The Laughing Listener
Format: EBook
*I was given this for free in exchange for an honest review*
Overall Rating: 5 Stars

Whoa. I’m just... That completely threw me off and I mean that as a compliment. Normally I’m not one for contemporary books. Living my own life can enough of a challenge, so I don’t want to read stories that will remind me of my current reality. I read books to escape. To fall into another world. As a result, I usually go into contemporaries already grumpy and looking for faults, but this one put me in my place. I thought I knew exactly where this story was going, but boy was I wrong.

THE GOOD

First of all, I absolutely LOVED THE WAY THIS WAS WRITTEN. Totally having a nerd moment over here because I thought the writing style was AMAZING and the formatting GENIUS. When looking at the story as a whole, it’s fairly unremarkable and straight forward. I’m going to be vague because the less you know going into this the better, but Ezell did a killer job of taking a small story and turning it into something exciting and dynamic. The main character Audrey wakes up the Sunday after losing her virginity to firefighters demanding she evacuate her home. There’s a wild fire coming fast and she needs to get the hell out of dodge. After the first chapter, two timelines emerge—one that follows Audrey on that terrible Sunday hour by hour and one of flashbacks that slowly reveal what’s been going on in her life for the past few months. They both build slowly until they meet at the climax for an explosive ending.

Okay, I’ll shut up and stop gushing. But seriously, IT’S AWESOME. Once I got a third of the way in, I couldn’t put this book down.

This also hit me on several different personal levels. I was born in California, lived in Los Angeles for three years after college graduation, and most of my extended family resides there. The setting and landscape was completely familiar to me in a déjà vu kind of way. Wild fires have been a real threat to some of my family in the past, so that definitely struck a chord. Plus, we’ve all been through one of those terrible life altering moments. The kind that changes the essence of who you are. Watching Audrey navigate her own life altering moment was completely relatable and my heart ached for her.

I also REALLY LOVED HAYDEN and I want one of my own. Just saying.



THE UGLY

The only sort-of negative comment I have is that I wish Audrey’s character had been a little more interesting and not so bland. To be fair, that IS one of the things she struggles with. This book is all about Audrey finding her “thing” (as she put it) and discovering who she is as a person. But next to her colorful sister and best friend, she seemed so grey and boring. It did make the story more relatable in that I could easily project myself onto her, but I wish there had just been a little more individuality there somehow.

FINAL WORD
This books was AMAZING and I loved it! Definitely recommend!