Is it that time again? Looking at my calendar, it is! My outstanding pick was a recommendation from a kindred book friend who said I must listen to the audiobook. Now I’m recommending it to anyone who will listen that you must listen to the audiobook.

I was crushing on Barrie Kreinik and Peter Ganim who narrate Nancy Wake and Henri Fiocca. Kreinik brought the French accent by way of New Zealand perfectly along with the zest and spunk of the real-life Nancy Wake that Ariel Lawhon presents to readers in Code Name Helene. Wake was a woman on a mission of resistance living many lives at once at the onset of World War II. And Fiocca was the man she fell in love with and married. Ganim brings the sex appeal to their romance through the ears from the pages.

It’s not often that I feel a certain way about narrators as my friend Stacey Rattner does, but when they’re good, I can see how it can happen. Yet their presentation can only be built from the impassioned foundation of Lawhon herself to approach this subject matter. I was lost in the details, the adventure, the romance, the espionage. It was dangerous and it sometimes had to be funny. It needed to be bawdy but also indulgent. And the treachery!

If I’ve said nothing that has stuck, remember this: listen to Code Name Helene by Ariel Lawhon.