My 2023: Favourite Audiobooks

I have listened to quite a lot of audiobooks this year – probably about half of my reading total. They have largely been excellent, with one notable exception which I think I may mention at the end for the lols.

I hate choosing favourite books, and in the space of reading down my list of contenders I have changed my top three at least four times.

So let’s see which ones make the list as I type…

Under The Whispering Door by T J Klune (Narrated by Kirt Graves)

Blurb: When a reaper comes to collect Wallace Price from his own funeral, Wallace suspects he really might be dead. 

Instead of leading him directly to the afterlife, the reaper takes him to a small village. On the outskirts, off the path through the woods, tucked between mountains, is a particular tea shop, run by a man named Hugo.

Hugo is the tea shop’s owner to locals and the ferryman to souls who need to cross over. But Wallace isn’t ready to abandon the life he barely lived. With Hugo’s help he finally starts to learn about all the things he missed in life. 

When the Manager, a curious and powerful being, arrives at the tea shop and gives Wallace one week to cross over, Wallace sets about living a lifetime in seven days. 

By turns heartwarming and heartbreaking, this absorbing tale of grief and hope is told with TJ Klune’s signature warmth, humour, and extraordinary empathy.

That last line of the blurb says it all really – I laughed, I cried, I laughed some more, and then I utterly bawled my eyes out yet again.

I actually had to pull over into a lay-by when I was driving and listening to it one time, because I could just tell it was building up to a moment that was going to break me and I didn’t want to either a) lose some of the atmosphere and feeling to focussing on the road, or b) not be able to see because I was crying so hard.

I love love love TJ Klune’s writing, he is a genius when it comes to exploring the best (and worst) of human nature and his books are always emotional rollercoasters, but they leave you with the overall feeling of having had a big, warm hug.

*

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire (Narrated by Amber Benson)

Blurb: Meet Roger. Skilled with words, languages come easily to him. He instinctively understands how the world works through the power of story. 

Meet Dodger, his twin. Numbers are her world, her obsession, her everything. All she understands, she does so through the power of math.

Roger and Dodger aren’t exactly human, though they don’t realise it. They aren’t exactly gods, either. Not entirely. Not yet.

Meet Reed, skilled in the alchemical arts like his progenitor before him. Reed created Dodger and her brother. He’s not their father. Not quite. But he has a plan: to raise the twins to the highest power, to ascend with them and claim their authority as his own.

Godhood is attainable. Pray it isn’t attained.

It is always a pretty safe bet that I am going to love a book that Seanan McGuire has written (under any of her pen names – remember my love of Mira Grant? Yeah, that’s Seanan.) but I particularly loved this one.

It was multilayered and whimsical, quite dark but also full of lighter moments and it has haunted me ever since I listened to it. (In a good way!)

*

Legends & Lattes by Travis Balder

Blurb: High Fantasy with a double-shot of self-reinvention

Worn out after decades of packing steel and raising hell, Viv the orc barbarian cashes out of the warrior’s life with one final score. A forgotten legend, a fabled artifact, and an unreasonable amount of hope lead her to the streets of Thune, where she plans to open the first coffee shop the city has ever seen.

However, her dreams of a fresh start pulling shots instead of swinging swords are hardly a sure bet. Old frenemies and Thune’s shady underbelly may just upset her plans. To finally build something that will last, Viv will need some new partners and a different kind of resolve.

A hot cup of fantasy slice-of-life with a dollop of romantic froth. 

This one was SO CUTE! Honestly, it ticked all my D&D/fantasy boxes whilst also being super-low stakes, low peril, low drama, cute and fluffy romance. There were orcs and succubi, rogues and treasure, swords, fire… and entire sections of characters baking cinnamon rolls and brewing coffee.

The most feel good story I have read in ages, Legends and Lattes was a little dose of sunshine that I didn’t know I needed, but definitely did.

*

I highly recommend all of the above books, in whatever format you prefer.

I do not, however, recommend the following book in any format because… honestly I have absolutely no idea what the point of it even was.

The book in question was Normal People by Sally Rooney which had been recommended to me multiple times, raved about by the internet, and has even been adapted for the screen – all of which implied that it was maybe going to be at the very least ‘pretty good’.

Blurb:

Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life changing begins.

A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Normal People is the story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find that they can’t.

My summary: Two not-particularly-interesting-absolutely normal people who are both basically the same personality just one is rich and one isn’t, have an on-off relationship through college & university. Nothing exciting happens, it’s set in perfectly normal Dublin in perfectly normal twenty-tens, and I was genuinely surprised when it ended because I was still waiting for the character building to finish and the story to start.

No, really. I said ‘wait, what?!’ out loud and rewound it five minutes because I thought I’d missed something/accidentally skipped a chunk of book. It just seemed to… stop. They were having a conversation, there was a hint of something maybe interesting happening, and then bam! – Random man saying ‘Audible hopes you enjoyed this programme.’ Book over.

If I hadn’t listened to it when stuck in my bedroom isolating with Covid, I would want the seven and a half hours of my life back. As it is, I had nothing better to be doing so it’s fine. I suppose.

I would never have finished it if it was a physical copy though – it may well have ended up thrown across the room in frustration.

If you enjoy a book with zero plot, mostly unlikable characters, and minimal world building, then this one is for you.

It was not for me.