
Our Beautiful Boys
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Shahjehan Khan
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By:
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Sameer Pandya
About this listen
When the star players on a high school football team are accused of violence by another student, their secrets—and the secrets of their parents—threaten to shatter their entire community in a gripping novel of race, class, and privilege from the author of Members Only.
“Timely and timeless . . . gorgeous yet understated storytelling . . . The struggles in Our Beautiful Boys are not exceptional dilemmas but rather uncomfortably common situations.”—Nic Stone, The New York Times Book Review
Vikram Shastri has always been a good kid. He’s got a 4.6 GPA, listens to his parents, barely hits the parties, and is on track for a fancy college. But when he gets the chance to play on his high school football team, his world suddenly starts to shift. Basking in their recent victory, Vikram and his teammates Diego and MJ attend a party at an abandoned house in the Southern California foothills, located right below three ancient caves. They find themselves lost in the dark of night in one of the caves, carried away by male bravado, with a classmate who has annoyed them for years.
But when the kid emerges with injuries that prove to be more serious than the all-star boys intended, they are suspended for the rest of the season, and the boys’ parents are brought in to manage the situation. As the parents try to protect their boys, they are also managing their own complicated family and professional lives. While the parents work with, and against, one another to figure out the truth about that night, the boys must come to terms with how much of their own secrets they’re willing to reveal to clear their names.
Insightful and deeply human, Our Beautiful Boys is about race and class, parents trying to raise good boys in our fraught times, and the conflict we find when all of these slam together. It’s about the kids inside each parent and the games the world makes each of us play.
©2025 Sameer Pandya (P)2025 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Timely and timeless . . . Pandya presents flawed but understandable people trying to navigate a murky situation with high stakes: the futures of these boys. Above all else, [it] is a book about the lies we knowingly or unwittingly tell ourselves.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Pandya reveals not just the secret heart of adolescence but also the fragile veneer of an adult world striving—and often failing—to guide it.”—UCSB, The Current
“Our Beautiful Boys is a gift arriving in bookstores, coming in like a lion, as approachable as a lamb. The novel’s prose is pellucid, straightforward, enveloping the reader, insinuating in the way serious fiction turns us in the culture, facets our seeing, our understanding.”—Zyzzyva
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Story
Steven Mills has reached a crossroads. His wife and son have left, and they may not return. Which leaves him determined to find out what happened to his own father, a brilliant, charismatic professor who disappeared in 1984 when Steve was twelve, on a wave of ignominy. As Steve drives up the coast of California, seeking out his father’s friends, family members, and former colleagues, the novel offers us tantalizing glimpses into Steve’s childhood—his parents’ legendary pool parties, the black-and-white films on the backyard projector, secrets shared with his closest friend.
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Good writing
- By Suzanna on 04-27-25
By: Andrew Porter
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The Family Recipe
- A Novel
- By: Carolyn Huynh
- Narrated by: Vyvy Nguyen, David Lee Huynh
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Duc Tran, the eccentric founder of the Vietnamese sandwich chain Duc’s Sandwiches, has decided to retire. No one has heard from his wife, Evelyn, in two decades. She abandoned the family without a trace, and clearly doesn’t want anything to do with Duc, the business, or their kids. But the money has to go to someone. With the help of the shady family lawyer, Duc informs his five estranged adult children that to receive their inheritance, his four daughters must revitalize run-down shops in old-school Little Saigon locations across America: Houston, San Jose, New Orleans, and Philadelphia.
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Could have been something
- By Kraig Odabashian on 06-11-25
By: Carolyn Huynh
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Hard Town
- Kurt Argento, Book 2
- By: Adam Plantinga
- Narrated by: Charles Halford
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
After having survived a deadly prison break, ex-Detroit cop Kurt Argento is ready for some quiet. Still working through his grief over the passing of his wife, Argento finds himself house-sitting for a friend with his loyal companion, Hudson, a Chow Chow-Shepard mix. It's a simple life, picking up odd jobs here and there, but it's one that Argento is content to live. Then Kristin Reed shows up with her young son, Ethan, and begs Argento to help find her missing husband... and Argento tells her he'd just be in the way.
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Great writing
- By David Warren on 05-05-25
By: Adam Plantinga
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Theft
- A Novel
- By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Narrated by: Ashley Zhangazha
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
At the turn of the twenty-first century, three young people come of age in Tanzania. Karim returns to his sleepy hometown after university with new swagger and ambition. Fauzia glimpses in him a chance at escape from a smothering upbringing. The two of them offer a haven to Badar, a poor boy still unsure if the future holds anything for him at all. As tourism, technology, and unexpected opportunities and perils reach their quiet corner of the world, bringing, each arrives at a different understanding of what it means to take your fate into your own hands.
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Potting more than a slice of life
- By Susan on 06-07-25
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True Life in Uncanny Valley
- By: Deb Caletti
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Eleanor, like so many others, is used to watching her famous father from afar. To the world, Hugo Harrison is the brilliant and charismatic tech genius whose AI inventions seem to create a better new reality. But to Eleanor, whose mother had an affair with Hugo years ago, he is something even more intriguing, and dangerous—a secret. When Eleanor’s spying leads her to a posting for a live-in summer nanny job for Hugo's young son—her half-brother—she knows she has to apply. This is finally her chance to learn about her father, his family, and the life that could have been hers.
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Flawed but good
- By Pink Amy on 03-22-25
By: Deb Caletti
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I Leave It Up to You
- A Novel
- By: Jinwoo Chong
- Narrated by: Daniel K. Isaac
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A coma can change a man, but the world Jack Jr. awakens to is one he barely recognizes. His advertising job is history, his Manhattan apartment is gone, and the love of his life has left him behind. He’s been asleep for two years; with no one to turn to, he realizes it’s been ten years since he last saw his family.
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Great listen
- By Bri on 03-29-25
By: Jinwoo Chong
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Claire, Darling
- A Novel
- By: Callie Kazumi
- Narrated by: Bronwen Price
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Claire is excited to drop off a surprise workday lunch for her fiancé, Noah. It’s their anniversary, after all. But when the receptionist tells her that no one with Noah’s name works there, Claire thinks there must be a mistake. Noah isn’t picking up her calls. Her texts go unanswered. It turns out Noah has a different life . . . one with a beautiful girlfriend, a beautiful house. Claire was never really in the picture.
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A must listen!
- By Cynthia Jackson on 03-15-25
By: Callie Kazumi
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Vanishing World
- A Novel
- By: Sayaka Murata
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
As a girl, Amane realizes with horror that her parents “copulated” in order to bring her into the world, rather than using artificial insemination, which became the norm in the mid-twentieth century. Amane strives to get away from what she considers an indoctrination in this strange “system” by her mother, but her infatuations with both anime characters and real people have a sexual force that is undeniable.
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Excellent
- By Chris Reich on 04-28-25
By: Sayaka Murata
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Killer Potential
- A Novel
- By: Hannah Deitch
- Narrated by: Kristen Sieh, Daru Oda
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
A scholarship kid with straight As and big dreams, Evie Gordon always thought she was special, that she’d be someone. But after graduating from an elite university, she finds herself drowning in debt and working as an SAT tutor for the super-rich of Los Angeles. Everything changes one Sunday, when she arrives for her weekly lesson at the Victors’ Beverly Hills estate and, in lieu of a bored teenager, finds the bloody remains of the parents strewn through their beautiful back garden, and a woman crying for help within a closet.
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Outstanding story, totally captivating
- By Fran on 06-16-25
By: Hannah Deitch
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The Boy from the Sea
- A Novel
- By: Garrett Carr
- Narrated by: Stanley Townsend
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Ireland 1973, a baby boy is found on the beach of a close-knit fishing village. Fisherman Ambrose Bonnar offers to bring the child into his own family: his son, Declan, wife, Christine, and up the lane, Christine's sister and aging father. The townspeople remain fascinated by the baby, now named Brendan, as he grows into a strange yet charismatic young man.
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A Rrespite
- By Penny Reeder on 05-31-25
By: Garrett Carr
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Audition
- A Novel
- By: Katie Kitamura
- Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
- Length: 4 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, young—young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day–partner, parent, creator, muse–and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately.
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Bizarre
- By Kevin on 04-23-25
By: Katie Kitamura
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Nesting
- A Novel
- By: Roisín O'Donnell
- Narrated by: Louisa Harland
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
On a bright spring afternoon, Ciara Fay makes a split-second decision that will change everything. Grabbing an armful of clothes off the clothesline, she straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. Head spinning, all she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe—and that this time, when she leaves, she must stay away. On the surface, she has a perfect life: her husband, Ryan, is a good provider, sometimes even kind and attentive, from a nice Irish family, and they have another baby on the way.
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Jarring narration at times
- By Anonymous User on 04-04-25
By: Roisín O'Donnell
Perhaps it was the subject matter of this one (focused on teenagers), but I enjoyed the author's first book more. I connected with the protagonist's fallibility and good intentions. I'm looking forward to Mr. Pandya's next offering.
Cool Kids Break Bad
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