Whispers in Autumn

The Last Year, #1

By: Trisha Leigh

Narrated by: Brielle Silvestri

Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

In 2015, a race of alien Others conquered Earth. They enslaved humanity not by force, but through an aggressive mind control that turned people into contented, unquestioning robots.

Except sixteen-year-old Althea isn't content at all, and she doesn't need the mysterious note inside her locket to tell her she's Something Else. It also warns her to trust no one, so she hides the pieces that make her different, even though it means being alone.

The autumn she meets Lucas, everything changes.

Althea and Lucas are immune to the alien mind control, and together they search for the reason why. What they uncover is a stunning truth the Others never anticipated, one with the potential to free the brainwashed human race.

It's not who they are that makes them special, but what.

And what they are is a threat. One the Others are determined to eliminate for good.

©2012 Trisha Leigh (P)2014 Trisha Leigh

reread as audio book

I already loved this book... now on audio I can listen during high traffic commute!

great read, pace is fast enough to keep up with audio book. I would follow Althea and Lucas to the ends of the earth to help fix what the others have done!

Thanks for a great story

Good Esscape

My daughter in law hooked me up with this book.
I enjoyed the characters and the interesting way they handled the problems they were given.
There were no inappropriate innuendos in the book to make me uncomfortable having my children listen.
The teens in the book were curious and worked hard at figuring out the problems but didn't make me as an adult feel stupid.
There is respect and love.
I went on to get all the books in the series and enjoyed it to the end.
I would definitely recommend this series for a family listen and for anyone that likes a Sci-Fy listen.

It's refreshingly different!

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I would recommend this to anyone who has a love for stories about what it means to be human. Yes, it's from the point of view of young adults and that's what makes it so perfect. It's an age where discoveries are me, when we try to figure out where we fit in life, and how our actions, or lack thereof, impact those around us.

What other book might you compare Whispers in Autumn to and why?

It's about our world, but very much like 1984 meets Stepford Wives, except this is Stepford families.

Any additional comments?

Whispers in Autumn is only the beginning in the struggle to fall in love with our humanity: our capacity to trust, to love, to grieve, and to persevere.

Good story, bad performance?

Where does Whispers in Autumn rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

It was an interesting story and a well told story. It is book one of four. It seems authors can't tell a whole story in just one book anymore, so eventually I will need to get the others.

How could the performance have been better?

The narrator's voice was pleasant and sounded fine, but there was a pause between sentences that was just too long. I had to speed the book up to 1.25 or I would have never been able to stand it.

Average YA story, Terrible Pronunciation

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

A narrator that did not completely distract me from the story by pronouncing random words so oddly.

What didn’t you like about Brielle Silvestri’s performance?

I have nothing against different dialects or pronunciations, but I have never heard discernible pronounced disKERNible in my life. NEVER. Spindly is not pronounced SPINEdilly, and precedents is very different from presidents. The mistakes are odd in a way that makes the listener feel like Brielle Silvestri must have been locked in a room for most of her life reading without actually ever having heard words out loud. You're going along, everything is great and correct and then BAM! RepUJGnance. It became a very tense experience for me--waiting to hear the next incredibly odd mispronunciation deposited randomly in a sentence. Maybe this is just me, I never thought of myself as particularly picky about these types of things, but by the end it was just nails on a chalkboard.

The weird thing was, I listened to the next book, and the same types of mistakes were made! It started me on this intense path of self-doubt. Did no one listen to this before it was published? Or after? Why didn't anyone correct her? Do I pronounce them incorrectly? It was exhausting. And every time it happened I would miss the next 30 seconds of the story pondering these questions. I would probably have listened to further books in this series, but I couldn't handle hearing one more time about how they were going to eKscape by inFILTERating the enemy.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

Sure, the story is fairly entertaining. Not great literature, lots of cliches (especially with the romance aspect--I long for the day when the heroine DOESN'T fall in love with the one guy who is like her but instead with some random doofus not integral to the plot line), but a good mindless book perfect for a long drive or a sick day in bed. The aliens in this book are somewhat unique which makes for some unexpected twists in the plot and helps to keep up suspense.