Up until last year, I couldn’t understand the allure of audio books. I somehow purchased an Audible subscription and tried sample after sample but nothing hooked me. I tried classics (too boring) and then non-fiction (it was hard to get into the story). My favorite podcast had recently released a novel, The Welcome To Night Vale Novel,  so I purchased it, knowing the narrator and world well. To my surprise, it was so similar to the best parts of the podcast, it was easy to slip into without even trying.

After that ecstatic experience, I was back at square one! In a calculated effort to find my next pick, I examined what made my audio book of my podcast novel so perfect.

One: The narrator’s voice.

The narrator of my audio book was already familiar to me and I loved his voice. So my next audio book had to have a narrator with a beautiful voice.

Two: The ease of slipping into another world

The allure of the Welcome to Night Vale novel that the world was already built for me after listening to so many episodes. The ease of a fictional world can be hard to create, so maybe starting with a realistic  and modern fictional world would be easy to slip into.

Having those two starting points wasn’t much, but it encouraged me to check out the Audible Channels for some free, streaming audiobooks for that might fit the criteria. I saw two titles on the Editor’s Picks that caught my eye: H is for Hawk and Everything I Never Told You. The description of Everything I Never Told You seemed to fit the profile so I decided to stick it out to at least the first hour. Everything I Never Told You is a fictional account of a family in 1970’s Ohio dealing with the death of the oldest daughter.

Luckily for me, the story opens so beautifully, it like was like slipping into a warm embrace. In fact, I loved the audiobook so much, I had to get a physical copy so I could go over some passages and really savor the beautifully written sentences.

How did you make your way into audiobooks?