The Most Anticipated Audiobooks of June
The Month to Come in Literary Listening
Each month, our friends at AudioFile Magazine share a curated list of the best audiobooks for your literary listening pleasure.
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JUNE FICTION
Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry | Read by Julia Whelan
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Penguin Audio | 12 hrs.]
Golden Voice narrator Julia Whelan delights listeners with this heartfelt contemporary romance. Alice Scott is optimistic about her writing—always hoping for a big break. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hayden Anderson is a grumpy enigma.
Both find themselves on Little Crescent Island for the same reason: They’re competing to write the biography of an elusive heiress. Whelan expertly conveys Alice and Hayden’s hilarious, genuine, and intimate conversations.
My Friends by Fredrik Backman | Read by Marin Ireland
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Simon & Schuster Audio | 13 hrs.]
Golden Voice narrator Marin Ireland grandly performs this story of art, friendship, and what it means to be a teen. Ireland replicates the snarky tone of Louisa, who has just released herself from foster care to go see the work of art that is the fulcrum of the plot. Ireland captures the spirit of four teenagers—Kim Kim, Joar, Ali, and Ted—whom we see twenty-five years earlier in flashbacks.
Backman has created indelible characters and laugh-out-loud moments. Ireland is simply splendid.
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans | Read by Maggi-Meg Reed, Jane Oppenheimer, Carly Robins, Jeff Ebner, David Pittu, Chris Andrew Ciulla, Mark Bramhall, Petrea Burchard, Robert Petkoff, Kimberly Farr, Cerris Morgan-Meyer, Peter Ganim, Jade Wheeler. Jim Seybert, et al.
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Random House Audio | 8.5 hrs.]
Maggi-Meg Reed is at the top of her game in her nuanced portrayal of Sybil Van Antwerp. Sybil shares her life in letters to friends and family, as well as strangers and authors she admires. The thousands of letters she has written and received reveal lives connected by Sybil’s delicate thread.
Thanks to outstanding narrations, responses to her letters allow each correspondent to emerge as a fully realized individual. Beautiful prose and amazing performances make this audiobook one listeners won’t want to miss.
Aftertaste by Daria Lavelle | Read by Ari Fliakos, Tessa Albertson, André Santana, Kristen Sieh
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Simon & Schuster Audio | 10.5 hrs.]
Ari Fliakos’s exceptional performance of haunted Kostya Duhovny is among the many pleasures of this immersive debut, a combination love story, Manhattan foodie romp, and otherworldly tale.
Fliakos captures Kostya’s complex reactions to his supernatural ability to bring back the dead through food. In one extraordinary moment Fliakos does a breathless dramatic monologue that merges foods and flavors while ghosts hover and howl.
Sky Daddy by Kate Folk | Read by Kristen Sieh
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Random House Audio | 9.5 hrs.]
Kristen Sieh’s performance brings the listener into the life of a complicated woman whose sexual desire is fixated on commercial airliners. Lisa works as an online comment moderator in San Francisco. She’s good at her job, but she reserves her passion for airplanes.
She perceives flights as dates, turbulence as flirtation—and a smooth flight could lead to something more. Lisa’s friends begin to suspect something when her vision board fills up with plane imagery. Sieh’s approach to this work fully maintains the audiobook’s comedic tone and timing and hits all the emotional moments.
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JUNE NONFICTION
The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780 by Rick Atkinson | Read by Grover Gardner, Rick Atkinson
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Random House Audio | 32.5 hrs.]
Author and narrator are both at their best here. Golden Voice Grover Gardner’s flawless delivery marks this as one of the year’s hallmark listening experiences. Few accounts of the great struggle for independence are so fully and vividly recounted, or so penetrating.
Washington is the dominating figure, always admirable, but on a human scale, with his share of shortcomings and pretensions. Lafayette, Arnold, even John Hancock—the dusty names step out of the shadows and down from their pedestals.
Accidentally on Purpose by Kristen Kish | Read by Kristen Kish
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Hachette Audio | 10.5 hrs.]
“Top Chef” host and alum Kristen Kish beautifully delivers her memoir, displaying her compassion throughout. Adopted and raised in Michigan, Kish never doubted her family’s love, even as she struggled with social anxiety. Her deep family bonds and drive to succeed echo throughout her story.
Kish’s genuine, heartfelt narration pulls listeners into her triumphs, her family’s pure love, and her joy at being able to experience life with the people who mean the most to her.
Yoko by David Sheff | Read by Max Meyers
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Simon & Schuster Audio | 11 hrs.]
Max Meyers’s performance of Yoko Ono’s biography works because it’s done with a reporter’s professionalism—minus the invisible eye rolls. The audiobook offers an insightful examination of the controversial woman John Lennon not only loved, but also respected as an artist.
What comes across in the audiobook is that Yoko and John existed on a different plane than most of us do. We can better understand her motivation and her unusual forms of art, much of which was so cryptic as to be understood only by her and John.
The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd | Read by Tilda Swinton, Robert Macfarlane [Intro.], Jenny Odell [Afterword]
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Simon & Schuster Audio | 4.75 hrs.]
This exquisite work of nature writing celebrating Scotland’s Cairngorms mountains remains a classic of ecological observation. Tilda Swinton’s rendition of Nan Shepherd’s poetic prose mesmerizes. Her tone is exceptionally clear, her pace adds drama, and her style of narrating is immersive.
Shepherd appreciated these mountains in all seasons and lived near them for much of her life. The language sings. An audiobook for the soul.
Ordinary Time: Lessons Learned While Staying Put by Annie B. Jones, Emily P. Freeman [Fore.] | Read by Annie B. Jones, Emily P. Freeman [Fore.]
AudioFile Earphones Award
[Harper Audio | 6 hrs.]
Annie B. Jones shines as she narrates her first book, an essay collection about all the ways an ordinary life can feel extraordinary. An independent bookstore owner and host of the popular podcast “From the Front Porch,” Jones narrates with confidence, a lively intonation, and expert pacing.
As she considers all the times she has stayed put—in her small town, her long marriage, and her career as a bookstore owner—she tells thoughtful, often funny anecdotes that explore what makes life meaningful. The result is an audiobook to treasure.
