The Library War

By: Cecily Wolfe

Narrated by: Krystal Chiarolla

Best friends with secret crushes - on each other!

Connor and Maya have volunteered at the neighborhood library together since middle school, but when a grant makes a paid summer position available, their relationship crumbles as they compete to prove which of them is more worthy of the job.

The third YA novel from award-winning, best-selling author Cecily Wolfe looks at friendship under pressure, with humor, drama, and misunderstandings that ultimately don't stand a chance against true love.

©2019 Cecily Wolfe (P)2020 Cecily Wolfe

good

Loved it !! this story. the narrator is so fantastic it's like your really there!! good overall

Could Have Been

This book could have been really great! I am a huge fan of the 'friends to lovers' trope (with my favorite being "Just one of the Groomsmen"). With the set up of two friends exiting high school and both competing for the same job the potential for greatness was there. However the payoff fell a little bit short for me as it turns out that the job they are both competing for is just an over the summer paid position and the complications of carrying on a long distance relationship is mentioned but never addressed in detail. In regards to the temp position at the library I felt the stakes were not high enough for their friendship to have dissolved as much as it did. If say Maya had been wanting the position as a means to switch over to becoming a full time librarian to fulfill some long time dream she had that would have been more impactful. As it stood I couldn't' understand why neither would talk of finding a different job or about potentially splitting hours at the library (since it seemed that the librarian valued both of them equally initially and had expressed sadness that there weren't enough funds for both). If their friendship was really as strong as they said why wouldn't they have talked about different options? Neither of them wanted to be librarians and you can't tell me that there was nothing else in the whole town that couldn't have satisfied either Maya's need for money and Connor's need for teaching kudos.
Jason and Kaylee really ended up getting the short end of the stick in this book too and I will say I got kinda of bored with the repetitious "Oh no I like you, but I set you up with X! Now what ever can I do? I can't tell you that I like you!" over and over and over again that came into play surrounding the addition of the aforementioned characters. Both Connor and Maya were ignoring Jason and Kaylee or otherwise using them as pawns in their dispute. I also felt that this was an un-necessary element that was added in because neither Jason or Kaylee really represented a threat to Maya & Connors relationship (as is evidenced by the ending and their helping throughout). Things that could have been further explored are what a college relationship would mean, or negotiating different working schedules when they had previously been used to working with one another all the time. That would have, in my opinion, made for stronger content.
In short, it had a lot of potential to be greatness as the bones of a great story where there but it got lost in repetition of the same things and talking points and fails to utilize more impactful dramatic themes.
Also, as a note the narration in this by the end had me wanting to tear my hair out. The narrators diction is not for me and if I hear the word library pronounced "lie-berry" one more time I think I will have an aneurism!

Not a fan.

I should have known at the very beginning when the narrator repeated who the author and narrator were that this wasn’t the right book for me. I really should have just stopped there … but I didn’t. How had that gotten passed whoever was in charge of releasing the audiobook? Did no one bother to listen to it after the narration was complete?

In all honesty, I have no clue why I didn’t just stop listening. There were so many issues. The story did nothing for me. It was like listening to the weather. Wait… depending on the location, I think I would have found that more interesting than this story. I’m sorry to the author, no matter how many 5-star reviews she has, this was a poorly written story, in my opinion.

The fact the story is all about two characters fighting over who’s going to get the summer library job, then not revealing who the winner was by the end of the story? Really?

I found it … interesting? I don’t know if that’s the right word. The fact that Mia and Connor are fighting over a paying job at the library that they’d only just found out about, Mia acting like she’d been trying for it for a long time, well it just didn’t work for me. I mean, why had she been volunteering at the library for so long when she knew she’d need money for college at the end of senior year? Why would she think Connor was trying to trick/manipulate her by kissing her, giving her an ice cream sandwich so he could have the job? No …. I get they were kids, but they were almost adults, not middle-schoolers. Had they only just met/became friends? Did she not know him at all? If Conner didn’t support her in getting the job than Connor wasn’t the right type of friend for her? Really, Mia?

Then with the ending, they makeup and, all of a sudden, a horse appears and they’re riding off into the sunset. Are you serious? Any “romance” that the author wanted the reader to hear or feel or some other emotion between the main characters wasn’t there. I never felt either character loved the other. If I had to choose one, I’d say Connor had more lovey-dovey feelings toward Mia than her to him. On that note, I just didn’t like Mia. She was a selfish, uninteresting character. Although Connor wasn’t that better.

Moving on … I didn’t like the narrator at all. I’m sorry, but she makes me wonder how some people think they can become narrators, to begin with. While she had an upbeat voice, that was it. This is the second story, almost in a row, where the narrator pronounced “library” as “libarry” and forgetting the first “r” in “librarian.” Come on, narrator! It’s libRary. I swear every time she said “libarry,” I wanted to scream. There were several words I picked up on that were mispronounced. For example, “Vitally” was pronounced as “Vially” and “Gravelly” was pronounced as “Grave-ly.” And what was with adding emphasis to like every other word? Was that how it was written? I doubt it. Adding emphasis to the “t’s” in “important” or “importantly.” It didn’t work for me. She spoke way too fast for my liking; I tried to slow the book down, but that didn’t work. With her speed-talking, there were so many times when she’d be zooming through the words then suddenly slow down as though she lost her place, was going to say a different word (realized she didn’t know the next word), or I have no clue why. That meant there were no pauses between scene breaks/new character POV, so that didn’t help either. It was really annoying. There was no differentiation between the characters’ voices, so oftentimes, I had no clue who was talking. Even when a character was angry or spoke quietly, it’s like the narrator didn’t care and just continued in her super-fast voice. Did she get paid more if she was able to finish the narration in a shorter time? Lastly, there were a few times when the narration, a specific line, was repeated.

Questions/Comments:

I can only imagine the mistakes (grammar-related) that I would have found had I read the book. I mean the narrator spoke so fast, it was hard to confirm that there weren’t more mistakes than what I was hearing. For example, Connor, his date, and Jason are sitting in the cafeteria and Mia comes in “nodding as she avoidING looking at them again.” Or “Her arm under his fingers were less tense then it has [HAD] been.” Or when Mia was wondering about the birds. “Did the birds have a leader telling them where they should be and where they should be heading?” Isn’t that saying the same thing? Or there when Mia and Connor shook hands in a peace offering. Per Mia’s POV: “He acted as though he didn’t want to let go. He didn’t.” How would she have known he really didn’t want to let go? It’s written (or sounds to me) like that last part was Connor’s POV.

I requested another audiobook by this author and I’m very hesitant about listening to it. Wish me luck!

I received a free audiobook version in exchange for an unbiased review.

okay

I didn't like the narrator. I don't know if I would have liked the story better with a different one. When they finally got together the book was over it was the last few minutes. I wish there was more of them as a couple.

library wars

in this book, two best friends fight over a job that the both want and their growing feelings for each other. the story is cute, but not exactly for me. I am sure that someone will really enjoy this, but it's not my normal read.

This was okay for me.

This was just okay for me. I felt like the writing itself was good, but the story got really repetitive and the adults in the story were unnecessarily mean. I also think the conflict between the two MCs was not really resolved. After the whole book was dedicated to that conflict, they probably should have had more of a talk about where they went wrong. I was a little disappointed. There were spots where sections were repeated and the narrator wasn't a great fit.

Loved this Teenage Angst Story

I loved this story about teenage love and all of the worries that come around during senior year. It was great, the narration was good but I wish there was more differentiation between the voices of Connor and Maya as it was sometimes hard to understand who was speaking. Other than that the story was great!

It's pronounced "library"

This review is based on an ALC audiobook received for free from Audiobook BOOM. I am not being paid to review this book and what I write here is my own opinion. Maya and Connor have always been friends, but when a single paid position becomes available at the library where they’ve both been volunteering forever that friendship suffers when they decide they want it. Maya needs it because she needs the income. It’s not clear why Connor wants it. Their relationship is further strained as it evolves from casual friendship to discussions of relationships with other people, and especially prom plans. The fact that everyone in their school seems oddly obsessed with their behavior doesn’t help at all. There are a lot of instances where Connor wants to reach out to touch Maya, or maybe kiss her, or otherwise touch her in a more-than-friends way. It starts so early in the book that it doesn’t really seem to add much dramatic or romantic tension to the story. And, similarly, she keeps baiting him by pretending to be interested in other guys, to the point where those moments lose their significance. They end up kissing about halfway through the approximately-a-month-ago period and it goes very, very badly because Maya gets suspicious of Connor’s motives. The novel’s first chapter takes place about a month after the bulk of the action begins. The narrative point of view is inconsistent in that it is either extended instances of limited third person (when the main characters are not occupying the same space) or bounces between the two of them (when they are in the same space). Because these perspective shifts are not signaled within chapters, it can be a little jarring, at least in audiobook form. Perhaps in print there are visual indicators. It’s nice to hear how much the two of them love the library, and it’s clear that Wolfe has spoken with librarians or has library experience, but Connor’s attitude toward shelf-reading is baffling. If he’d really rather scrub toilets than shelf-read, he has no business applying for a library job. It’s a really important task, and (speaking only for myself, but as a librarian) very relaxing. Ultimately it’s moot, though, given the way the book ends. Narrator Krystal Chiarolla was not a great choice for this book. For one thing, she keeps saying “lie-berry” and “lie-berry-in.” In a book about library volunteers, this is an excruciating mispronunciation to hear over and over. She also attempts to add interest by speaking louder and tends to make everything uncomfortably emotional sounding by adding too much emphasis to words that aren’t really that important, which makes it difficult to focus on information that actually is important. Additionally, she tends to over-enunciate her Ts. That said, I appreciate Chiarolla’s quick speech, since I often have to listen to audiobooks at 1.25x or 1.5x speed in order for them to sound normal, but the pace may be too fast for some listeners.

Great story line

I loved the story and the growing friends to more plot line. The realistic conviction of the characters. But if I’m being 100% the narration didn’t do it the justice it deserved. I found it to be very monotone. During the dialogue scenes it made it hard to track who was speaking because the voices didn’t differentiate enough.

The story itself is well developed. The growth of our young cast struggling with the thought of a best friend as more was amazingly captured. The doubt that crept into their mind, the strain of being pitted against each other for a job and the conflict of double dating was easily visualized.

The Library War

This book has a hallmark feeling to it, so if you like those types then this one will be perfect. You have best friends that are falling for each other but too scared to tell and the drama begins. I loved listening to this book and seeing how they will finally come out and tell each other. A great, clean listen with really great narration as well.