Audiobook Review: Everything We Never Said by Sloan Harlow
Everything We Never Said
Author: Sloan Harlow
Narrators:
Steven Molony
Ferdelle Capistrano
Brittany Pressley
Published: May 28, 2024
Audiobook: 9 hours 14 minutes
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Listened: January 17-24 2025
Jessica’s Rating: 5 stars
Book Description:
What you don’t know can hurt you….
It’s been months since the accident that killed Ella’s best friend, Hayley, and Ella can’t stop blaming herself. Now, Ella is back at school, and everywhere she looks are reminders of her best friend—including Sawyer, Hayley’s boyfriend. Little by little, they grow closer, until Ella realizes something horrifying…
She’s in love with her dead best friend’s boyfriend.
Racked with guilt, Ella turns to Hayley’s journal, hoping she’ll find something in the pages that will make her feel better about what’s happening. Instead, she discovers that Sawyer has secrets of his own, and that his relationship with Hayley wasn’t as picture-perfect as it seemed.
Ella knows she should stay away but finds herself inextricably drawn to him—and scared of everything she never knew about him. Perhaps it’s his grief. Or maybe his desires, cut short by tragedy. Or could it be something twisted only Hayley knew about?
Jessica’s Review:
This one is my first five star read of 2025! It is a mix of my two top genres: YA and Suspense/Thriller. It’s more of a mix of those genres with some romance added in. It does get a slight bit steamy, just the YA version of 16/17-year-olds doing what 16/17-year-olds do.
We have two narrators: Ella and Sawyer. Ella and Hayley were best friends and Ella blames herself for Hayley’s death while Sawyer was Hayley’s boyfriend. We also get to know Hayley through diary entries. Over time Ella and Sawyer become close and then fall for each other. But over time Ella begins to read Hayley’s diary and begins to realize things may not have been what they seemed.
Grief and domestic abuse are themes in this novel and could be triggering to readers. The book takes place in Georgia and Harlow is also from the state so I enjoyed the many references being from Georgia myself! Authors from Georgia that mention locations in Georgia get a plus in my reading! It helps me identify with the characters more.
Everything is a fast-moving novel and yes, I figured out the ‘whodunnit’ 66% of the way in, but not the why this person did what they did. I still had a surprise when I got to that. But then…. To quote Samuel L Jackson, “hold on to your butts” the reader is in for another big twist later on!
I really enjoyed Everything We Never Said. There are three narrators to it. The guy narrator had to ‘grow’ on me. I didn’t really like him, but the two female narrators did great. Brittany Pressley narrated Hayley’s diary entries and did a fabulous job!
I will be looking into Harlow’s future novels!
Book Review: 25 Days by Per Jacobsen
25 Days
Author: Per Jacobsen
Published: November 1, 2024
Paperback: 360 Pages
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Read: December 1-25, 2024
Jessica’s Rating: 5 stars
Book Description:
Hoping to bring his family closer together, Adam Gray arranges a vacation in a remote cabin on a snowy mountain. Things take a dark turn, however, when someone starts leaving gifts in the Christmas stocking mounted on the barn door.
Each morning brings something new, and with every passing day, the contents become more terrifying. Soon, the family makes a spine-chilling they’ve been dragged into a deranged game of Secret Santa, and if they want to survive, they will have to fight.
Curry’s a little nervous with what’s going to happen next!
Jessica’s Review:
I wanted to get my review for 25 Days in before we got too far into 2025, and thus father away from Christmas. This book is unique! Jacobsen wrote it ‘advent style’: Where the reader reads one chapter a day from December 1st and ends the book on Christmas Day. But ultimately in his author’s note he says that you can read it in the way that you choose. This advent style is what drew many of his first-time readers to 25 Days, myself included! I read it advent style and completed the book on Christmas. I admit I did fall behind three times, but still caught up and ended it when I was supposed to. I am very proud of that fact!
Jacobsen also had a Facebook group where readers could talk with him and his publisher wife Sarah daily in regards to the book, and many just had to keep reading, they just couldn’t stay with ‘a chapter a day’. I will say this: the further along you get in the book, the harder it is to stay with the ‘chapter a day’, but I can proudly say I did it!
We have the Gray family on vacation and their little stay in an isolated cabin becomes a living nightmare! I became attached to each of the family members, but had no idea who was going to make it to the end of the novel, if anyone did.
25 Days is a horror novel and will not be for everyone. It’s a violently graphic novel that will not be for everyone! Reader discretion is advised, especially with chapter 19. I can handle violence, but this chapter did a bit of a number on me! In addition to the torture of the family, there are animal deaths in the book.
Some readers were not happy with an ending that doesn’t give all the answers, but I loved it! Life and villains don’t always have complete answers. If anything, maybe we can get a continuing story in the future!
Jacobsen worked very hard on this novel, especially with the ‘advent style’. Imagine having to come up with a story that had to end with a certain number of chapters and to also have each chapter develop with enough of the story in it and keep readers wanting to come back the next day!
I enjoyed and appreciated 25 Days so much that it made my Top 10 of 2024, being number five! I will definitely be reading more of Jacobsen’s novels in the future.
There are some things that I just won’t see the same again anymore: Among those things are stockings, Secret Santa, isolated cabins in winter with snow, and snowmobiles! If you want to know why, then you must pick up 25 Days!
Purchase Links:
The Author’s Website where you can purchase signed copies or bookplates and more!
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Audiobook Review: Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Daisy Jones & The Six
Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
Narrator: Full Cast Narration
Published: March 5, 2019
Audio: 9 hours 3 minutes
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Read: December 5-11, 2024
Jessica’s Rating: 5 stars
Book Description:
Everyone knows DAISY JONES & THE SIX, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . until now.
Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n’ roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.
Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.
Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.
The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.
Jessica’s Review:
Daisy Jones & The Six is a book that must to be listened to! I had heard that before and I agree that is the way to read this book! This book is everything that covers the career of a fictional band in the late 70s from their formation to their eventual fall.
Everything about this book feels like the telling of the ‘behind the scenes lives’ of an actual band and its members. It is a full cast narration with some well-known names participating. The narrations fully give the listener the sense of stardom with Daisy and Billy, along with the given sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
I couldn’t help but become fully involved in the story of Daisy Jones and The Six. This one is a definite five star listen and I definitely will be watching the mini-series!
There is also a PDF of song lyrics included with the audiobook.
Purchase Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK
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