Lily Clairet, Book 1 (Light Novel)

By: Kaye Ng

Narrated by: Savannah Gilmore

A young girl is arguing with a cherry tree. That's a new one for Lily, who's managed to reach the end of her first year at high school without too much weirdness. Unfortunately for her, it's not long after solving this odd mystery that her untroubled life begins to unravel. Discovering an abandoned room at the end of the music department corridor, she finds that aside from it being utterly run-down, it's also devoid of its sole occupant: Sonata Sonoda, the missing journalism club president.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2014 Kaye Ng (P)2019 Kaye Ng

Hyouka meets Monogatari feat Kyon

So. If you recognize those names in my title then you've probably already given this LN a go.

It's simple, but fun. it has a quick wit and charm about it with a MC that just can't be bothered and has some serious RBF that her friend felt the need to rehabilitate her image.

it's a mystery series that won't leave you reeling and it's really meant for you to solve ahead of time, but is interesting to see how all the pieces fit together at the end.

Much like the Monogatari series you learn about characters from the way they speak and interact rather than actions. So if you enjoy battles of wit and a heaping helping of sarcasm and apathy. Then you will most likely like this book.

One other thing about the narrator. She delivers in a very strange way from what I'd expect from a LN. it's not bad. Just different. It grew on me and I think it gives a unique life to all the characters rather than generic anime girl A, B, and C.

So much fun!

I loved this book! Savannah Rivers has such an amazing voice. Listening to this was a pleasure! Highly recommend!

I enjoyed it.

There are some weird skips in the flow of the narration in the first or second chapter that thankfully don't happen in later chapters. The performance is good but there are some weird pronunciations for some words. Storywise its a lot like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya series. Lily feels a lot like Kyon being pulled around by her eccentric friends.

So glad I took a chance with this one!

This took me by surprise, it really is a book/audible for young to old.
It follows a young girl in high with a typical character profile. But she becomes more a more interesting as the story goes on. If you can think of a high school (ish) Sherlock Holmes / Veronica mars, but much lighter.
Savanna Rivers does a phenomenal job reading and voice acting this book, and is worth listening too just to her acting!
Definitely a must light listen!!

Excellent Slice of Life

Lily Clairet is the epitome of what slice of life writing can be. The main character’s internal dialogue is hilarious, and the imagery used to describe her emotions and reactions to the world happening around her had me wanting to write down quotes constantly. There are some problems with the audio very early on (a little skipping), but they do not persist, and both the book and the performance made for a wonderful 9 hours. Absolutely incredible work. I will be buying the light novels to keep hearing about Lily’s exasperated waltz through high school immediately.

No Thoughts, Head Empty = Chill Times

Lily Clairet is WRITTEN to be an audio-book. The story is made to be dialogue heavy supported with descriptive breaks to help bring the scenes to life in one’s theater of mind. It’s trope-y but not annoying, it’s wholesome with a hint of cringe sometimes. It’s just Lily and her friends living their idyllic high-school life.
Overall, this is just a nice, wholesome story to immerse yourself in. Listen to it when you’ve time to chill, the way the dialogue and interactions are written could inspire you to better write your own.


More thoughts if you want to read them…

The voice’s performance is excellent. I had trouble identifying the characters at first, but that’s because I was trying to put the manga images provided in the accompanying PDF with the characters they represented in my mind. To enjoy the story and learn these characters, I recommend to instead listen to the subtle shifts in tone and pitch of the speaker. She really does an excellent job in making every character feel different enough to know who’s speaking, even if it’s a newly introduced character.

The script for the dialogue is also quite a treat - I mean, the voice can only go so far to tell a story. The well-written script - especially the dialogue - goes a long way to making these characters feel believable. They’re not entirely lifelike - each of the cast is essentially an archetype - but it feels like the author understands how to present them in their best light. It’s nice identifying the archetypes in the characters and seeing them NOT so overly exaggerated, like in manga or anime.

A slow start that quickly picks up

Re-edited and reviewed for the whole series:

It might look like a mystery series but it’s definitely a cozy slice-of-life series with romance. If you’re familiar with Haruhi, Hyouka, and Oregairu, then this will feel familiar.

Even so, if you’re not familiar with the previous series that I mentioned, this is still an amazing series. If I can describe the whole series into one word, it would be **lyrical**; Kaye Ng is a wordsmith – being able to craft so many memorable lines, scenes, and dialogues that will absolutely make you laugh and smile, hook you into Lily’s monologue that is both loquacious and poetic, and you just want to cheer her on as she build her bonds with the people around her though bantering, bickering, being a softie, and occasionally taking a social gamble.

The Lily from volume 1 to 7 becomes a completely different person that you’ll feel proud of. Besides Lily, the cast of characters around Lily are a treasure filled with hilarity, sass, silly, and a delight to learn about. Also, this series has re-reading value too; Ng sprinkles hints and foreshadowing throughout the story and you just can’t help it but do that Leo Pointing meme.

Savannah Gilmore is a fantastic narrator; she reads the series with emotions and nuances, especially in Lily’s monologue — it’s not flat, monotone, or as if she’s doing a cold read. She gives life to the cast of characters that shows up, even to the minor characters that pop up in the story. And just like the series, her narration gets better at each volume.

Give this series a try, Lily’s story gets *better and better* at every volume.

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I bought this a long looong time ago during one of those Audible sales. I bought this because at the time, narrated light novels was pretty rare but I didn’t listen to it until recently. The story starts off pretty slow but it after a few hours getting listening to it, it’s a fun and cosy story and I’m totally glad I gave this story a chance.

This is a slice of life story that revolves around a high school girl, who gives off Kyon vibes, and gets dragged around by her eccentric and colorful friends. This LN has it all; a mischievous and cheerful girl who is full of energy, a stern friend who takes care of the MC, a soft spoken and well mannered girl, an athletic club president with a rough exterior, and a popular school idol with a hidden secret.

What makes this book fun to listen to is the MC’s wit and how she interacts with each character. The writing is absolutely brilliant, similar to Monogatari levels of metaphors and descriptions.

Savannah Gilmore has done an amazing job narrating the story and makes it fun to listen to.

I’d give an additional star for including a pdf; it’s all illustrations and the author is brilliant enough to describe each character down to a T but illustrations really adds to it all

Incredible performance and great story

First off I want to gush over how much I appreciated a light-novel style book appearing on Audible! I drive a lot, and walk often when not driving, and I'd love to sate my appetite for light novels while mobile. Thank you!

Next, the performance was superb. Ms Rivers was clear and her diction over a broad array of words was generally spot on. There were a few pronunciations that irked me, but that could have been regional dialect so I let it slide. Her voice acting was fun, especially for the school idol. She breathed life into these characters in a very special way. I'll be watching for more performances by her for sure.

The story was fun. The characters were enjoyable. I agree, the main character was a hoot - snarky and relatable. This book provided eight hours of smiles and enjoyment, and not a few laughs, on an otherwise monotonous drive. I do recommend it and I have a high bar. That said, I do have a few reservations about the story. Ms Ng likes to be verbose and can substitute a lot of big words for a clear description. I imagine it would have been troublesome and my eyes would have skipped over it if I had been reading the text. It's not that I don't have or appreciate a big vocabulary, but it can get in the way of a story if overused.

I also didn't get a sense of what the conflict was going to be until the second half of the story. It developed *very* slowly, but it wasn't boring because Ms Ng's strength is in dialog, both internal and external. Her characters were fun, especially when brought to life by Ms Rivers. Ms Rivers made these characters LIVE in my mind and I dearly hope if Book 2 comes to audible that Ms Rivers will read it. She's a great complement to Ms Ng's writing talent. ;-)

Great LN that's a mix of Hyoka and Monogatari

There's a surprising lack of Light Novels on Audible so I decided to go ahead and check this one out. I was really surprised by how much I liked it. It's about Lily who is just a run of the mill high school student that is surrounded by colorful characters always trying to make her life more complicated. The book is mostly flowerly dialogue, reminding me of Nisioisin's Monogatari series. I love the metaphors Lily comes up with when complaining about her classmates or how the middle schooler talks to herself and is often "flummoxed."

The story itself reminds me of Hyoka, as Lily becomes sort of a detective solving mundane mysteries (such as who stole a middle schooler's cookie). Lily reluctantly goes about solving these mysteries, which, upon retrospect, had clues to help the reader as well. I also want to mention the names of the characters' names are great (such as "Hina Hinata").

I hope the sequels get released on Audible, l would love to listen to them as well.

a cute and cozy listen

it's a slice of life light novel with a very fun and narrator courtesy of Miss Rivers. shame the rest of the series is not on here, but I think I'll be picking up the rest on Amazon. what a wonderful listen