Author: Vanessa Diaz

Awww yeah, the conclusion to Olivia Waite’s Feminine Pursuits series is here! After losing their piano shop to a con man in London, Sophie and her family move to a new town to start anew. Sophie meets stunning beauty Madeline Crewe and immediately suspects the silk-weaver of being up to no good—no one’s that good looking without having something to hide, surely! As for Maddie, she just needs oooone more big score to finally fund the weaver’s union. The last thing she needs is a nosy piano teacher poking around in other peoples business. Only one thing left to do: seduce her into the cause. Is it time for a body roll? I think it’s time for a body roll. (romance)

Read by Morag Sims (Pride and Premeditation by Tirzah Price, The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley)

Familia, I have been a big ol’ slacking slacker who slacks about including poetry audiobooks this year! This one was brought to my attention and I just couldn’t look away. Author Therese Estacion survived a rare infection that almost killed her, but not without losing both her legs below the knees, several fingers, and her reproductive organs. With elements of Filipino horror and folk tales, Estacion pulls from stories of ogres, mermen, and gnomes straight from Filipino children’s nightmares and weaves them in with imaginings from the hospital room where she spent months in recovery. This promises to be a unique work of poetry and an immersive, if haunting, listening experience. (poetry)

Read by the author

The follow up to The Silent Patient sorta feels like if The Secret History were a psychological thriller set in Cambridge instead of New England, but with less outright elitism and really scary rich people (this is a gross oversimplification, just trying to communicate some of the vibes and themes). Mariana is a troubled therapist grieving the loss of her husband. Her niece is a student at Cambridge, where Mariana once studied herself, and she’s bereft when her friend’s dead body is found. That friend was a member of a secret society known as The Maidens, a group of young female students who fawn over Greek tragedy professor Edward Fosca in most icky fashion. When other members of The Maidens start turning up dead, Mariana knows it’s the untouchable Fosca who’s done it. She’ll stop at nothing to prove it, and doing so will mean confronting some buried memories and unprocessed trauma. (mystery/thriller)

Read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell) and Louise Brealey (The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson)

Yeah, I’m including a second thriller because LAWD this sound like a ride! Oliver is a recovering addict who finally has everything he wanted: sobriety and stability, including his wealthy trauma surgeon partner Nathan. He knows he has no business going to a gay bath house, and even less business following a complete stranger into a private room therein. Just like that, a line is crossed, one Nathan can never ever know about. But then! Things go horribly wrong and Oliver barely escapes with his life. It’s bad, it’s very bad, and what to tell Nathan? That’s when Oliver falls back on old habits: he lies. Just in reading the description, I was saying aloud, “Nooooooo don’t do iiiiiitttt!” This sounds so thrilling and twisty. (thriller)

Read by Michael Crouch (They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera) and Daniel Henning (The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune)

Can we talk about that gorgeous cover? The power! Voya has long awaited her Calling, the trial all witches must go through before they come into their powers. Then the unthinkable happens—she fails. When an ancestor offers Voya an unprecedented second chance at the Calling, the price for redemption is steep: it will mean sacrificing her first love—who she’ll have to find and fall for first—and her entire family will lose their magic if she fails once again. This is also the first in a series, can’t wait to dive in. (YA fantasy)

Read by Joniece Abbott-Pratt (Legendborn by Tracy Deonn, The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris)

You may hear “witch trials” and think exclusively of Salem, but thousands upon thousands of women died as a result of witch hunts all over Europe, too. This historical novel begins in the German duchy of Württemberg in 1618 right as the plague is spreading and The Thirty Years War has begun. When illiterate widow Katharina is accused of being a witch by a deranged woman in their small town, Katharina’s scientist son must use his talents to defend his mother against the hysteria. Facing financial ruin, torture, and possible execution, Katharina tells her side of the story to her neighbor and friend Simon, a reclusive widower with dangerous secrets of his own. (historical fiction)

Read by Natasha Soudek (The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, The Regional Office Is Under Attack! by Manuel Gonzales)

Socialite Jewel Van Hanen is known for her super popular video-sharing app, Golden Rule. After a mysterious year-long hiatus from the app, she surprises everyone again when she comes back with a big announcement: she’s inviting six Golden Rule users on an all-expenses-paid getaway at her private estate and calling it the Golden Weekend. When the invitees get to Jewel’s estate, she hits them with another announcement. They’re going to play a game she’s calling The Cruelest Jewel, an elaborate escape-room style situation wherein the players must complete a series of tasks for a chance at being one of two winners of $500,000. Let the games begin! (contemporary YA)

Read by Joniece Abbott-Pratt (The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris, Legendborn by Tracy Deonn, Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko)

Malini is a princess held captive in a decaying temple by her despotic, woman-hating brother. Priya is a maidservant and survivor of a temple massacre whose hiding a secret about her true nature. When Malini witnesses the terrifying magic that Priya possesses, she sees not only a woman she could love, but way to overthrow her brother. (fantasy)

Read by Shiromi Arserio (Thorn by Intisar Khanani, Unnatural Magic by C.M. Waggoner)

Danielle Henderson’s childhood was unconventional. At age 10, she was abandoned by a mom who chose her abusive, drug-addict boyfriend over her daughter, leaving Danielle to be raised by grandparents who thought their child-rearing days were far behind them. She grew up Back, weird, and uncool in a predominantly white neighborhood in upstate New York, the perfect storm of factors for an identity crisis. “Under the eye-rolling, foul-mouthed, loving tutelage of her uncompromising grandmother – and the horror movies she obsessively watched – Danielle grew into a tall, awkward, Sassy-loving teenager who wore black eyeliner as lipstick and was struggling with the aftermath of her mother’s choices.” But her grandmother also instilled in her a faith in her abilities, one she’d draw from to go on and save herself. (memoir)

Read by the author

“What if Dear Abby was a Mexican man on Grindr?” This was the question that made me snort-laugh during a recent episode of Keep It! The podcast hosts interviewed author JP Brammer, the self-described “Chicano Carrie Bradshaw” of his generation. The first time someone called him “Papi” was on the popular gay hookup app Grindr. It was maaaaybe fine at first, but it kept happening over and over and over again (and as a Latina who’s been called Mami by non-Latinx men more times than I can count, I am triggered!). The radicalized moniker and all the messiness around it became the inspiration for his wildly popular advice column, named… you guessed it, Hola Papi! This book sounds like a hilarious and moving story about JP’s experience growing up biracial and closeted in America’s heartland.

Read by the author

I was feeling super impatient the other day as I waited for my Libby holds to come in and started looking up available audiobooks like I sometimes do. This one from my TBR popped up and it was the perfect twisty weekend listen.

At the start of the book, Jules is living at a resort in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico when a strange interaction with a fellow guest leaves her rattled. That’s when we learn that Jules is in hiding, and now it seems she’s been found and must go on the run again. The book then progresses backwards with each chapter, revealing bits of her tragic childhood and eventual friendship with the rich and glamorous Imogen, who by the way has mysteriously gone missing. The further back the story goes, the more clear it becomes that we don’t really know anything about Jules or Imogen at all.

I “figured it out” pretty quickly, if that’s even the best way to describe this mystery, one of those thrilling reads that’s less about a whodunnit and more about the why. You’ll be confused for a good part of the book, but not in a bad way. Every chapter is a new revelation and a whole new batch of what-the-f*ckery. The narration by Rebecca Soler (Caraval by Stephanie Garber, The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert) was taught and tense, never giving more away than was called for in the moment. I listened this one on a hike and found my pace quickening during the especially tense parts. So fun!

If you’re looking for a mystery with a less traditional structure, complex characters, and explorations of women’s relationships and ambition, this one’s for you.

Cynical 23-year-old August has just moved to New York City with a very firm “magical love stories don’t exist” mentality. Then she meets a dazzling, edgy, and mysterious woman named Jane on the train and BOOM, instant crush. Jane soon becomes the best part of August’s day, until she discovers a pretty big problem: Jane doesn’t just look and dress like an old school punk rocker: she literally IS from the 70s. August will have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help June get back where she belongs. (romance)

Read by Natalie Naudus (The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo, a new queer retelling of Gatsby!)

Four years ago, Addie and Dylan fell in love under the Provence sun. He was a wealthy Oxford student vacationing at their friend Cherry’s gorgeous villa and she a wild-child working there as a caretaker for the summer. They were a perfect match…until they weren’t. Now their lives have collided most comically: on their way to Cherry’s wedding, Dylan and Addie’s cars are involved in a crash. With one car wrecked and time a’ticking, Addie and her sister Deb find themselves begrudgingly agree to drive Dylan and his best friend Marcus to the rural Scotland wedding. Things so super smoothly, right? Wrong. Hilarious! But so, so wrong. (romance, rom-com)

(tw: sexual assault, non-graphic)

Read by Eleanor Tomlinson (One Day in December by Josie Silver) and Josh Dylan (Saturdays at Noon by Rachel Marks)

Ashley C. Ford is an American writer, podcaster and educator and this is her much-anticipated memoir. “Through poverty, adolescence, and a fraught relationship with her mother, Ashley Ford wishes she could turn to her father for hope and encouragement. There are just a few problems: he’s in prison, and she doesn’t know what he did to end up there.” Ford shares her deeply personal story with readers, exposing how isolating a childhood growing up a poor with a family fragmented by incarceration can be. This promises to be an impactful, if heartbreaking, read. (memoir)

This audiobook is read by the author and includes a bonus conversation with Clint Smith—who also has a new book out this week!

It’s August 1983 in Malibu. The four Rivas siblings are the offspring of legendary singer Mick Riva. There’s Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer and the other a famed photographer; and their baby sister, Kit. Together the siblings command a Kardashian-esque fascination the world over. Nina is getting ready to throw her annual end-of-summer party; but over the course of 24 hours, all of their lives will change forever. (historical fiction)

Read by Julia Whelan (People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid)

Many of you may know writer and poet Clint Smith’s wonderful work from The Atlantic. This is his debut work of nonfiction, a “deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history.” He starts with his hometown of New Orleans and takes readers on a tour of moments and landmarks that tell an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping this nation. I am going to take my time with this one. (history)

Read by the author

This debut is the first in a new historical mystery series set during the Harlem Renaissance, so I’m already sold. Louise is a young Black woman who works at a café by day and at Harlem’s hottest speakeasy by night. When a girl turns up dead in front of the café—the third local Black girl to turn up dead in the past few weeks—Louise is forced to confront a past she’s tried so hard to run from. When an altercation with a cop gets her arrested, Louise is given an ultimatum: she can help the police catch the killer or wind up in a jail cell. Not really much of a choice, is there? Louise will have to go toe-to-toe with a murderer bent on taking more lives, possibly her own… (mystery)

Read by Shayna Small (The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna)

I haven’t been great about reading short stories lately and wanted to change that, so I borrowed this audiobook from Libby after no less than seven friends commended it (LOL: one of them told me to read “this amazing audiobook, I think it’s called Women Who Go to Church?). I told myself I’d listen to one story every night during my skincare routine. Theeeeen I liked it so much that I finished it in a day.

The collection of nine stories is described as exploring “the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good.” I couldn’t have put that better myself if I tried. There’s the story of two 40-year-old lifelong friends whose relationship turned sexual years ago; on New Year’s Eye 1999, the narrator suggests to her friend that they could be more than occasional lovers, but the friend stills dream of life as a “good Christian woman” and rebuffs her with horrified disgust. In another stories, two women have fled their hometown in the south to live freely and safely as a same-sex couple. But one of the women grapples with the concept of home, of family, of longing for the people and places that made you even though they may no longer be good for you. There’s another story of a teenage girl reckoning with her mother’s cold, abusive behavior and years-long affair with their pastor. She struggles to understand who or what God really is, and what it means to be a god-fearing person at all.

The stories are read with such warmth and tenderness by Janina Edwards (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton, The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory). She puts so much heart into each narrative, like she’s reading from her own diary and not a collection of short fiction. On a personal level, I related sooo hard to the stories where characters examined their relationship with faith and religion with new eyes. I cried in my car at least twice as these fake people poured their hearts out and shared the softest parts of their conflicted souls.

This is one of the best story collections I’ve read in years and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

I despise the word “guncle” (it reminds me of barnacle? and knuckle?), but I love Steven Rowley and the premise of this book. Patrick, or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP for short, LOL) loves his niece and nephew. But when the kids lose their mother tragically and their father is faced with a major health crisis, Patrick finds himself taking on the role of primary guardian. Having the kids round the clock, it turns out, is just a touch more demanding than having them over for weeklong visits, and his life in Palm Springs as a gay man with a stalled acting career isn’t exactly suited to the lives of two small children. As Patrick stumbles his way through this new set of responsibilities, he learns that sometimes, “even being larger than life means you’re unfailingly human.” (fiction)

Read by the author. I was totally expecting Michael Urie to read this since he narrated both of Rowley’s last books (Lily and the Octopus and The Editor), but I’m really digging the sample I just listened to!

Recent computer science grad Julia Lerner was living in Moscow in 2006 when she was recruited by Russia’s largest intelligence agency. Now she’s the COO of Tangerine, a giant Silicon Valley tech company, where she steadily funnels intelligence back to the motherland. When Alice, a low-level Tangerine employee, discovers a loophole in the company’s security settings during a routine performance check, she has the sneaking suspicion that Julia herself is abusing that loophole. The closer Alice gets to Julia, the more Julia questions her loyalties to Mother Russia. (fiction, spy thriller)

Read by Lauren Fortgang (Shadow and Bone and I believe all the books in the Grishaverse by Leigh Bardugo, Pretty Things by Janelle Brown)

Everyone at school likes popular, easy going Hani Khan. But when she comes out to her friends as bisexual, they tell her she can’t be bi since she’s only dated guys. Hurt and invalidated, Hani panics and blurts out that she’s actually in a relationship with Ishu Dey, a girl (take that!) her friends absolutely hate. But that’s a lie! Overachieving Ishu is nothing like Hani, but she does think being more popular could help her become head girl and increase her chances of getting into college. She agrees to help Hani and go along with this fake relationship thing, but in a twist absolutely no one on this earth saw coming—no one I say!—they start developing real feelings for each other. (YA rom-com)

Embarrassing Confession Time: For years I thought “head boy” and “head girl” were made-up roles that only existed at Hogwarts. When I heard a kid say he’d made head boy while visiting England a few years ago, I thought to myself, “Aww, bless him.”

Read by Reena Dutt (The Shape of Thunder by Jasmine Warga) and Shubhangi Karmakar. The sample of this is so cute, I can’t stand it!

This second Installment in the Runaway Royals series is a queer Anastasia retelling! Makeda Hicks has just lost both her job and her girlfriend, so she’s in no mood to rehash the story of her grandmother’s infamous fling with a runaway prince from Ibarania. Then the sleek and sexy investigator tasked with searching for that missing heir crashes into Makeda’s life and she finds herself singing a different tune (yep, you guessed it: insert body roll here). “When a threat to her grandmother’s livelihood pushes Makeda to agree to return to Ibarania, Bez takes her on a transatlantic adventure with a crew of lovable weirdos, a fake marriage, and one-bed hijinks on the high seas.” (romance)

Read by Karen Chilton (Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon), whom Alyssa Cole fans will recognize from the books in both the Runaway Royals and the Reluctant Royals series as well as several of her standalone romance).

Meddelin Chan has just accidentally killed her blind date, as one does when said date gets all gross and gropey and doesn’t get that no means no so you have to taser his ass while he’s driving. Meddy’s meddlesome mother calls her even more meddlesome aunties to help get rid of the body, then the corpse accidentally ends up in a cake cooler en route to the billionaire California coast wedding that the Chan women, who run a family wedding business, are working. Things go from bad to OH SH*T worse when Meddy’s ex, the one who got away, makes a surprise appearance at the wedding. What could possibly go wrong?

I laughed so hard while listening that I had to stop applying my makeup and send a voice note to Book Riot Contributing Editor Nusrah Javed (who raved about the book on Read or Dead) to let her know what she’d done to me. The second chance romance plot line is adorable, and the “mystery” (which is obvs not a whodunnit so much as a “how are they going to fix this?!” situation) is both low-key stressful and hilarious to watch as one thing goes wrong after another. But its Meddy’s mom and aunties who steal the show, a hilarious group of Indonesian women whose love for each other is as fierce as the petty rivalries between them. As the descendant of immigrants myself, I cackled at the very relatable miscommunication that results from language barriers and stuff that just gets lost in translation, like Meddy having to explain to her mom that the guy she set her up with was not, indeed, offering to cook her dinner when he sent over a bunch of eggplant emojis, or that she had been catfished, not “goldfished.”

Risa Mei, an LA-based singer and actress fluent in Indonesian, brings every one of the women’s big personalities to life with her performance, from the aunties’ hilarious one-liners in their accented English to Meddy’s flummoxed inner dialogue. I sometimes forgot it was just one person reading all the roles!

This book was an absolute romp from start to finish. It’s a little corny and a little slapstick in the best possible way and a heartfelt love letter to the bond of family.

Izumi Tanaka, a young Japanese American woman in a mostly white northern California town, was raised by a single mom and no idea as to her father’s identity. Then she discovers that pops is none other than the Crown Prince of Japan, making Izzy is a literal princess. She travels to Japan to meet the dad she never known and get a taste of all that glitters, but the glamorous life may not be all it’s cracked up to be. This is pitched as The Princess Diaries meets Crazy Rich Asians, and that sounds like a super fun time. (young adult)

Read by Ali Ahn (To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han, Claudia and Mean Janine (The Baby-Sitters Club, Book 7) by Ann M. Martin, plus all the recent BSC recordings of books told from Claudia’s perspective)

Ophelia “Ophie” Harrison learned she could see ghosts on the night her Georgia home and her father were taken from her in an act of cruelty. She and her mother have started a new life in Pittsburgh where Ophie’s mother secured her a job as a maid at Daffodil Manor, the same manor house where she works for the wealthy Caruthers family already. The manor is haunted by memories, prejudices, and wrongdoings from days gone by, not to mention the ghosts that only Ophie can see. She befriends a ghost whose life was ended suddenly and unjustly, hoping she might be able to help… but that haunted old house may hold more secrets that she realizes. (middle grade)

Read by the g.o.a.t. Bahni Turpin (The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera)

How many ways do I already love this book!? One: It’s by Alexis Hall, whose Boyfriend Material was one of my favorite audiobooks of 2020. Two: It’s a rom-com set at a baking show. Three: it’s the first in a series called Winner Bakes All. Give it to me! The titular Rosaline is a single mom who dropped out of college to raise her daughter and is now teetering on the edge of financial ruin. But where there’s a whisk there’s a way (hehe), and Rosaline gets a shot at turning things around when she lands a spot on a beloved baking show. That prize money would be life-changing, but there’s more than just the usual baking challenges to contend with; fellow contestant and shy electrician Harry Dobson makes Rosaline question everything she believes about herself, her family, and what she wants out of life. (romance, romantic-comedy)

Read by Fiona Hardingham (An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir, We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal)

Fifty-one-year-old twins Jeanie and Julius live in isolation with their mother, Dot, in a cottage in the English countryside, secluded and sheltered from the modernizing world all their lives. When Dot dies and their landlord takes back the cottage, the twins are hit with a harsh dose of reality as they try to navigate life on their own. Julius is torn between his loyalty to Jeanie and a desire for independence while Jeanie struggles to find a job and and home for the two of them. “And just when it seems there might be a way forward, a series of startling secrets from their mother’s past come to the surface, forcing the twins to question who they are, and everything they know of their family’s history.” (fiction)

Read by Kim Bretton – I’m unfamiliar with Bretton’s work but I was sucked in by the sample enough to include it here in spite of being an Audible exclusive. I love her cadence, the slight rasp to the lower registers of her voice, and her lovely accent, of course.

This historical YA mystery had me hooked from start to finish! In mid-1400s Joseon, Korea, Min Hwani’s family has never been the same since she and her sister went missing as children and were later found unconscious in a nearby forest next to a grizzly murder scene.Years later, their detective father has learned that 13 other girls have disappeared in that same forest—and now it’s him that’s gone missing. He traveled to their hometown on the South Korean island of Jeju to investigate and hasn’t been seen since. Min Hwani takes it upon herself to find her father and get to the bottom of these awful and mysterious disappearances, but the secrets she unburies in the process suggest the answer could lie within her own buried memories.

Some of you may just be cooler than I am, but this book kept me guessing the entire time. It casts suspicion on just about every character convincingly with lots of deftly placed red herrings, but also in examining how some crimes aren’t just the result of one act of evil. The heart of the crime explores women’s lack of bodily agency at the time and the danger that results when obsessive protection and misogyny combine. Add this to your TBL, journey to Jeju, and enjoy this suspenseful, atmospheric mystery.

Funny story: I was debating whether to read this book or If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha next, and it turns out they’re both read by Sue Jean Kim! I absolutely loved this performance. Sue Jean Kim manages the suspense and tension really wonderfully and keeps each of the characters really distinct. I can’t wait to spend time with her work again soon.