Audio: Evergreen by Buck Turner

Narrated by: Alexander Cendese

Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins

Release date: 01-20-26 by Tantor Media

YA Fiction(to review)

A coming of age YA book with heart and turmoil.

Cole moves with his mother and sister to a small town after his dad died in an accident. He does not want to move, or start a new school. But almost at once he befriends a pretty girl next door. One who carries a heavy past.

He meets new friends, and also does something no one dares to do. Goes up the mountain to talk with the hermit who lives there. The scary old man who is said to have killed 3 teenagers. But Cole is a good guy and together with his new friends he tries to find out what happened to those missing teenagers to clear the name of his new chess partner.

There is also faith as his new friend takes him to church and he tries to deal with the questions of could he have saved his dad if he had prayed harder?

And something unexplainable comes in at the end. I can not tell you of it, but there is something mystical in those woods.

Heart, mystery, first love and friendship.

Good narration. He had a good feel of the story and it flowed very well and I felt these different characters.

Cole Mercer is a young man angry at the world...and for good reason. After the sudden loss of his father, Cole's mother moves them hundreds of miles away from all that is familiar to the sleepy town of Evergreen, North Carolina. He struggles to settle in, but navigating difficult classmates is offset by the beautiful girl next door. And he begins to understand there's something different about this small southern town and the forest that surrounds it, which seems to have more of a presence than it should.

Nothing in Evergreen is quite what it seems.

Listeners will fall in love with Evergreen's southern charm and the love story at its center which transcends time.