Review: Viva Durant and the Secret of the Silver Buttons by Ashli St. Armant

Title: Viva Durant and The Secret of the Silver Buttons
Author: Ashli St. Armant
Publisher: Audible Audio
Publication Date: October 31, 2019
Genre: Mystery, Young Adult, Fiction

BLURB

Plucky 14-year-old Viva Durant heads to New Orleans every summer to spend time with her loving but stern grandmother, known as Gram. After Gram reads Viva an article in the local paper about a missing treasure related to the world-famous song, “Miss Mary Mack,” Viva traverses the Crescent City on an epic adventure to solve the mystery. Along the way she meets some of the city’s most colorful characters as her journey takes her to the French Quarter, a jazz club, a creepy cemetery, and even the circus. Can Viva rise to the occasion and solve this musical mystery? Listeners will find Viva Durant and the Secret of the Silver Buttons a joy to listen to! (via Goodreads)

THOUGHTS

I’m kind of in an audiobook marathon after my magnificent experience from The Starless Sea so I decided to download this as a free credit from my new Audible membership. Viva Durant is a cute mystery story that happened while 14-year old Viva spent a summer in her grandmother’s house in New Orleans. Honestly, I found the this short audiobook cute and enjoyable. Viva has this ability to memorize anything as long as she put it in a song. I was surprised to hear actual singing as well as the actual jazz notes that the story denotes. Listening to this audiobook reminded me so much of those early children shows, especially with those “ding” moments when the protagonist figures something out. The narration by Bahni Turpin was spot on and the accent added layers to the narrative. This is one of those audiobooks that makes me appreciate the efforts in producing these pieces and made me realize that I need to listen to audiobooks more often.

To cap it all off, if you’re looking for a short story to listen to – try out Viva Durant. This is a whimsical mystery story that will surely take you out for a ride.