The Laughing Listener
November 2018
Format: Hardback & Audiobook
Narrator: Julia Whelan
Length: 8 hours & 45 minutes

Story Rating: 3 Stars
Performance Rating: 5 Stars
Overall Rating: 3.5 Stars

It’s confession time book nerds—I am complete trash for everything Charlie Bowater does. She’s one of my favorite artists, so OF COURSE I had to read a book she designed the cover for. What is it about?? Hell if I knew, but the cover is BEAUTIFUL. Lucky for me, this faerie fantasy was super fun and I loved reading it!

I feel like this book can summarized in one phrase, which is “this was really cute.”

Because it was! It was nice reading about Isobel who’s so artistic and cunning. She was super smart, something that never ceases to be refreshing, and her relationship with her little family was adorable. Her little goat sisters were cracking me up!



And once Rook came around to get his portrait done, I really enjoyed watching their relationship grow. It seemed a little fast, but I can’t tell if that’s because it was, or because this was a shorter standalone and I’m too used to long series. Either way, I didn’t really mind because I liked them both together.

Once the story moves into the faerie lands, it was cool seeing all the different landscapes and getting to know the faerie culture. All the faeries were so low key creepy and weird! Watching Rook and Isobel try to navigate through it was fun. There were also some serious autumn vibes to this story that I LOVED. Reading this book in November was perfect and I definitely recommend it as a fall read for everyone!

FINAL WORD
The story isn’t crazy inventive and nothing too twisty happened. Honestly, it was fairly predictable. But Rogerson did an excellent job weaving a fun and adorable little romance. I loved it!