Audiobook Review: A Tangle of Knots

A Tangle of Knots by Lisa Graff, read by Katie Honaker, Fenruary 5, 2013. 4 hours and 9 minutes. Published by Penguin Audio. Source: publisher.

Told in multiple viewpoints, A Tangle of Knots is a magnificent puzzle. In a slightly magical world where everyone has a Talent, eleven-year-old Cady is an orphan with a phenomenal Talent for cake baking. But little does she know that fate has set her on a journey from the moment she was born. And her destiny leads her to a mysterious address that houses a lost luggage emporium, an old recipe, a family of children searching for their own Talents, and a Talent Thief who will alter her life forever. However, these encounters hold the key to Cady's past and how she became an orphan. If she's lucky, fate may reunite her with her long-lost parent.
Lisa Graff adds a pinch of magic to a sharply crafted plot to create a novel that will have readers wondering about fate and the way we're all connected.

First Sentence:

The line for the number 36 bus out of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, was the longest at the station.

Story

Seriously, if I could find the right words this review would probably be one of my longest because Lisa Graff's characters, and the interwoven story line between said characters, is enough to make me ramble on and on.
   A Tangle of Knots surprised me in some many way. But one of the things that really made this such a fascinating book was that it was told from the perspective of so many different characters and that each of the characters used to narrate the story were of widely varying ages. I did not think that the author, Lisa Graff, was going to be able to pull off a story with some many narratives but she did a wonderful  job of creating a cast of characters that you'll love with a story that easily flows from one point to another connecting them into one whole.

Cady is one of the reasons I enjoyed this book so much, I loved that while she was an orphan you never got the sense that she pitied herself or anything of that sort. While I loved that she never seemed down over the circumstances that kept her from finding the right family early on, I really enjoyed listening to her story because she was such a nice character and was always thinking of others. It was in short, a nice change from the majority of characters I've read about where their main interest lies on their own feelings.
   Now, I'm not going to tell you about the rest of characters because their stories are so closely woven into Cady's and the endgame of the book. Besides you know how I hate spoilers. Just trust me on this one account, you'll love them once you read this book.

One of the things that makes A Tangle of Knots so good is that the plot moves rapidly and that there are, like, no slow points in the entire book. In all seriousness, this book felt so short because the story and writing just pulled me in and made me stay up long into the night to see how things would play out for Cady and the rest of the cast.

If you plan on reading this one, I would highly suggest making sure you have some cake to eat while reading it because this book will make you crave cake the entire time you read it. Which was so not cool because I was listening to it in bed before going to sleep and in a hotel with no hope of getting any cake.

Narration

This will sound out of character for me in regards to the narration of an audio book, but good golly, Katie Honaker blew this one out of the water. Her narration of A Tangle of Knots was simply brilliant from beginning to end and I am just impressed with her reading of the entire cast of characters.

What I really loved most about Ms Honaker's narration would have to be that she did such an amazing job, but what makes her narration of A Tangle of Knots even better is that the book is told from the perspective of a great many of characters. I loved how each of the characters sounded so distinctive from one another. If I were only allowed to recommend this based on the reader it would be cake.

While the narration was generally amazing, the only thing I did not like about it where the cake recipes because they made me hungry. Hungry for cake. So, what I did not like is kind of trivial in this one in regards to the narration,but that is because I for once have nothing to complain about in the narration.

Final Verdict: I delicious tale of love, friendship, and how one decision can change the course of everything.

A Tangle of Knots earns 4.5 out of 5 Pineapples.