Happy Booker

I loved this story, despite my issues with the audio version that I'll get to at the end of this review. It was fairly easy for me to sink into Katsa's world from early on in the book, her feelings regarding her grace and what she was made to do with it, and how she saw herself as a person. I loved how her feelings changed after she met Po, and she started seeing things a little differently. The romance between Katsa and Po was believable and not overdone imo. A lot of the other reviews I read before starting this book talked a lot about Katsa being opposed to marriage and children. However, this made complete sense to me in the context of the story. Why would Katsa, raised as she was, find the concept of legally giving over her freedom to a man to be remotely attractive to her? She didn't really get into her reasons why she didn't want children but as I assume Katsa was fairly young in this book, I don't consider it a negative that she didn't feel her only path to happiness was as a wife and a mother. Overall, I think this was a great book and I'm interested to see how she continues the series. Now, as far as the audio version of this book, I have a lot more to say. I initially thought that the "full cast" audio would be off-putting for me, but it either grew on me or as I became more invested in the story, I no longer noticed. However, the music.... THE MUSIC!! That was the most annoying thing I've ever listened to in any audio book. It was constant, between every chapter, used to punctuate jokes, played during the sex scene, and most annoyingly during climactic scenes almost overpowering the narrators voice. I HATED it and strongly recommend that if you're going to read Graceling, get the actual book.