Trouble the Saints Audiobook By Alaya Dawn Johnson cover art

Trouble the Saints

A Novel

Preview

Get this deal Try for $0.00
Offer ends January 21, 2025 at 11:59PM ET.
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Trouble the Saints

By: Alaya Dawn Johnson
Narrated by: Neil Shah, Shayna Small
Get this deal Try for $0.00

$14.95/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends January 21, 2025 11:59PM ET. Cancel anytime.

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $20.24

Buy for $20.24

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

"Narrators Shayna Small and Neil Shah transport listeners to 1940s New York in this dark fantasy set against a backdrop of racial tension and brewing war.... Both narrators also excel at a range of accents, making this audiobook a fully immersive experience." (AudioFile Magazine)

The dangerous magic of The Night Circus meets the powerful historical exploration of The Underground Railroad in Alaya Dawn Johnson's timely and unsettling novel, set against the darkly glamorous backdrop of New York City, where an assassin falls in love and tries to change her fate at the dawn of World War II.

Amid the whir of city life, a young woman from Harlem is drawn into the glittering underworld of Manhattan, where she’s hired to use her knives to strike fear among its most dangerous denizens.

Ten years later, Phyllis LeBlanc has given up everything - not just her own past, and Dev, the man she loved, but even her own dreams.

Still, the ghosts from her past are always by her side - and history has appeared on her doorstep to threaten the people she keeps in her heart. And so Phyllis will have to make a harrowing choice, before it’s too late - is there ever enough blood in the world to wash clean generations of injustice?

Trouble the Saints is a dazzling, daring novel - a magical love story, a compelling exposure of racial fault lines - and an altogether brilliant and deeply American saga.

A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Books

“Juju assassins, alternate history, a gritty New York crime story...in a word: Awesome.” (N.K. Jemisin, New York Times best-selling author of The Fifth Season)

©2020 Alaya Dawn Johnson (P)2020 Macmillan Audio
African American Classics Fantasy Fiction Historical New York War Paranormal Heartfelt

What listeners say about Trouble the Saints

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    13
  • 4 Stars
    9
  • 3 Stars
    9
  • 2 Stars
    2
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    19
  • 4 Stars
    7
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    12
  • 4 Stars
    7
  • 3 Stars
    6
  • 2 Stars
    3
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A clear-eyed, purposeful noir; a story of profound love

On one hand, I hesitate to call this a noir, since--for all its bleakness--holds out the promise of a better future; if not in the characters' lifetimes, then someday. But on the other, it hits all the beats: dark tone; morally dubious characters; violence; explicit sex; a criminal setting and a cynical--that is, accurate--view on American history and society. But that really doesn't do it justice. The relationships in the story are so profound; their love for each other so potent. It's the unflinching ugliness of the world, made worth bearing for the love of your community--friends, family; ancestors, descendents--that does it for me. Just marvelous

The performances are also very good; both narrators do a great job of giving each character a distinctive voice, and then mirroring those voices between them

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Lovely, but difficult.

I found it a bit hard to follow with all the jumps between present, and before. BUT the voice acting was exceptional. AND, at the end of the day it's a beautiful love story with some very lovely prose.
I found the story a bit difficult to get through, but some of the verbiage and the idea of the power of love made it worth the listen. For me at least.
Think maybe because I grew up on old black and white movie dialog and voices.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Solid and Thought Provoking

I wish I had known the story was broken into three parts with three different narratives. I was left a bit confused when the plot climaxed a few hours in.
I was very moved by the way the characters are driven by the “gifts” they posses; the way it forces them to think about how they interact with the people around them and the discrimination they are immersed in.
This book kept me reading with themes of privilege, right and wrong, guilt, and the struggle to chose action vs safety, and others over yourself.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!