Radio Silence – Alice Oseman Free Audiobook

Written by Alice Oseman
Read by Aysha Kala
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: HarperTeen
Release date: March 28, 2017
Duration: 10:23:22

From critically acclaimed author Alice Oseman comes a smartly crafted contemporary YA novel.

Frances Janvier spends most of her time studying.

Everyone knows Aled Last as that quiet boy who gets straight As.

You probably think that they are going to fall in love or something. Since he is a boy and she is a girl.

They don’t. They make a podcast.

In a world determined to shut them up, knock them down, and set them on a cookie cutter life path, Frances and Aled struggle to find their voices over the course of one life-changing year. Will they have the courage to show everyone who they really are? Or will they be met with radio silence?

Two teens connect through a mysterious podcast by British author Oseman (Solitaire, 2015).Frances Janvier is a 17-year-old British-Ethiopian head girl who is so driven to get into Cambridge that she mostly forgoes friendships for schoolwork. Her only self-indulgence is listening to and creating fan art for the podcast Universe City, “a…show about a suit-wearing student detective looking for a way to escape a sci-fi, monster-infested university.”

Aled Last is a quiet white boy who identifies as “partly asexual.” When Frances discovers that Aled is the secret creator of Universe City, the two embark on a passionate, platonic relationship based on their joint love of pop culture. Their bond is complicated by Aled’s controlling mother and by Frances’ previous crush on Aled’s twin sister, Carys, who ran away last year and disappeared.

When Aled’s identity is accidently leaked to the Universe City fandom, he severs his relationship with Frances, leaving her questioning her Cambridge goals and determined to win back his affection, no matter what the cost. Frances’ narration is keenly intelligent; she takes mordant pleasure in using an Indian friend’s ID to get into a club despite the fact they look nothing alike: “Gotta love white people.” Though the social-media-suffused plot occasionally lags, the main characters’ realistic relationship accurately depicts current issues of gender, race, and class. A smart, timely outing.

Teen (and adult) listeners will relish every word of British author Alice Oseman’s latest tour de force, narrated by Aysha Kala. Seventeen-year-old Frances Janvier is driven by one goal: getting into elite Cambridge University. Her only distraction is her favorite podcast, the edgy “Universe City.” She’s thrilled when she meets the genius behind this mysterious channel, Aled Last, who asks her to collaborate as an illustrator for the popular podcast. Frances eventually learns that the subplot of “Universe City” provides clues to Aled’s difficult real life, and for the first time Frances realizes the meaning of friendship and loyalty. Kala’s expert narration is a perfect match to the book, which captures angst-ridden teens with authenticity. D.S. � AudioFile 2017,