Nice surprise

This was a truly enjoyable high school coming out/coming of age story. Think of it as a gay John Hughes film. The author is a real fan of John Hughes and obviously cares a great deal about the challenges gay teenagers face in high school. Some would say this isn't a YA book. I have to disagree. The sex scenes in this book are no where as graphic as in traditional gay romance. And if I remember correctly, nothing that the average teenager not only knows about, but much milder. It wasn't a perfect book and the narrator doesn't give a lot of diversity to the characters, but he does do a good job at lending depth and emotion to the story. But be warned, he does sound like a high school kid, which is what the story needed. Absolutely worth a credit.

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Brilliant - loved the narration!

Maybe With A Chance of Certainty (book 1)

I bought this book (and the rest of the series) and obviously started with this one first - duh! I read and LOVED it. Then I had the chance to listen to the audio version. And WOW!

If I thought I enjoyed the story the first time round, the audio version just improved on it. The narrator, Michael Stellman, enhances the story and takes nothing away. It was so interesting to compare my thoughts on the story from my own reading experience versus my thoughts from the listening experience. Sometimes the narrator's voice and style doesn't match the characters I have built in my head but this one hit the nail on the head - brilliant! Michael Stellman's voice captured Kyle perfectly with a real sense of youth and emotion.

I loved the style of writing and characters were totally wonderful. I loved the emotion and challenge of growing up. I loved the nerd and the jock facing life head on. I loved public confrontations and grand gestures. But most of all I loved the strength and honesty.

I wouldn't usually come right out and recommend an audio book over the ebook or print edition (I'm a bit old-school that way and prefer the characters in my head) but this is the reverse for me. I actually originally rated the written book as a 4/4.5 but it is now a definite 5 and moving to my favourites shelf!

End of the Beginning (Book 2)

This is the second book in the series and part of the Tales From Foster High audio book so I listened to rather than read this book. As with the first book, I LOVED this is it's audio form. The narrator's voice was just brilliant, catching the teenage voice of Brad.

Here we have Brad's point of view as he agonises over the events of the past couple of days. Coming out in front of the whole school was a spur of the moment decision and Brad wonders if he made the right choice. It was sad to watch him go from the top of the school social ladder to pretty much the bottom but his strength lay in how he handled himself.

It's such an interesting look at the real person behind the facade. Brad may have had the looks, the status, his sporting prowess, a big home and a nice car but this didn't make him happy in his heart. I loved the character development in this story.

Raise Your Glass (Book 3)

When times get tough, you really find out what people are made of and in this book Brad and Kyle totally shine, particularly Kyle who is no longer a wall flower and very much the centre of attention.

The experiences the boys go through as they return to school are heartbreaking. As to be expected, the reaction from the other students is not positive and Brad and Kyle are tormented for their sexuality. But it is the reaction of the adults - the teachers and authority figures - that is the most shameful. This is tough look at what life can be like for young people who don't conform to what other people deem as being acceptable - bullying and lack of support. But there is a positive ending as support comes from some unexpected places.

I liked the message from the author at the end of the book, an anti-bullying message, to remind people they are never alone and remind us, the reader, that although this story is a work of fiction, bullying is an all too common occurrence that can have tragic consequences.

General

I cannot speak more highly of Michael Stellman. He did a wonderful job of narrating Tales from Foster High and I believe his voice is perfectly suited to the telling of a YA story.

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5 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Depressing for me.

Don't hate me for not loving this book... but I didn't love it. I'm not even sure that I liked it, honestly. I think I did? I don't know, it was all just so angsty.

I've read quite a few books that reminded me of this one (Something Like Summer, Pictures of You), and they were all angsty as F. In fact, I could tell a few plot points were coming before they were hinted at because I had a mental checklist of painful YA M/M going on in my head.

My main issue with this book was the inconsistencies with the primary and secondary characters. The parents were basically shown as evil through most of the story, like really bad, until, all of the sudden, they weren't. Brad was a good guy sometimes and other times I wanted to beat him senseless. I got stuck on a lot of the details.

While the story enthralled me and kept me going, it was also painfully sad. I was depressed while listening and depressed when I finished. I'm certainly not going to continue with the series.

The narration of this book was lovely, however I always get stuck on the fact that Michael Stellman can only do one voice. It's a nice voice, but it's just one tone, one character.

I'm trying to stay positive about the story and remember all the good things and my gut 3-star rating, but when I think back on the story, I'm not bringing up fond memories. I guess this series just isn't for me.

*Audiobook ARC provided for review*

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An all boy The Breakfast Club meets Pretty in Pink

If you could sum up Tales From Foster High in three words, what would they be?

Angsty teen love.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Brad. When the story starts it's told from Kyle's POV, and Brad was the stereotypical, perfect, popular jock. But when the story switches to Brad's POV, you see all the cracks and how broken he really is.

Which scene was your favorite?

When they kissed for the first time. The fact that Brad's nose was bleeding at the time was a bit gross, but it's definitely a scene that sticks with you.

Any additional comments?

I love Michael Stellman's narration, but there are definitely sound quality issues with this one. The echo and background noise in some parts were quite noticeable depending on the kind of headphones you use. It sounds better on speakers. And there was one part that was repeated twice in the recording (Kyle and Kelly's second fight where Kyle notices other students taking pictures). It made me do a double take because I thought I was imagining it, like déjà vu. But no, that part was just duplicated. It was just one small part of the chapter, though.

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Goode Enough?

At the time of my writing of this review, I have already read several of John Goode’s books. While I will specifically address Tales from Foster High (hereafter referred to as Book 1) I'm sure that my overall evaluation of Goode's output will come poking through.

By now, it's likely that you've already read a summary of the plot, so I feel no need to be repetitive.

Book 1 tells a fairly conventional story in gay fiction. High school nerd (Kyle) and high school jock (Brad) fall for each other. The nerd understands his sexuality. The jock has to struggle to understand what he learns about himself.

John Goode does a better job of telling this tale then most other authors I have read.

Pros
Kyle and Brad are interesting and charismatic.
Early on, student life is portrayed with some realism.
The narrative is focused and moves quickly.

Cons
Too many adults are clueless or the enemy.
Teachers are usually absent from places where teachers usually are.
Violence pops up without real-world repercussion.
When necessary to the plot, school officials become totally clueless.

What disappoints me about the violence and the clueless school officials is that their treatment could have been realistic and provided interesting plot points for the main characters to deal with. Maybe it would have taken a couple extra pages, but it would keep knowledgeable readers from stopping for a moment and thinking what the heck is wrong with this author.

Nonetheless, it's a sweet story and moves quickly enough that some of the logic fails can pass by with slight impact.

I have listened to it twice and found it enjoyable enough.

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Eh...

There were too many unsolved problems in this story for me to give it more than 3.5 stars. The performance from Michael Staleman was pretty decent, but I felt really let down by the ending. The story touches on a lot of key issues and felt very current, but instead of feeling like I wanted more...I was left feeling empty. Almost like I spent seven hours listening to some school boy summarize his high school career for a term paper. No emotion, no resolution, no life. Just a bunch of bits of information thrown together. It has the potential to be so much more and then just stopped. Almost like the author has a heart attack and the never got around to finishing the story before meeting his demise. Too bad.

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Good Story With A Good Heart

John Goode has an agenda: to stop bullying! Besides some clever references to pop culture sometimes spoken with acid sarcasm, Tales From Foster High also manages to fight at least one stereotype: victims of bullying never fight back, because they do in this book. The #1 emotion expressed most frequently is teenage angst, some of it over-baked. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the story. My one niggle with an otherwise excellent narration done by Michael Stellman (oops, make that two), given that the story takes place in a small Texas town, we never get any hint of a Texan drawl from any character. It could have taken place in Arizona or California and maybe that was intentional. Also, my copy of the audio at times had some annoying reverb, again, not the narrator's doing, just a technical glitch I suppose.

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Disturbing

This book hit all my triggers, which made it hard for me to finish. I stopped at the point where Brad was bullied in the locker room, it took me a couple months to get back to it. I’m glad I finished, because the story really needs to be told. The narrative is good, but doesn’t really give voice to the individual characters.

Most importantly, I feel like there should be a trigger warning in the audible sample or on the purchase page, (I didn’t see one) be warned, the bullying and homophobia is brutal.

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Great story, terrible editing

This book is an amazing rollercoaster of emotion. I’ve never been a fan of the “stream of consciousness” writing style, and this book has it in spades. But it somehow kept me hooked regardless. The story’s POV bounces between the two lead characters, who have noticeably different feels to them: Kyle with his overly dramatic purple prose and Brad with his earnest dumb jock energy. And both go in depth into their emotional damage and their terrible family life. It’s a lot of up and down and shouting at them to stop being stupid and then shouting at everyone opposing them, and it’s so good.

Which makes it such a shame that this audio book’s editing is ABYSMAL. The narrator’s performance is good, great even in some of the scenes. But whole thing sounds like it was recorded in a cavern instead of a sound studio. And there are chunks of the book that are of a noticeably different sound quality to the rest of it. The story has three chapters, one for each third of the story, but the audio book has 8 “chapters” marked out with no rhyme or reason for the divisions they chose. The first chapter of the book sounds like it was over-edited, with all the breaths cut out of the narrator’s performance, so the whole story was slamming into you with no pauses for breath. But then later in the book, the editing is nearly nonexistent, with clear breaks where the narrator was presumably turning a page or something because the break didn’t mean the scene was over, like it would have in a good audio book. It’s a crapshoot trying to figure out if some place is a good spot to pause, or if you’re just pausing on the narrator turning a page midway through a sentence.

And the crown jewel of this crappy editing is when an entire paragraph of text was REPEATED — as in, the performance was exactly the same, and the same events played out twice in a row when it made no sense for such a thing to happen. This event actually made me stop playback and redownload the book to make sure I didn’t just have a corrupted version or something. NOPE, it’s EDITED like that! Apparently no-one did a quality pass on this thing! And it was particularly jarring because the author *deliberately* does a stylistic repetition moment in the third act, and the effect of it was marred because I was distracted wondering if the editing had screwed up again.

And it’s such a shame because the story is good and the characters are engaging (if a little stupid sometimes, but they are teenagers). And by the end of it you’re desperately hugging the boys, telling them it’ll be okay.

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I can’t believe this recording is still on here

This book is melodrama bordering on absurdity. Not one character made believable choices. Also, were authors really still using the R word in 2012? I honestly can’t remember, but its presence didn’t age well, regardless. Maybe it’s time for a new edition, but I don’t think it would be worth the effort. The recording itself was marred by not only uninspired and inappropriate reading, but also poor equipment and poor editing. There are pregnant pauses galore, but none of them are in places where a longer pause would be logical for pacing. The quality of this is so far below anything else I have listened to on Audible that I sorta can’t believe it’s still on here.

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