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The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
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Magical realism, lyrical prose, and the pain and passion of human love haunt this hypnotic generational saga. Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender.
Ava - in all other ways a normal girl - is born with the wings of a bird. In a quest to understand her peculiar disposition and a growing desire to fit in with her peers, sixteen-year old Ava ventures into the wider world, ill-prepared for what she might discover and naive to the twisted motives of others. Others like the pious Nathaniel Sorrows, who mistakes Ava for an angel and whose obsession with her grows until the night of the summer solstice celebration. That night, the skies open up, rain and feathers fill the air, and Ava’s quest and her family’s saga build to a devastating crescendo. First-time author Leslye Walton has constructed a layered and unforgettable mythology of what it means to be born with hearts that are tragically, exquisitely human.
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meh...
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By: Tiffany Baker
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Promise
- A Novel
- By: Minrose Gwin
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In the aftermath of a devastating tornado that rips through the town of Tupelo, Mississippi, at the height of the Great Depression, two women worlds apart - one Black, one White; one a great-grandmother, the other a teenager - fight for their families' survival in this lyrical and powerful novel.
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Mostly Disappointing
- By Anjoli on 06-15-19
By: Minrose Gwin
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Arcadia
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Lauren Groff’s acclaimed debut novel The Monsters of Templeton was short-listed for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, Arcadia opens in the late 1960s with a group of young idealists forming a commune in western New York State. Into this group is born Bit, who grows into a quiet, distant man. Over the course of 50 years, Bit witnesses the utopia crumble and the world change in unimaginable ways.
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Luscious prose, intimate and realistic
- By Kathleen on 03-22-12
By: Lauren Groff
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Paradise
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In Paradise - her first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - Toni Morrison gives us a bravura performance. As the book begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby (pop. 360), in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain", assault the nearby Convent and the women in it. From the town's ancestral origins in 1890 to the fateful day of the assault, Paradise tells the story of a people ever mindful of the relationship between their spectacular history and a void.
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MORRISON AT HER MOST COMPLEX
- By Kennedi Hill on 11-07-19
By: Toni Morrison
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Her Body and Other Parties
- Stories
- By: Carmen Maria Machado
- Narrated by: Amy Landon
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.
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Beautiful
- By Anonymous User on 11-17-17
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The Star Side of Bird Hill
- By: Naomi Jackson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Two sisters, ages 10 and 16, are exiled from Brooklyn to Bird Hill in Barbados, after their mother can no longer care for them. The young Phaedra and her older sister, Dionne, live, for the summer of 1989, with their grandmother, Hyacinth, a midwife and practitioner of the local spiritual practice of obeah. Dionne spends the summer in search of love, testing her grandmother's limits, and wanting to go home. Phaedra explores Bird Hill, where her family has lived for generations.
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My absolute favorite book of all time
- By Eme on 07-16-15
By: Naomi Jackson
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Jagannath
- By: Karin Tidbeck
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 4 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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A child is born in a tin can. A switchboard operator finds himself in hell. Three corpulent women float somewhere beyond time. Welcome to the weird world of Karin Tidbeck, the visionary Swedish author of literary sci-fi, speculative fiction, and mind-bending fantasy who has captivated fans around the world. Originally published by the tiny press Cheeky Frawg - the passion project of Ann and Jeff VanderMeer - Jagannath has been celebrated by listeners and critics alike, with rave reviews from major outlets and support from lauded peers like China Mieville and even Ursula K. Le Guin herself.
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Always unique, usually quite good, sometimes meh
- By Eugene on 02-13-19
By: Karin Tidbeck
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A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True
- By: Brigid Pasulka
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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The novel opens on the eve of World War II. In the mountain village of Half-Village, a young man nicknamed the Pigeon, under the approving eyes of the entire village, courts the beautiful Anielica Hetmanska. But the war's arrival wreaks havoc in all their lives and delays their marriage for six long years.
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The Old & New Worlds Converge & Transcend Time
- By Sara on 11-22-16
By: Brigid Pasulka
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The Blind Assassin
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margot Dionne
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental.
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Good book, TERRIBLE audio!
- By Whitney on 04-27-09
By: Margaret Atwood
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The Baker's Daughter
- By: Sarah McCoy
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1945, Elsie Schmidt is a naive teenager, as eager for her first sip of champagne as she is for her first kiss. She and her family have been protected from the worst of the terror and desperation overtaking her country by a high-ranking Nazi who wishes to marry her. So when an escaped Jewish boy arrives on Elsie’s doorstep in the dead of night on Christmas Eve, Elsie understands that opening the door would put all she loves in danger.
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great story
- By Stevon on 03-15-15
By: Sarah McCoy
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Above Us Only Sky
- By: Michele Young-Stone
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Prudence Eleanor Vilkas was born with a pair of wings molded to her back. Considered a birth defect, her wings were surgically removed, leaving only the ghost of them behind. Growing up in Los Vientos, Florida, Prudence meets her long-estranged Lithuanian grandfather and discovers a miraculous lineage beating and pulsing with past Lithuanian bird-women.
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I'm So Glad I Listened to It!
- By Elizabeth on 08-22-16
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Welcome to the cursed town of Sparrow...where, two centuries ago, three sisters were sentenced to death for witchery. Stones were tied to their ankles, and they were drowned in the deep waters surrounding the town. Now, for a brief time each summer, the sisters return, stealing the bodies of three weak-hearted girls so that they may seek their revenge, luring boys into the harbor and pulling them under.
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can't keep my attention. I tried to like it.
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From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans comes an unforgettable edge-of-your-seat mystery that is at once heartbreakingly tender and morally courageous about what it means to be human.
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Be patient; it will pay off
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This collection features the novels in her historical military fantasy trilogy—The Poppy War, The Dragon Republic, and The Burning God—a complete epic inspired by the bloody history of China’s twentieth century and filled with treachery and magic.
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Not a book for everyone but an excellent story
- By Anonymous User on 06-23-23
By: R. F. Kuang
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The Ten Thousand Doors of January
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In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place. Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure, and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world, and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.
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A princess in a castle can't fend for herself
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Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.
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Horrible narration
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can't keep my attention. I tried to like it.
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Dreamlike Experience to Savor
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Not a book for everyone but an excellent story
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A princess in a castle can't fend for herself
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Horrible narration
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What listeners say about The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jodi M.
- 01-22-24
Took my breath away
A gorgeous story of love and so much more. Evocative of early Alice Hoffman or Sarah Addison Allen.
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- Carol
- 11-24-22
Engaging characters,
My daughter and I listened over a few weeks in the car. We really enjoyed this.
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- Jeanna
- 02-27-16
Wonderfully Strange
Wonderful story with nice character build, just like the title, its strange and wonderful, i would recommend this to anyone who wants a background on each character.
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- Cliente Amazon
- 05-17-22
a strange tale
it's a difficult book to review. It's dreamy and strange and full of sorrow, it Is worth it ..I think
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- LBH88
- 04-14-14
Watited for the story...then for it to end
I wanted to love this book. I, like some other reviewers, found it on a list of YA novels to watch out for. I was disappointed. It is a fairly grown up story with lots of violence, etc, which doesn't bother me in the least, but the language is immature, almost like a fairytale at some points and so simplistic as to draw attention to itself and this strange contrast of content and style--not incredibly well written (of course, I think listening makes this more noticeable and especially in the absence of a captivating storyline).
It was an interesting premise in which Walton created a lot of interesting exposition and back stories but the story of Ava Lavender itself falls flat. You never really care about her; she is little more than the character who happens to narrate the story, nor are there any other characters you are really rooting for. When bad things happen, as they inevitably do, you are not surprised or upset. It's like a really long, twisted bedtime story. I just wanted it to be over, knowing it was not going to offer me any sort of awesome plot twist or satisfying conclusion, so that I could go download something else! Some people seemed to really like it, but if you care about a strong story and characters, look elsewhere.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Mary
- 06-23-17
Slow To Get Into, But A Strangely Beautiful Finish
It took quite a while for me to gain interest in the storyline, part of which I'm sure had to do with the monotone narration - hence my 3 star review... however the last five chapters saved it for me. Definitely not for everyone, but I'm glad I gave this one a chance nonetheless.
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- Amanda Goeke
- 02-06-15
Inspiring and imaginative writing
If you could sum up The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender in three words, what would they be?
Beautiful, sad, artistic
What was one of the most memorable moments of The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender?
Vivianne Lavendar goes into the Summer Solstice Festival describing the beautiful things around her: the musicians playing lovely tunes, the delicious pies made by the schoolgirls' mothers... and as she runs away from the festival in a sad state she describes the same items again through a different emotion: the drunk musicians and the over-baked pies. It was so beautifully written and I found myself inside of the book many times.
Which scene was your favorite?
When Ava is kissed for the first time. Leslie's description is lovely and so heartfelt. It reminded me of my first kiss with my husband.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
You must let them go for them to come back again.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 09-26-16
Hauntingly beautiful
A story that has been very well written. A quote comes to mind when I finished this book. ..."It is always darkest just before the day dawneth."
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- MJ A
- 03-20-21
SIMPLY BEAUTIFUL
The authors writing ✍️ is so beautiful lyrical and whimsical the kind of books that I love and will never forget
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- Anastasia Smith
- 12-01-23
The deep rich emotions
I absolutely love this book it was my first real favorite book. It’s my Roman Empire. I think about it at least once a week. It’s absolutely amazing and stunning. All the characters, the culmination of different stories from different times and perspectives. Still my favorite book.
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