• Zoe & Zak and the Ghost Leopard (Volume 1)

  • By: Lars Guignard
  • Narrated by: Bailey S. Carlson
  • Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
  • 4.1 out of 5 stars (35 ratings)

Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
Zoe & Zak and the Ghost Leopard (Volume 1)  By  cover art

Zoe & Zak and the Ghost Leopard (Volume 1)

By: Lars Guignard
Narrated by: Bailey S. Carlson
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $19.95

Buy for $19.95

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

If you loved Harry Potter, if you couldn't get enough of Percy Jackson, if you're wondering what to listen to after The Kane Chronicles - from, Lars Guignard, the author of Lethal Circuit, comes the brand new, kids' magic fantasy adventure....

Ghost Leopard

Zoe Guire just talked to an elephant. Well, technically speaking, the elephant spoke to her, but either way it was weird and, as a rule, Zoe doesn't do weird. Except the thing is, when Zoe goes along on her mom's business trip to India, things get very weird, very quickly. Soon after she arrives, Zoe finds herself tagging alongside a kid named Zak, lost in a crazy city, with no money and no way home.

And those are the least of Zoe's troubles. Because if she's to believe the scary-looking snake charmer guy sitting in the corner, she and Zak have been chosen - chosen to protect some kind of mythical animal called the Ghost Leopard from who knows what.

Now, the further they get into the mountains, the more crazily impossible things get. Carpets fly and statues talk and if either Zoe or Zak want to make it back to their parents, or the sixth grade, or anything even close to normal, they're going to have to make some new friends, learn some new tricks, and listen, really listen to that talking elephant. Because if they don't, nothing will ever be the same again.

©2011, 2012, 2013 Lars Guignard (P)2013 Lars Guignard

More from the same

What listeners say about Zoe & Zak and the Ghost Leopard (Volume 1)

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    11
  • 4 Stars
    20
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    2
Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    15
  • 4 Stars
    13
  • 3 Stars
    5
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    2
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    14
  • 4 Stars
    15
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    2

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

What a fun read!

Would you consider the audio edition of Ghost Leopard to be better than the print version?

I have not read the print version, however, I think the audio was great. A few hiccups here and there but otherwise fabulous.

What other book might you compare Ghost Leopard to and why?

The Nancy Drew Series! This book brought me back to loving mysteries as a kid.

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

I wish the narrator would have paused at the end of a climactic event. There were so many chapters when Zoe and Zak were in peril and the narrator just zoomed to the next part instead of letting what happened to Zoe and Zak sink in a little.

Any additional comments?

Really fun to listen to. I normally do not get into mysteries, they just aren't my thing anymore, but this was absolutely fun. A very easy listen, definitely for the younger audience.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Not a Ghost of a Chance

I read a lot of middle-grades and young adult literature, so when I was offered a free copy of the audio version of this book in return for a review, I jumped at it. Unfortunately, if I hadn't felt obligated to do the review, I would have stopped the book less than halfway through.

This is being marketed with comparisons to the Harry Potter and Lightning Thief series. Maybe in some parallel universe. I would say it is closer to Michael Grant's Magnificent 12 series, especially in terms of reading level, but even then it pales in comparison. I love Grant's series. It is clever and laugh-out-loud funny. Zoe and Zak are just plain annoying.

Zoe Guire is 11 years old, the adopted daughter of a single woman who works for the State Department. She tags along on her mother's business trip to India, hoping to take some pictures and get in some "Mom-and-Me" time in order to find out more about her adoption. Instead she gets stuck with a classmate from the states, Zak, who's there with his dad, a colleague of Zoe's mom. When the parents are called out of town on an emergency, Zoe and Zak are left pretty much on their own. (OK, so there's a rent-a-nanny, but we all know that's not going to stop them.)

The adventure begins when they overhear a mysterious man talking on the phone about a leopard and leaving behind a mysterious map. (The man is repeatedly described as very muscular and even though we learn his real name, he is referred to throughout the book as Rhino-butt.) They break into the man's hotel room, hide in a giant box, get flown in the box to the foothills of the Himalayas, escape the box with a smaller box of money with which they can buy what they need, and meet up with a series of people who are either trying to capture something known as the ghost leopard or stop it from being captured.

There are several hair-raising encounters and these are well done. It becomes clear that Zoe and Zak are predestined to help save the leopard, leading to more questions about Zoe's birth and a mysterious set of marks on one of her hands. In times of crisis the marks glow and Zoe is able to unleash a special energy force she doesn't quite understand, but it does give Zak a chance to yell "Yogi-fy them!" and "You're the Yogi-nator!" Both the good and bad guys have special powers, too. The bad guys are right out of central casting: an evil bhagwan who's really an ancient monkey with an entire monkey army at his command.

I can see where younger readers (3rd—6th grade) could enjoy this book a lot. It could also be a great read-aloud book (but not necessarily the audiobook version, which I'll get to in a minute). But it takes quite a while for the action to really get going, and I found it so much harder to buy into the premise of this book than others in the genre. While Guinard says it's not meant to be a cultural study, he packs a lot of information about India into the book, almost too much. It appears Zoe has memorized an entire travel guide, which allows her to explain not only the Hindu deities but also local customs, the Hindi names for certain things, and on and on.

I liked the story of an adopted child beginning to question her origins. That will clearly play a role in future installments of the series.

Back to my earlier remarks that Zoe and Zak are annoying. I have to wonder if part of this is due to the way the narrator presents them—to say that Zoe is perky would be an understatement—or whether it's the way Guignard wrote them. I think it's probably a combination of both. No 11-year-old girl would ever say, "I needed time to compose myself." Zak is the typical sidekick, first talking Zoe into going on the adventure and then eventually realizing the error of his ways. The problem here is that he just isn't as funny or interesting as other sidekicks. (Perhaps the problem here is also that I've read so many stories like this that my expectations are higher.) I just really couldn't bring myself to care about either one of them.

Finally, the narration by Bailey S. Carlson was too. . . too . . . what? Golly gosh, gee whizz. Even in the most harrowing moments Zoe sounds like she's bouncing up and down. I also thought it was odd that she used a Western twang for the leopard hunter (a/k/a Rhino butt). It was hard not to picture Yosemite Sam. She did a much better job with the Indian accents. I have seriously considered that I might have enjoyed this book more if I had read it instead of listened to it.

So, overall, this was a "fail" for me. I won't be lining up for the next one in this series.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!