Audiobook of the week

The Summoning- Darkest Powers Trilogy, Book One

Kelley Armstrong

She sees ghosts, he’s a sorcerer and his foster brother’s a…oops. I’m not giving everything away. Kelley Armstrong brings her world of supernaturals to teens, and as a listener, I’m super glad she did. The adult books have paranormal politics to navigate, relationships to balance and mysteries to solve, but the YA experience takes us back to when a supernatural first learns about her powers and her plight. And what she doesn’t know can definitely hurt her.

As a Listener:

I enjoyed the first person narrator more than the third person multiple POV Kelley Armstrong uses with her adult books, but that’s probably a personal taste issue more than anything else. The protag, Chloe, is a good mix of insecurities and growing strength. She has some terrific movie and movie heroine comments. The show of the various characters trying to manipulate their mental health treatment seemed realistic to me, and there were some decent twists along the way. It’s a to-be-continued ending, so if you don’t like those, you might wait until you have The Awakening on hand too. And The Reckoning, the final in the trilogy.

As a writer:

I totally get why writers of adult fiction do YA too. It’s a growing market, they can draw in future readers for their adult work, and I’m sure a lot of them soon figure out that YA’s a lot of fun to write. For the publishers it’s a no-brainer to give a proven seller a shot at a new market, and it could even bring teen and parent readers together with a shared favorite author. Win, win, win, right? The only problem is, for us would-be authors, it could mean a few less debut spots on the lists each year. But hopefully, the number of adult fans these writers can cross over to YA will make up the difference.

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