Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Room Away from the Wolves
    A Room Away from the Wolves
    A Room Away from the Wolves
    Audiobook8 hours

    A Room Away from the Wolves

    Written by Nova Ren Suma

    Narrated by Sandy Rustin

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Bina has never forgotten the time she and her mother ran away from home. Her mother promised they would hitchhike to the city to escape Bina's cruel father and start over. But before they could even leave town, Bina had a new stepfather and two new stepsisters, and a humming sense of betrayal pulling apart the bond with her mother-a bond Bina thought was unbreakable. Eight years later, after too many lies and with trouble on her heels, Bina finds herself on the side of the road again, the city of her dreams calling for her. She has an old suitcase, a fresh black eye, and a room waiting for her at Catherine House, a young women's residence in Greenwich Village with a tragic history, a vow of confidentiality, and dark, magical secrets. There, Bina is drawn to her enigmatic downstairs neighbor Monet, a girl who is equal parts intriguing and dangerous. As Bina's lease begins to run out, and nightmare and memory get tangled, she will be forced to face the terrible truth of why she's come to Catherine House and what it will take for her to leave . . .
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateSep 4, 2018
    ISBN9781980011422
    A Room Away from the Wolves
    Author

    Nova Ren Suma

    Nova Ren Suma was a fellow in fiction with the New York Foundation for the Arts and received an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. She is the author of Imaginary Girls and she lives in New York. Find out more at novaren.com or follow her on Twitter at @novaren.

    More audiobooks from Nova Ren Suma

    Related to A Room Away from the Wolves

    Related audiobooks

    YA Horror For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Bone Shard Daughter

      Sep 9, 2020

      RELEASED 10 SEPTEMBER 448 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Andrea Stewart Publisher Orbit Books Epic fantasy has long had a thing for One True Kings. You know the drill: a dreadful tyrant is murdering people for fun and generally imperilling t

      1 min read

    • Article

      Descent

      Jun 14, 2022

      People got out in strange ways. No stranger, I suppose, than the ways they got in. One year an American military helicopter flew too low over an Italian ski village, killing two families headed up the lift. A woman at Hillcrest had Italian citizenshi

      22 min read

    • Article

      It’s Come to This

      Sep 1, 2021

      It’s Come to This
      16 min read

    • Article

      THE Dark Light

      Oct 28, 2020

      THE Dark Light
      9 min read

    • Article

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • Article

      In Search Of Sanctuary

      Jan 5, 2024

      In Search Of Sanctuary
      16 min read

    • Article

      Ursula K. Le Guin

      Jun 15, 2018

      He was thinking of Lookfar, abandoned long ago, beached on the sands of Selidor. Little of her would be left by now, a plank or two down in the sand maybe, a bit of driftwood on the western sea. As he drifted near sleep he began to remember sailing t

      15 min read

    • Article

      New World

      Aug 2, 2018

      New World
      2 min read

    • Article

      ‘Starling Days’: Featured Fiction from Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

      Apr 7, 2020

      In today's edition of featured fiction, we present an excerpt from Rowan Hisayo Buchanan's latest novel, Starling Days. The post ‘Starling Days’: Featured Fiction from Rowan Hisayo Buchanan appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Somebody Else Sold The World

      Nov 1, 2020

      & before I knew it, the violet skyflagged with the sun’s violentdemands: for magnolias in bloom,for natural light, anyplace withoutlocks or doors. Different kindsof masks for being & breathing.The antagonists with their vanitytans sang the usual jing

      3 min read

    • Article

      Estella’s Fate

      May 17, 2023

      Estella’s Fate
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Living Days

      Nov 4, 2019

      The Living Days
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Man I Should Have Married

      Dec 29, 2019

      The Man I Should Have Married
      11 min read

    • Article

      Sweet Fantasy

      Nov 20, 2021

      Sweet Fantasy
      8 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Sep 1, 2022

      Are you ready? I nodded. She slid the needle inand the sick cat, who only a moment before had tried toleap to the floor closed his eyes and exhaled. Andthat’s it, she said a little too brightly, pulling the needle out.That’s it? I asked. That’s all t

      3 min read

    • Article

      Estella’s Fate

      May 17, 2023

      Estella’s Fate
      7 min read

    • Article

      Morpeth Crash: I Helped Two Survivors

      Nov 4, 2019

      THE feature by Fraser Pithie on the Morpeth Curve (RM Sept) was a fascinating read, which allowed me to re-live my involvement in the 1984 crash. We lived at 45 Low Stobhill at the time of the 1984 crash. I loved the fact there were trains at the b

      2 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      People let themselves down so hard they took to clappingwhen the plane lands. Sometimes even at the creditsof a movie. Their funerals turned out to be for the livingall along. You wouldn’t know how much they hatedcrowded trains by the way they kept b

      3 min read

    • Article

      Lingering EFFECTS

      Jun 2, 2022

      Lingering EFFECTS
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Room Away from the Wolves

    3/5

    36 ratings6 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      This book was very well written, haunting, and atmospheric. I would have rated it with more stars, but I'm still not quite sure what to make of it. My questions weren't really answered at the end, and while I understand the need for the unreliable narrator, I don't enjoy books written in this style. This book is a celebration of New York City and unique friendships. The flawed main character is relatable for teens, and the classic gothic mystery characteristics are fun and spooky. The characters are a secretive and mysterious and though there isn't a lot of action, you are invested in learning more. Unfortunately, though there is a great twist, the ending is unsatisfying.
    • 2/5
      I really wanted to like this book, as it's well-written and it portrays a sad and desperate childhood with a deft hand, but I found the book so confusing I couldn't follow what was going on most of the time. I feel like the author was trying to enhance the horror movie feel by having things skip around and be non-linear and not fit together, but I abandoned the book 40% through because it made my brain hurt.
    • 2/5
      “Maybe you thought you knew something you don’t. Something you can’t know yet. Because you’re not supposed to.”

      Nova Ren Suma’s A Room Away from the Wolves can be summed up entirely by this quote, for both the protagonist and the reader. Categorized as magical realism, the story opens with a girl jumping from the roof of a building only to get up from the cracked concrete and walk away unharmed. Strange things continue to happen as the story goes on, such as photographs that move of their own accord, the mandatory curfew and what happens if its missed, and the strange door Bina’s room with a staircase leading to nowhere.

      Main character Sabina, or Bina for short, simultaneously both runs away and is expunged from her home. She seeks out Catherine House, a boarding house for girls, where her mother sought refuge as a young woman. This is really the clearest part of the story, Bina’s need for independence and fondness for her mother. She’s constantly told she won’t know things until she’s ready, excluded from social circles of the other girls in the house, and seems to be in a perpetual state of confusion. Unfortunately, this is also how the reader feels for most of the novel. The story poses more questions than answers even upon reaching the unsatisfactory ending.

      For those who’ve read Suma’s superbly written The Walls Around Us, they’ll likely recognize the same kinds of patterns emerge and have an inkling of what’s not being revealed, or rather implied, until the close of the story. That is where the similarities end though. A Room Away from the Wolves offers a poetic writing style for readers intrigued by a book’s language, but apart from that, readers end the story feeling like they’re in a room away from clarity.
    • 4/5
      *Thank you to the publishers for a free copy in exchange for an honest review!*I am such a fan of Nova Ren Suma’s writing. It’s always gorgeous and perpetually confusing and I just LOVE it.A Room Away From the Wolves is honestly no different. This story follows Bina, short for Sabina, who suddenly finds herself kicked out of her own home (temporarily). And it’s nothing new – when she was little, she and her mother ran away and began their own hitchhiking journey. Eighteen years ago, Bina’s mother had taken refuge at Catherine House. Now, Bina returns, but she finds that there are things about the house – and about her mother – that she never knew.Nova Ren Suma’s writing style has consistently been one of my favorites, especially when it comes to magical realism type stories – she does a great job balancing concrete and abstract language, which is even more powerful because I found myself questioning it all – Is it real? Is it in the character’s head?The plot is magical, and I’ve finished reading the book, true. But I’m still confused, and in a good way. This is one of those books you’d want to reread immediately after, because you hope that maybe the second time around, you’ll get more answers. A Room Away From the Wolves filled me with the best kind of trepidation.Bina is an extremely flawed main character, and that’s good because it’s more realistic, and yet because of that I found myself frustrated at her actions, while still symp/empathizing with her. There were definitely other characters that I wanted to know more about and wanted to see more of, but this book does leave room for lots of imagination.Other than that, I would recommend this book to readers of magical realism and fantasy – it’s got a mysterious vibe to it while simultaneously being able to juggle a setting in the contemporary world.
    • 4/5
      This wonderful story has one step inside reality, and the other is deep inside somewhere quite otherworldly, which is also somewhere that Nova Ren Suma’s writing sits. Her writing is what gives this simple tale of a young girl ‘Bina’, who runs away from home to a boarding house in New York City, so much character, originality, and mystery.Bina and her mother fled their home once before, last time to escape her cruel father. They never made it beyond the home Bina has to share now with a stepfather and two stepsisters that eventually has become a new hell she’s decided she must escape on her own. Bruised inside and out, she feels betrayed and let down by her mom, and sees no other way.Eight years after her and mother once ran from her father, she heads for Catherine House, the place she heard so many stories about from her mom, and asks for the very room that she stayed in.From the moment Bina arrives in Greenwich Village, something is strange, and somehow connected to the opal ring her mother gave her, and to the original owner of the house, Catherine herself.I don’t want to go into too much explanation of the story because there would be too much given away. I’ll lead this by saying that if you like your stories served up on a platter, without beautiful prose laden with wonderful imagery, this may not be the book for you. Suma writes with so much mesmerizing imagery wrapped in every sentence, that you’ll miss half of the tale she’s written for you if you don’t dig a little deeper.This is a modern ghost story as well as a heart-breaking tale about the connection between mother and daughter, and how families make mistakes and let each other down. This part of the book is the guts of why Bina ends up Catherine House, and made me long for my own mom who is thousands of miles away.Bina feels betrayed by her mom and looks to her mother’s past for answers, but there’s so much that’s tragic about this; reading the book it felt like Bina carries such a weight for a young girl, but doesn’t truly complain. It’s especially tragic because her father has already let her down, and she’s now being bullied by her stepsisters.The other characters in the novel bring out all sorts of thoughts and memories for her: Monet is the girl in the room below, and is a fascinating character and one who Bina is drawn to, without explanation. She makes Bina question everything and gives her clues as to what is really happening.There are twists and portals and thrills in this novel that make it a page-turner, and it’s as beautiful as it is heart-wrenching. There’s some spookiness that might make you feel like you’re not alone when you’re reading this (maybe you’re not). *Bonus points: cats involved!*Trigger warning: suicidal ideation
    • 4/5
      After trouble with her stepsisters and a string of bad behavior, Bina is leaving home. She heads for New York City to a boarding house that features in many of her mother's stories. But once there, she finds that leaving is not as easy as she thought.