And even worse, he was killed with a box cutter from the coffee cart, which makes her the prime suspect.

Now she has to unravel all these layers of mysteries involving local property development. There were protesters who were upset about this property to be turned into a big fancy building that doesn’t fit the neighborhood. Her estranged mother’s shady past misdeeds and her complicated family ties.

Lots of layers to this, but it still has that cozy feel where it’s kind of comforting and gentle. I mean, there isn’t anything other than the original murder that’s really in your face.

Great sense of place. Emmaline Duncan brought Portland to life for me. I’ve never been there, but she made it sound absolutely wonderful.

And I loved all of the coffee talk and I never felt like it was an info dump or page filler. I hate when I’m reading a book and it almost feels like the author is like, “I did all this really intense research, and now I’m going to share it with you.” If I wanted that, I’d be reading nonfiction, please don’t do that.

Sage and Harley felt authentically knowledgeable about coffee roasting. They were talking about the beans – where they were grown and creating beverages. They even had coffee cocktails, which sounded intriguing.

And she included other issues about homelessness, runway kids, gentrification. I thought she handled all of those in a really sensitive manner, but it never felt like a heavy, oh, this book is about issues. She kept a fairly lighthearted tone and Sage, the main character with her humor, her dating, and her desire to give back to the community and her conflicted feelings about our own past very well developed believable, main character.

I wanted to hang out with her while drinking one of her coffee creations. It sounded like a whole lot of fun, so Fresh Brewed Murder, a fast paced, quick read with a twisty mystery, great sense of place and an engaging main character. And I gave it five stars on Goodreads.

Stacy: [00:07:57] Awesome. First of all, I would love to have a coffee cart with my best friend.

Stacy: And it sounds like there’s a lot to unpack for a cozy mystery, but done in like a fast-paced, lighthearted way, like you were saying. So like kind of more depth than like a normal cozy mystery, which is nice.

Laura: [00:08:14] You still have the traditional right? Set in a small town but I’ve also noticed that some of the newer, younger writers are kind of involving more social issues and social awareness into their cozy mysteries.

They still have that bit of traditional with an amateur sleuth, not a lot of blood or gore. If there’s sex, it takes place off the page. So there’s still that gentle read. I know that sounds funny when you’re talking about a book that has a killing in it, but that gentle sort of feel to it, but it feels like it’s a little bit more current.

Stacy: [00:08:52] Like with the title that it’s a cozy read, you know, I like that because I don’t know—I don’t think I’ve ever read a cozy mystery before. It just has never sounded super appealing, but that the book that you just described definitely does.

Laura: [00:09:06] And Shana for you – It has a yellow cover. I know how you love the yellow covers.

Shayna: [00:09:11] Oh yeah. If it’s a yellow book, I’m going to read it. That’s my thing. That sounds really good.

Shayna: And I agree with you, Stacy. I would love to have a coffee cart with my best friend. Like even with my husband, like, yes, let’s make coffee cocktails!

Laura: [00:09:30] They have the cart, but they also cater events. They do tastings for people and they have little samples of these delicious coffee creations and I’m like, yeah, I think I would like to taste one of those.

Shayna: [00:09:44] I’ve read cozy mysteries where it’s like a chocolate shop or a truffle shop or cupcakes, or I read a cozy mystery series where it was Mexican food and like the way those authors write their books, you can almost taste and smell the food and the desserts. And they’re just so much fun.

Stacy: [00:10:06] Yes, absolutely. That would be really fun for a book club too, to get together at someone’s house. And make some recipes from the book, do some, some samples, what would I do? And then our next podcast can be updates on this is what we made.

Shayna: [00:10:26] That’d be fun! All right. I will go next with my next pick. Laura read this one. It’s The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner. Yes, a gorgeous, gorgeous cover. A great debut. I really enjoyed the book. I mean, it has a dark atmosphere. She definitely does a great job setting the scene for readers.

There’s mystery. There’s a little bit of romance, a little, and it also just has a bunch of historical components, which I love. 

I’ll just read the summary.

One cold February evening in 1791 at the back of a dark London alley in a hidden apothecary shop Nella awaits her newest customer. Her mother’s apothecary shop used to be a respectable place for healing. Now Nella uses her knowledge of herbs, insects, plants, flowers, and such for a much darker purpose. She sells well disguised poisons to desperate women who want to be rid of the terrible men in their lives…Husbands brothers, uncles, friends.

Nella only follows two rules now. Rule number one, the poison must never be used to harm another woman and rule number two, the names of the murderer and her victim must be recorded.

Eliza is just 12 years old and her mistress has devised a plan with the child to poison and murder her husband. When Eliza shows up at Nella’s hidden apothecary asking for the poison Nella begins to truly question her humanity. An unexpected friendship is formed and a string of events is set in motion that jeopardizes Nella’s whole world.

In present day London, Caroline spends her 10th wedding anniversary all alone. She recently discovered her husband’s infidelity and is trying to cope. She discovers an old abandoned apothecary near the river, and as she investigates, she realizes she has found the link to the unsolved apothecary murders from 1791…

Centuries apart the lives of these three women intersect in unimaginable ways.

That was a lot!

Stacy: [00:12:37] It’s hard when it’s very deep, when the book is very like detailed.

Shayna: [00:12:41] It’s back and forth between present day London and then London in 1791.

Nella is an apothecary, which, during that time they created medicines for people. But instead she makes poison for men. When Eliza shows up, who is a child, Nella really then starts to say, “I’m a terrible human being, what am I doing?!”. And things just start to happen. A series of events happens and they’re basically fighting for their lives.

Then Caroline, in present day London, her husband has been cheating on her and they had this big trip planned for London for their anniversary. And she’s like, bye, I’m going alone.

She is a history major. And she goes mud larking. Mud larking is a real thing where people go and they dig in the mud in the river. Especially in London, it’s a big deal, mud larking, and there’s groups and clubs. And they find artifacts that could be centuries old. She finds a little vial and that’s how she starts to get on her quest for this apothecary.

Her husband ends up showing up and he wants to fix things. He ends up getting sick and the police have to take him to the hospital. And the police think that she poisoned him because they find her notes on this apothecary and poison and how to poison people…

It’s a whole whirlwind! I really, really liked the book and I really liked that it blends well between the characters, because you have Nella, who’s an adult woman and she’s not a real exciting character. She’s kind of like Debbie downer in the dumps all the time.

And then you have Eliza, the child who’s very mature for her age and is doing stuff she probably shouldn’t be. And you have Caroline who’s going through something. All three women, just the way the author intersects their lives, it just came together perfectly. I really hope she writes more books because I really enjoyed this one.

And at the end of the book, it talks about mud larking a little bit more, so it’s very historical and the story was just so interesting.

Laura: [00:14:46] That’s another book where you can tell she did a lot of research, but I never felt like she was just going, admire my research. Look at all the hard work I did. She integrated it really well in terms of story.

Talk about the luck of the draw for a book cover. That is one of the most gorgeous book covers.

Stacy: [00:15:03] Yes, it’s beautiful.

Shayna: [00:15:05] I love it. I think actually, Laura, I think you brought it to my attention, the book, because of the cover, like, I don’t even think we saw the summary.

You just said, “Look at this book. It’s gorgeous!” and then I think me, you, and Jordan, we all added it to our list. A couple of people here at New Richmond have read it because of the cover. So it’s a good one.

Stacy: [00:15:26] And you were talking about mud larking and one of my coworkers, the adult selector for all of our materials here at the library, Jeanne, she attended a panel with the author, like virtually out of a book show or, you know something for publicity for the book.

And the author actually went to London and mud larked, I don’t know if that’s the right term, but did the act of mud larking so she could talk about it, like genuinely in her book. So, she really did do her research.

Shayna: [00:15:58] Yes. I read that at the end of the book. You know how some authors will add an author’s note? She mentioned that that’s what inspired this book. Someone else found a vial in the group when they were mud larking and I think that inspired this story for her. And so, she does talk about it. It’s really interesting.

Stacy: [00:16:18] That’s awesome. I haven’t read this one yet, but it is on my to-read list and I think it’s going to be my next audio book, because it sounds like it has very like lush descriptions and I feel like it would be a really good one to listen to.

Laura: [00:16:31] It would be really good as an audio.

So my next book is another cozy mystery about food. It’s called Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala. It is a fast-paced mystery that’s going to make you laugh, cringe and salivate simultaneously.

Lila’s returned home to help with her family’s failing Filipino restaurant. And unfortunately, Shady Palms is a small town and she can’t escape her restaurant reviewing ex who seems to have it out for the family’s restaurant. If that’s not stressful enough, the restaurant’s landlord who wants the restaurant off his property is her ex’s new stepdad. So double yikes.

He and her ex come to eat lunch at the restaurant.

Her ire is up and she makes no bones about being angry with him, constantly criticizing the restaurant in his reviews. And she really feels like it’s having an impact on the family’s business. When he ends up face down in his desert, dead from poisoning, Lila’s obviously the prime suspect.

This was a super fun book to read. Leila is likable and relatable. She’s trying to figure out what she wants – balancing out her needs with the pressure to meet her family’s expectations. I love her interactions with her extended Filipino family.

She talks about having grudges with some of her cousins that go back to when they were in grade school. And yet when chips are down, she knows that she can count on them to help her out with her investigation.

And her grandmother is simultaneously terrifying and hysterical. She makes these very short, kind of grim pronouncements and everybody could sort of scurries around to keep grandma happy. And when she’s not bossing them around the restaurant or at home, she’s off gambling with her friends. Super funny.

There is a large cast, all of these family members plus her friends. And I love that the author had diversity on display ethnicity, religion, sexuality, even people’s eating habits. You have everybody from super carnivores to absolute total vegans.

It was nice that there was this broad display and yet everybody was getting along and liking each other. Except for those childhood grudges, everybody had their own voice, which was also nice. I felt like she really fleshed them out.

And the food descriptions were absolutely amazing. And there’s even coffee. Her best friend works at a coffee shop and she’s constantly making up these concoctions for Leila to try.

If you’re on Instagram, take a look at Mia P. Manansala’s account. She posts pictures of some of the recipes that she was working on for the book. And I’d never heard of it before this, but there’s a Filipino type of purple yam called an ube. She made these crinkle cookies,  like you see at the holidays, right? The chocolate crinkles, except she made them with ube and they’re this beautiful violet color.

She included recipes and  I’m going to have to try some of them. The adobo chicken sounded just amazing.

Stacy: [00:19:47] It’s almost lunchtime.

Laura: [00:19:54] Great mystery, lots of layers, several suspects with believable motives and plus there’s a hint of a love triangle. I hope in upcoming books, she’s going to flesh that out a little bit.

Shayna: [00:20:06] Oh, I love when authors do that. Love it. 

Stacy: [00:20:08] To me it sounds like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but with the Filipino family and murder instead, but with all the characters and like everybody has like a big personality and stuff like that. That sounds, it sounds like a fun read.

Laura: [00:20:22] I liked it. It was a lot of fun.

Shayna: [00:20:23] Yeah, that one sounds good. My aunt is actually Filipino. She and my uncle, met when he was in the Navy. And so sometimes at cookouts or family get-togethers, she will bring Filipino dishes. So, I’ll have to ask her about that.

So, my last pick is called Starfish by Lisa Fipps.

This one is absolutely adorable. I loved every chapter. I loved this book. It’s uplifting. It’s empowering. It was kind of gut wrenching, just all wrapped into one. It is a juvenile, so it’s written for kids, but as an adult myself, it was very, very good. It’s not very long. I think it was less than 300 pages and it’s written in the style of free verse poetry.

Each chapter is a poem and they’re very short chapters but it’s easy to follow. I’ve read books before where it’s written in free verse poetry and it’s a little hard to follow because it jumps throughout the person’s life. This one was not like that. It was very straightforward, easy to read, very quick. I think it took me like an hour and a half, if that, to finish it one morning. I’ll read the summary…

Ellie remembers the day clearly. It was her fifth birthday party and she had worn a whale swimming suit. She jumped into the pool, made a big splash, and that is when the fat shaming started. Splash actually became a cruel nickname for her.

Now, Ellie is a preteen and she is sick of being fat shamed. So, she decides to do something about it. To cope with the bullying, Ellie has created what she calls “Fat Girl Rules” and she tries to live by them.

-No making waves while swimming

-Avoid eating in public

-Don’t move so fast that your body jiggles

Her safe space is the swimming pool where she can flow and feel weightless in a fat obsessed world. Where she can stretch herself out and take up all the rooms she wants, just like a starfish. She can escape her cruel siblings and her pushy mom who thinks that criticizing her weight will somehow motivate her to diet.

Ellie has allies in her dad, her therapist, and her new best friend, Catalina. They all love Ellie for who she is. With their support, Ellie might finally be able to get rid of her “Fat Girl Rules” and starfish in real life…

Sad!

Laura: [00:22:51] It sounds amazing.

Shayna: [00:22:53] It was really good. I mean, it definitely shows the worst in people, but it also shows the very best in people. And I loved how the author just really highlighted a child navigating their thoughts and their emotions in dealing with their self-worth.

Because I think the world is harsh when it comes to our looks. If you wear glasses, your hair color, how you’re dressed, your skin color, and especially if you’re overweight. We do live in a fat obsessed world and for a child to experience that and process it, it was just heartbreaking, but it was beautiful at the same time because as you read the book, Ellie, she goes to therapy the whole time and she does the work that her therapist tells her to do. For example, the therapist tells her to stand up for herself, but don’t become a bully at school. Because there’s a way to tell someone, “Hey, that’s not okay” without bullying them in return. As a child, she figures that out.

And so that was really awesome to see. I just really loved Ellie’s spirit. She does get lost sometimes in a negative swirl of thinking where she’s just like “I’m fat and no one cares about me, especially my mom. Why doesn’t my mom love me?”. I will say because this was a juvenile, I think if it was written for adults, I think the author might have maybe had some chapters for the mom.

That mom needs therapy herself because she’s just very, very cruel to Ellie. It’s almost like she’s embarrassed that her daughter is overweight. She’ll print out diets or magazine articles and she’ll tape them to the kitchen cabinets. Ellie just rips them down and crumples them up. But who does that to their kid, you know? So thankfully, Ellie has her dad who supports her and loves her and he’s actually the one that has her start going to therapy because he tells his wife, he’s like, “Look, she’s being bullied in school. Her spirit’s breaking.” …So that was really good.

A really, really cute book. I loved it. I loved every page and actually I have it here. Very cute. There’s Ellie. So, I love the cover.

Stacy: [00:25:05] Five stars all the way! I’m going to call it. It’s going to be a Newbery contender. It’s going to be the winner or an honor book.

The author, I think she’s either a teacher or a librarian. She just knows how to write from the voice of a preteen. It felt so realistic. Like Shayna was saying, the mom is definitely a villain. Like, you know, there’s nothing objectionable language or anything in it, but you could just tell, like, this is probably what a lot of children experience in their home lives.

And it was so heartbreaking, but it was wonderful to see Ellie’s support system, her dad, her friend, the new neighbors next door. I loved that family. They were so sweet.

Shayna: [00:25:59] When Ellie goes out with them to a restaurant, normally with her siblings they’ll say comments like “We have to get two tables because of you,” or “We’re not allowed to get dessert because mom doesn’t want you to get dessert so the rest of us can’t get dessert.” …They say really mean things to her.

And when Ellie goes out with her friend’s family, her friend Catalina who has some brothers, they don’t even notice how she looks or her weight. It uplifts her because I think when you’re a kid when all you know is your home and your family, you think that everyone’s family is like that, and that’s just not the case.

Stacy: [00:26:36] Right. And I think it’s important to note that her siblings are both older than she is. They’re in high school. But I think it really shows that kids can make, no matter how young you are, you can make a positive change. You can be a positive role model. You don’t have to wait to grow up to do that. So, it was so beautiful. I love that.

Shayna: [00:27:01] I loved it. I don’t read a whole lot of juvenile, but this one…I snatched it up as soon as I read the summary and I got it on hold when it came in and it was…I loved it. It was lovely.

Laura: [00:00:00] For my last one, this is a romcom, but also there’s a dead body because I guess that was my theme this time.

It’s Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto. And I have to say she has pulled up one mad cap, romcom caper. It’s a darkly, humorous debut.

I read someone, describe it as Crazy Rich Asians crossed with Weekend at Bernie’s and that seems like a pretty apt description.

Meddy’s meddling, Indochinese mom reaches new heights of meddling when she creates a profile on a dating site using Meddy’s name and photo, and then she continues to pose as Meddy chatting up a guy who seems nice. And she agrees to meet him, but as Meddy.

Because Meddy is a dutiful daughter, she goes along with this craziness. The date doesn’t go exactly as planned because Meddy accidentally kills him. Oops. Now what do you do?  She puts his body in her trunk and then she calls her mom and her aunts to figure out what to do.

And it’s this whole crazy caper where her family has a wedding planning business. One of  the aunties does the catering and they decided they will put the body in a big freezer and then they will deal with it after the weekend because they have this big lavish,  Indo-Chinese wedding that they need to do. Except the people who load their stuff up in the morning, load up the freezer too.

It’s an entire weekend of them at this island resort trying to hide the freezer, make sure that nobody touches the freezer. There’s a bloody in the freezer. We can’t let anyone discover this. And because it’s a romcom, there has to be the romance.

When Maddie gets to the resort, the person running it all is her ex-boyfriend from college. She had to break up with him because her family wanted her to come home. She’s a photographer and they wanted her to be part of the family business. And he had said, oh,  let’s start living together and I’ll get a job and you can work on your photography.

And it didn’t happen. She chose her family and she went home, but now he’s there. You have this whole weekend of all of these capers, about who has the body, where’s the body. What have we done with the body?

It was fast paced, darkly humorous with sweet, romantic moments.

There were some moments where the crazy aunties did things. And I was like, I, what did I just read? I must read this again. Surely that’s not what they did. Yes. That is there’s even a delightful conversation with Meddy explaining to them why you do not use the eggplant emoji when you’re talking to strange men.

Stacy: [00:03:01] That sounds fun!

Laura: [00:03:03] right, because you think, oh, it’s a romance with a corpse that will not be funny. That will go terribly wrong. And yet it was super, super funny and there are some descriptions – her mom and the aunties and Maddie get together for dim sum every week. So again, with the delicious food descriptions.

A sweet little romance with a dead body – giving a caper feel to it. I saw that Netflix has actually picked it up. I’m hoping that they do it justice. Because I think it would be a super, super fun adaptation.

Shayna: [00:03:38] I was just about to say the whole time you were explaining that I was getting, if you’ve ever watched Good Girls on Netflix, I was getting Good Girls vibes because a body ends up in a freezer, basically in a deep freezer in someone’s home.

Oh my gosh. I don’t know how I feel right now. I’m like, do I want to read that?

Laura: [00:04:03] Well, there isn’t anything- I mean, there’s no gross gory stuff. 

Shayna: [00:04:09] Just the fact that…They sound crazy. Let’s just stick them in the freezer!

Laura: [00:04:15] Shayna, it also has a yellow cover. So…

For all that there’s a corpse involved, it really does stay pretty lighthearted. I mean, you get Meddy and there’s also the storyline of she’s trying to balance her loyalty to her family and keeping the business.

Stacy: [00:04:50] So, so many questions. But my biggest question is like, how do you accidentally kill somebody on a date? Well, now I do want to read this. If it’s going to kind of ruin it, don’t tell.

Laura: [00:05:07] It happens very early on and I will just say she didn’t mean to kill him. It was an accident. He was kind of hands-y.

Stacy: [00:05:18] That’s giving me Practical Magic vibes.

Shayna: [00:05:22] It’s not the same but, it kind of reminds me of Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert that just released. She runs over the guy who is the love interest in the book. They’re not on a date, but she just backs into him and runs over him. And he’s like, “What the heck? What’s wrong with you, woman?!”

Laura: [00:05:46] With Meddy, it was an accident. The guy was really a jerk. Not that that’s grounds for killing people but I’m saying it’s not like he’s nice. It’s more like “Cellblock Tango” from Chicago. He had it coming.

Shayna: [00:06:06] Oh, that sounds like a wild ride.

Laura: [00:06:11] Very funny. Some super sweet, tender moments when she and her ex are kind of reconnecting, but every time she sort of reconnects with him, there’s the body and the body does not stay in the freezer because they need the freezer.

At one point, it very much as Weekend at Bernie’s where they’re posing the corpse. Which leads to a misunderstanding with the ex-boyfriend. The corpse is in Maddie’s room at the hotel, in her bed and the ex the goes to see her. And he can see what he thinks is a man. Well, it is a man – it just happens to be a dead man, but he thinks it’s a guy asleep in Meddy’s bed.

I can’t wait to see what they do with it on Netflix. I’m looking forward to it.

Stacy: [00:07:11] That sounds fun! Well, I think we have a lot of books that we all have added to our to-be-read lifts and hopefully our listeners and viewers have as well. So, thank you both so much for joining us today and sharing your titles.

Viewers, please subscribe to the Clermont Library YouTube channel, and listeners, you can subscribe to the Booklovers Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss an episode. Thanks for joining us.

The post Podcast: 6 Hot and Fresh Summer Reads At Your Library appeared first on Clermont Library.

Laura: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Clermont County Public Library’s Booklovers Podcast. I’m your host, Laura. And today I’m joined by two librarians who are very passionate about audiobooks for kids, Cara and Amy.

Laura: So Cara, would you like to kick things off?

Cara: [00:00:19] Yeah, definitely. I picked three books that I love the narrators for.

I think the narrator makes or breaks an audiobook. Some people don’t like audiobooks. I think they probably just listened to a bad narrator.

Laura: [00:00:33] I must have gotten bad narrators at first because I was like, I do not see what the attraction is. And then I got somebody who was just delightful, Moira Quirk. She was amazing. And I’m like, okay. I now have to listen to everything that she’s narrated. So I’m with you 100%. Narrator is everything.

Cara: [00:00:59] I’m the same way. I didn’t listen to audiobooks for the longest time, because I hated one that I listened to.

But then once I got into it, now I have a favorite audiobook narrator for adults. I don’t have a favorite for children. They seem like they’re all over the place, you know, they don’t do so many, but Cassandra Campbell reads a ton of adult fiction, maybe like historical fiction, because that’s usually what I read, and she’s fantastic.

Amy: [00:01:22] I think with kids, people often jump to Jim Dale, who did many of the Harry Potters and this got a lot of people into Harry Potter and listening to audiobooks for the first time. Yeah, there are a lot of audiobooks that are really well done I agree totally narration can break a story or make it.

Cara: [00:01:41] There’ve been some where I’ve listened to it, and I’ve wondered if I really didn’t like the story or I just didn’t like the narrator. Because I was so annoyed by the narration, I was like, I’m not sure if I went back and read the book if I’d like it or not, but who has time for bad books? So I didn’t try.

My first one is Skunk and Badger, which is by Amy Timberlake. It’s illustrated by Jon Klassen. So if you’re probably familiar with his picture books, he did the Hat series, I Want My Hat Back. So it’s definitely worth looking at the print version to see his illustrations.

And then I would highly recommend combining it with the audiobook, which is read by Michael Boatman. He apparently does some acting. I hadn’t really heard of him before, but it’s a fantastic audiobook. He brings a lot of energy to it and has really distinct voices for each of the characters. And I just really liked the way that he does the humor in the book.

It made me laugh so much. I would highly recommend listening to that one. It’s about three hours long, so I think it’d be good for like a day trip if you were driving somewhere, just for the day. It’s kind of a quick little audiobook, but it has a really modern classic feel to it.

So it’s your typical animal fantasy where they’re acting as humans. The premise is that Badger lives in his Aunt Lula’s brownstone, and that’s where he does his Important Rock Work. And one day there’s a knock at the door, and it’s Skunk. And he has no idea who Skunk is. He thinks he’s selling something and he tries to get rid of him, but he quickly realizes that Aunt Lula actually sent Skunk to live with him, which he would have known if he’d read Aunt Lula’s letters, but he hadn’t been reading them. So he kind of feels like he has to let Skunk in. He tries to give him a closet to live in. And so they really don’t get along. They’re totally different personalities. It’s kind of like an Odd Couple for kids.

But it’s really sweet and they kind of figure things out toward the end. And I was going to show an illustration from Jon Klassen’s fantastic art. There’s all these chickens outside the brownstone, and you can see Badger’s eye is really big. He’s like, what are all these chickens? And it says “The landscape had gone chicken.”

The way that it’s written, it’s just fantastic. So in addition to seeing the illustrations, I would recommend getting the print book if your kid is learning to read or is struggling to read; that can be a really great way for them to connect what they’re hearing with what they’re reading and to develop their reading skills.

I definitely recommend pairing them if you can.

Amy: [00:04:09] It’s also really great, if you have dyslexia or other reading issues or comprehension issues to hear it, it helps the auditory learners learn it better too.

Cara: [00:04:19] Definitely. It’s great for a lot of things. So I’m going to share; this is the very beginning of Skunk and Badger.

Narrator: “The first time Badger saw Skunk, he thought, “Puny,” and shut the front door. Badger didn’t normally shut the door on animals that knocked. But there was too much slick in this one’s stripe, too much puff in his tail. Also, there’d been that grin, and the way he’d stuck out his paw as if he had been looking forward to meeting Badger for a long, long time.

Badger knew what to make of that. He shut the door before the fellow got any ideas. “Not. Buying. Anything,” he said through the keyhole.

When the knocking continued, Badger added, “Ever.”

Then he drew the bolt. And the double bolt. And latched the chain. “Quartzite!” Badger thought briskly as he padded back into his rock room.”

So he’s going to work on his Important Rock Work, which the narrator talks about all the time, his Important Rock Work.

Laura: [00:05:34] That was absolutely charming. I defy any adult to listen to that and not giggle at least once.

Cara: [00:05:39] I definitely think that one’s for the whole family. I think everybody can enjoy that one.

Skunk and Badger is available as a:

Amy: [00:05:43] Definitely. Mine is also another great one for the whole family. I’m a big nonfiction reader and I found a nonfiction title great for the whole family.

It’s called the Story of Classical Music, written by Darren Henley and it’s read by Maryanne Alsip who is the conductor for the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. Published in 2004, it’s four discs long and about four and a half hours, but you don’t have to listen to it all in one chunk, you can break it up.

It’s a 1,200-year look at classical music from the very beginning starting with a Gregorian chant in the Medieval Period and going all the way up to modern classical music of the 21st century, the early 2000s, when the book was published. It includes 150 excerpts from the music that it talks about.

You’re introduced to each composer and their music. And then you get a brief excerpt of a piece of their music. The excerpts are about nine minutes long for each one. Composers like Mozart and Beethoven get more examples. But the other composers will get a song or two, and there’s always an introduction of each composer.

86 composers are discussed. The composers are Western European focused. I have two critiques – the first is that it is not world music, it is definitely Western classical music. The second is there are only two female composers mentioned. It does mention Egypt and the fact that in Hieroglyphics there are people playing flutes, but no printed music was left, so they just kind of skip over it. It’s like, okay, this was in Egypt and now we’re going to Western Europe, and that’s where they focus. They do have some American composers starting on disk three, so it’s late when America gets into the story.

There is a booklet that does include all of the titles of the pieces played and the composers, along with who’s playing them, it is not all the same orchestra or soloists. There are a lot of individual people playing and different orchestras. The booklet also includes a timeline that shows where the music falls in terms of world history, so you can learn a little bit about world history, the CDs include very brief notations of world history as well.

Disc four is also a CD rom as well as a musical CD. The CD rom includes how to read music. And it actually is fairly in depth on how to read music, it talks about tone, the staffs, and the name of the letters and how that all works. Also, there’s pictures of composers, there’s world flags and National Anthems, a dictionary of musical terms, quizzes and games, and a text version of the Story of Classical Music, if you want to follow along. But you don’t need to use the CD Rom to enjoy the CDs.

I will play a brief introduction from the very beginning of the CD.

Narrator: This is the story of classical music. Have you ever imagined what the world would be like if we had no music at all, listen… quiet, isn’t it. But don’t worry. Our story. Isn’t quiet at all. It’s filled with the most beautiful and exciting sounds ever made, and it will be finding out all about the people behind me sounds and about some of the greatest pieces of classical music ever written.

Music like this: (Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 plays briefly)

And this: (Britten: The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra plays briefly)

And this: (Offenbach: Can-Can from Orpheus in the Underworld plays briefly)

And even this: (Saint-Saëns: The Carnival of the Animals (Fossils) plays briefly)

Amy: What I love about it too, is that it’s a sneaky way to learn things without really focusing on that, rote learning. And it’s just a fun and great introduction to all kinds of classical music, that I think anybody from babies up through the very senior of us would enjoy.

The Story of Classical Music is available as a:

Laura: [00:09:47] it sounds like a lot of fun. All right, Cara.

Cara: [00:09:50] My next pick is maybe even more fantastical, so Skunk and Badger is animal fantasy, and then I chose The Trials of Morrigan Crow, which is part of the Nevermoor series. It’s definitely a Harry Potter read-alike, so if you’ve gone through all the Harry Potter, like Amy mentioned, by the incomparable Jim Dale, and even if you’ve read through or listened to all of the Series of Unfortunate Events; I know that’s another huge series.

One of my absolute favorite audiobook narrators of all time, Tim Curry, does a lot of those. And I mean, I can listen to him read the phone book, but he’s amazing. Some of them are read by Lemony Snicket himself. So that’s kind of interesting where you’ve got the author doing some of them and then a famous actor doing some of them.

So if you’ve listened to all those or read all those, I would recommend Nevermoor next. There’s quite a few books in this series. I’m not sure if it’s finished yet or not. But the first one is, you know, setting the stage for this world. So Morrigan Crow is a cursed child. She was born on Eventide, which is the unluckiest day of the year.

And it means that at the next Eventide, when she turns, it’s supposed to be, when she turns 12, she’ll die at midnight. But it ends up that it was an 11-year Eventide. So she finds out that she’s going to die right away. She’s shocked because everybody thought it was going to be 12 years. But this guy, Jupiter North, kind of swoops in and saves her.

So he takes her to Nevermoor, which is a magical city where she doesn’t have to worry about dying. She just has to go through four trials to be admitted into the Wundrous Society, which is their prestigious group that she wants to join. So she either has to try to navigate that or go back to her real life where she’s destined to die. So fairly easy choice. The trials are not easy though. The other kids that are involved all have special skills. She doesn’t have one, or at least she doesn’t know that she has one. So she finds it pretty difficult, but I really enjoyed this one. I know there’s been kind of a lot of Harry Potter readalikes.

I feel like this one is different enough that you don’t really feel like she’s trying to just play off of Harry Potter’s success. So it’s by Jessica Townsend and then the books are read by Gemma Whelan. I had never listened to anything by her, but I thought she was really great. Anything with an accent, I’m pretty much there. So she’s got an accent. I really enjoyed how she read it. It’s 11 hours long. So I think it would be good if you’re driving somewhere far away, like a trip to the beach or something like that. But I think it’s worth the listen. So this is when she finds out that Jupiter is interested in bringing her to Nevermoor.

Narrator: [00:12:31] “But there was a noise. A very small noise that was barely a noise – like a tiny whisper or rush of air. She flicked on her lamp and the room flooded with light.

It was empty. Morrigan’s heartbeat quickened. She jumped up and looked around, under the bed, threw open the wardrobe – nothing.

No. Not nothing. Something.

A small white rectangle stood out against the dark wooden floorboards. Someone had slipped an envelope under her door. She picked it up and creaked the door open to peek into the hallway outside. There was nobody there.

On the envelope, someone had written untidily in thick black ink: Jupiter North of the Wundrous Society wishes to present his bid for Miss Morrigan Crow. Again.”

Cara: [00:13:28] That’s Nevermoor, the first book in the series.

Laura: [00:13:32] I love that she does have a delightful accent.

Cara: [00:13:35] Yep.

Trials of Morrigan Crow is available as a:

Laura: [00:13:37] All right, Amy.

Amy: [00:13:38] My next one is also fantastical. It is the Unicorn Rescue Society. And the audiobook is comprised of books one and two. Book one is called the Creature of the Pines and book two is called the Basque dragon.

And it’s a continuation story, obviously, there are five books/audiobooks total. They’re available as audio books through overdrive. But books one and two are combined on a CD at the library.

The Creature of the Pine starts with Elliot Eisner’s first day at his new school and it’s a field trip day (which I can’t imagine trying to start school and meet new friends while being on a field trip at the same time). His class is going to the pine barrens of New Jersey. The school is located in New Jersey too. Elliot is walking down the aisle of the bus, trying to find a seat where somebody looks friendly and approachable, but not too weird, not too different, so that he could actually try and survive his first day of school. He sits down next to Uchenna Devereaux, and they quickly start talking to each other about the field trip and about school, and as it turns out, Uchenna was a new student last year, so she kind of understands his plight.

The field trip is led by Professor Fauna, who supposedly teaches social studies at the school, but he’s also rumored to have a torture chamber in the basement of the school, there is a lot of mystery about him. Most of the kids are scared of him as well.

Kind of the way I imagine Count Olaf in Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events, sort of overbearing and frightening, but you find out later that he’s not quite so frightening as he appears.

Once at the Pine Barrens, Uchenna goes off the path to investigate some strange noises that she hears and a few moments later, she screams. Then Elliot decides that he has to save his new friend because you know, he’s not going to just let her peril. He follows her off the path and then they see a strange blue creature with wings, tied up in a balloon string. They rescue him and as it turns out the creature also likes Elliot’s granola bars that his mom and grandma make.

When they catch up with the class they don’t mention that they found this new creature. The class meets with the caretaker of the Pine Barrens, and she mentions a mythical creature said to live in the area, a Jersey Devil, a blue creature the size of a deer with wings.

Uchenna and Elliot realize that they’ve seen and saved a Jersey Devil. Later, this same devil decides that he’s still hungry. He tries to get some more Granola bars by sneaking into their backpack. The story continues at a park and that’s where Professor Fauna assists Uchenna and Elliot. And the question is, is can they keep the Jersey devil safe? Can they find him again once he’s in the park, because the Jersey Devil, has the ability to go invisible in the shade? Also, why are there so many mysteries around Professor Fauna and why does he seem to act so strangely?

Book two, The Basque Dragon, is Elliot’s second day of school. They do survive the first book and that first day. On Elliot’s second day of school, Uchenna and Elliot are recruited as assistant members of the Unicorn Rescue Society by Professor Fauna, to fly to the Basque region of Spain, after school, to try and save a dragon.

They’re sort of thrown into the Rescue Society and as you’re listening, you’ll learn who stole the dragon, why they stole the dragon, and some dragon history and information on the Basque region as well. The question is, will Professor Fauna Elliott and Uchenna return to New Jersey before dinner, and will it be noticed that they are missing?

The narrator does a great, great job of creating distinct voices for each character which is really helpful as there are the three main characters in each of these stories and many minor characters.

I forgot to mention the books were written by Adam Gidwitz and it’s read by January LeVoy. It was published in 2018, it is four disks and it’s about four hours and 45 minutes, almost five hours, but it is book one and book two, and they’re two separate books. So you could easily listen to one and then listen to the other. Each one starts with the same letter of introduction, which I’m going to play now.

Narrator: [00:00:00] Unicorns are real.

Or at least, I think they are.

Dragons are definitely real. I have seen them. Chupacabras exist, too. Also Sasquatch. And mermaids – though they are not what you think.

But back to unicorns. When I, Professor Mito Fauna, was a young man, I lived in the foothills of Peru. One day, there were rumors in my town of a unicorn in danger, far up in the mountains. At that instant I founded the Unicorn Rescue Society – I was the only member –  and set off to save the unicorn. When I finally located it, though, I saw that it was not a unicorn, but rather a qarqacha, the legendary two-headed llama of the Andes. I was very slightly disappointed. I rescued it anyway, of course.

Now, many years later, there are members of the Unicorn Rescue Society all around the world. We are sworn to protect all the creatures of myth and legend. Including unicorns! If we ever find them! Which I’m sure we will!

But our enemies are powerful and ruthless, and we are in desperate need of help. Help from someone brave and kind and curious, and brave. (Yes, I said “brave” twice. It’s important.)

Will you help us? Will you risk your very life to protect the world’s mythical creatures?

Will you join the Unicorn Rescue Society?

I hope so. The creatures need you.

Defende Fabulosa! Protege Mythica!

Professor Mito Fauna, DVM, PhD EdD, et cetera.

Amy: [00:02:11] There is a lot of adventure in both of the stories. It is great for holding everyone’s attention, even adults. Nothing is too scary in either book and it would be enjoyed by anybody age five and above.

Laura: [00:02:30] Sounds great.

Amy: [00:02:31] It is.

Cara: [00:02:32] Yeah. I like the sound of that one. That was one that was on my list, one I never got around to. Is that one of those series where each book is by a different author?

Amy: [00:02:47] The first one is written by Adam Gidwitz. The second one is Adam Gidwitz and Jesse Casey. Adam Gidwitz writes all of them, though some may have co-authors.

The Unicorn Rescue Society is available as a:

Cara: [00:02:59] well, speaking of not too scary, my next one is a little bit scary. So if you have younger kids, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Probably grades three to four and up, or if your kids really like scary stuff, it’s not too scary. And it’s also pretty funny. It’s called demon dentist. It’s by David Walliams. Who is a British comedian. The grownups might know him from little Britain or other, you know, I think he does some stand-up, but he also writes children’s books and he does a fantastic job.

And then he reads the audio book. So I’m kind of fascinated by authors that read  their own books as the audio book. the one that I mentioned earlier where I didn’t like it, it was read by the author and I don’t know, it’s like maybe she just pushed to read her own story, but she was not a good narrator.

But then you have people like role doll who have read their own works, which I just loved listening to Charlie and the chocolate factory. Arnold Lobell does the frog and toad books. So there are a lot of good ones where the author does their own work and they do it justice. So his book is in the book it’s paired with illustrations.

It’s the famous British illustrator, Tony Ross. And there are a lot of illustrations. So this is another good one to pair with the, you know, the book with the audio.

So the premise is that the main character’s name is Alfie and he hates going to the dentist after he had a terrible experience quite a few years ago.

So he has awful teeth and his social workers trying to force him to go to the dentist. And there’s a new dentist in town. Her name is miss root and she lives at school and she gives all the kids toothpastes and candy. So it seems like there’s something fishy going on with a new dentist. Around the same time kids that are losing teeth and putting them under their pillows for the tooth fairy, instead of finding money, they’re finding weird creepy crawly, things like bugs and eyeballs and not nice thing.

So Althea and his friend Gabs are trying to investigate what’s going on in town. But kind of the whole story is leading up to what’s going to happen when Alfie ends up in the dentist chair. So this is the prologue of the book. It is definitely scary. Like you would kind of expect  but the rest of the book is pretty funny.

I promise. So this is the prologue.

Narrator: [00:05:21] Darkness said come to the town. Strange things were happening in the dead of night. Children would put a tooth under their pillow at bedtime excitedly waiting for the tooth fairy to leave a coin. In the morning, they would wake up to find something unspeakable under there, a dead slot alive spider hundreds, and hundreds of ear weeks, creeping and crawling beneath their pillow or worse much.

Worse someone or something have come into their bedrooms in the hours of darkness snatched the tooth after blood curdling calling card behind evil was at work, but who or what was behind it? How could they sneak into children’s bedrooms without being seen? And what could they possibly want? With all those teeth.

Cara: [00:06:26] So that’s Demon Dentist. I have books out that at schools and kids come in and they’re like, I want the book.  Yes, he’s great.

Demon Dentist is available as a:

Laura: [00:06:37] All right, Amy, you’re up.

Amy: [00:06:38] My last one is also for an older audience, a fourth grade and up listener. It is the Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo. Graeme Malcolm reads it. And it was published in 2003. It is four discs long and about three and a half hours.

It’s the story of Despereaux Tilling, a mouse who lives in a castle and loves music and stories. One evening he does the unthinkable for a mouse and he falls in love with the princess, who lives in the castle, named Pea. And he talks to humans, this leads to the disastrous situation where Despereaux is led away to the dungeon to be fed to the rats. This is also the story of a rat name, Roscuro, who lives in the dungeon. He only wants to live in the light because he’s tired of living in the pitch, black darkness of the dungeon.

And this dungeon has no light. The dungeon keeper has a rope tied around him, which is how he finds his way through the dungeon. And so Roscuro, who is one of the rats down there, has seen the light upstairs when a prisoner comes and he’s decided he wants to live in the light.

Also, it is the story of Miggery Sow, who is a servant girl, was sold by her father for a red tablecloth and a cigarette. Her owner does not treat her well, he boxes her ears (she is described as having cauliflower ears because she’s hit in the head so many times) and she’s hard of hearing. Miggery has a dream of being a princess. The story intertwines all of those stories along with a few more, you meet Miggery’s father, you meet the Dungeon master, you meet Pea the princess and all of those stories intertwine.

It is in the end a heartwarming story. But there is a lot of adventure and it is definitely for an older audience. There’s a little bit of a discussion about abuse, there’s also death and torture, and you are dealing with a dungeon.  For the younger audience, it might be a little frightful. It would definitely hold everyone’s attention, fourth grade and up in a car for a trip and there is nothing gory or violent in the story. It’s just, you know, a little bit heavier themed.

And I have a little bit of the introduction of Despereaux.

Narrator: [00:09:07] The April sun, weak but determined, shone through a castle window and from there squeezed itself through a small hole in the wall and placed one golden finger on the little mouse

The other older mice children gathered around to stare at Despereaux.

“His ears are too big,” said his sister Merlot. “Those are the biggest ears I’ve ever seen.”

“Look,” said a brother named Furlough, “his eyes are open. Pa, his eyes are open. They shouldn’t be open.”

It is true. Despereaux’s eyes should not have been open. But they were. He was staring at the sun reflecting off his mother’s mirror. The light was shining onto the ceiling in an oval of brilliance, and he was smiling up at the sight.

“There’s something wrong with him,” said the father. “leave him alone.”

Despereaux’s brothers and sisters stepped back, away from the new mouse.

“This is the last,” proclaimed Antoinette from her bed. “I will have no more mice babies. They are such the disappointment. They are hard on my beauty. They ruin, for me, my looks. This is the last one. No more.”

“The last one,” said the father. “And he’ll be dead soon.”

Laura: [00:10:19] How fun is that?

Amy: [00:10:20] Exactly

Cara: [00:10:21] Oh, I love Kate DiCamillo. She’s one of my favorites.

Amy: [00:10:25] It’s such a great story. It’s so well told. It’s so well written, as all of her books are. She’s definitely one of my favorites too.

Tale of Despereaux is available as a:

Laura: [00:10:33] Thank you both for sharing some amazing audiobooks for kids. I know I’m going to be visiting the catalog to check some of those out. And just a reminder as well to all of our watchers and listeners that they can find the show notes on clermontlibrary.org and links to all of them the audiobooks will be there.

So thank you to the two of you. This is always so much fun. And I love hearing about all the great books and audiobooks you suggest. Thank you to our viewers. Remember to follow Clermont Library on YouTube so you get all of our book talks plus additional great library content. And to our listeners, remember to subscribe to the Booklovers Podcast. Thanks, everybody. Happy reading.

The post Podcast: Our Favorite Audiobooks for Kids appeared first on Clermont Library.