Labyrinth Lost

By: Zoraida Cordova

Narrated by: Almarie Guerra

Nothing says Happy Birthday like summoning the spirits of your dead relatives. Alex is a bruja, the most powerful witch in a generation and she hates magic. At her Deathday celebration, Alex performs a spell to rid herself of her power. But it backfires. Her whole family vanishes into thin air, leaving her alone with Nova, a brujo boy she can't trust. A boy whose intentions are as dark as the strange marks on his skin. The only way to get her family back is to travel with Nova to Los Lagos, a land in-between, as dark as Limbo and as strange as Wonderland.

©2016 Zoraida Cordova (P)2016 Recorded Books

Absolutely perfect

I don't really have words for how wonderful this book was. Intersectionally feminist with a wholly unique plot, and beautiful prose to boot. I don't know if there will be more in this series. While I'd be thrilled if there were, this is also a beautiful stand-alone.

enjoyable

This story is beautiful. I really like it a lot, I totally recommend it, also the performance was so good.

Great magical story

It was a great magic story about brujas. I see that some people have stated the narrator was not good, but I don’t think that’s true. I’m originally from Mexico so Spanish is my first language and I think she was great.

Fascinating urban fantasy

It's quite incredible that I actually enjoyed this book. You see, it started with three strikes against it.

1, it's urban fantasy, which I very rarely enjoy.

2, it's written in first person, which drives me nuts.

3, it's written in present tense, which is almost never done well and almost always feels like a gimmick to create artificial immediacy (and usually fails to do so).

So, you might ask, why did I read this book?

Well, 2 reasons.
1, I'm trying to branch out into books I wouldn't normally read.
And 2, I'm a long time listener of the Writing Excuses podcast and they recommended this book a while back.

So here we are.

To start things off, the narrator was quite good. She has a good assortment of voices, well chosen pacing and tempo, and skillful vocal inflections. My one complaint is the inconsistency (or, to be more accurate, global consistency) of her accents. Every character speaks the Spanish words with the correct accent, but no character speaks in accented English. In fairness, no one is described as doing so, by some characters felt to me as though they should/would.

Okay, the story did start a bit slowly with a slice of Alex's daily life. However, once the story starts moving there is a lot of action, intrigue, and fascinating mythology.

There is a relatively obvious twist near the end and a sweet, if predictable, romance.

I spent a fair portion of the book not being overly fond of Alex, as willful ignorance is something that really irritates me.

In the end, though, she redeems herself and becomes a wonderful character.

I'm not certain if I'll continue the series, as I'm still hesitant to willfully enter into a book with three strikes against it from the get go. But we shall see.

Great book ..

It really draws you in with the storyline, can't wait to read the next book..

Excellent story and performance

Really love the diversity in this book as well as the worldbuilding. The characters were interesting and the narrator did a great job of bringing them to life!

I loved everything

The performance was perfect! I loved this story from the start. Finally a book I can relate to as a BIWOC.

Witchcraft

Awesome touches of Spanish throughout the book. The love of family are so beautifully depicted throughout the twists and turns of the story.

Lovely Read!

Had shocking twists o hadn’t expected. Overall enjoyable. Felt some places lagged but overall a great YA fantasy

Good YA Story

An excellent set up and plot, but I fell asleep listening on an airplane and missed a few chapters. I didn't feel like I needed to go back and re-listen. I'm glad I read it as it was a good, YA story full of magic and twists, but not my favorite in this genre.