🎧 Book Review 🎧 Title: Little Monsters Author: Adrienne Brodeur Publisher: Avid Press Reader
Simon & Schuster @avidreaderpress Genre: Literary Fiction Pub Day: 6/27/23 Thank you @librofm + @simon.audio for the listening copy of Little Monsters by Adrienne Broduer. This book immediately had me intrigued and invested in the Gardner family, in a large part thanks to a full cast narration by Jason Cult, Matt Pittenger, Cassandra Campbell, Joy Osmanski, Allyson Ryan and Sura Siu. Really well done.
Character Driven. Complicated Families. Secrets. Cape Cod.
The Cape Cod backdrop of this story almost feels like an additional character. I was swept up in the location. This is going to be the perfect read for summer for readers who like a little more meat to their beach reads.
We begin the story meeting Adam the patriarch of the the Gardener family. The family is about to celebrate his seventieth birthday and he feels his relevance at the top slipping away. He has spent most of his adult life a widower, a marine biologist studying whales and also bipolar. He’s quite full of himself. This made for an interesting childhood for his children, Ken and Abby. They used to rely on each other for everything, but have drifted apart. Now Ken is in real estate with political aspirations and married to Abby’s best friend from college, Jenny. Abby is a quiet feminist who is a successful artist. We also meet Steph who summers every summer on the Cape. Her parts will have you speeding up the audio or flipping pages for more!
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 I love a character driven story. This almost feels like a character study of a messy complicated family. The author wrote compelling rich multidimensional characters that are going to frustrate you some, but I think (hope) you will love too.
Purchasing from the link below helps support independent bookstores and my site!