Suder

I’ll admit: I picked up *Suder* expecting a sports story with literary flourishes. What I got instead was a full-contact satire that uses baseball as a Trojan horse for Everett’s real targets—racial performativity, the theater of masculinity, and the quiet terror of inheriting your parents’ demons. JD Jackson’s narration is the MVP here. His Suder isn’t a caricature of a ballplayer but a man whose voice tightens with every strikeout, whose sarcasm curdles into something darker when he’s alone with his thoughts. The pacing is relentless, even in the novel’s quieter moments (like Suder’s phone calls with his mother, which Jackson delivers with eerie, off-kilter warmth). That said, this isn’t a *comfortable* listen. Everett’s humor is so razor-edged it occasionally draws blood—there’s a scene where Suder’s teammates “jokingly” mimic his speech that’ll make you flinch, and the audiobook’s lack of musical cues means the silence after these moments lands like a gut punch. My one critique? The ending feels almost *too* abrupt, as if Everett trusted us to connect the dots a little too much. But that’s also the point: *Suder* doesn’t hold your hand. It throws you a 95-mph fastball and dares you to swing. If you’re here for escapism, look elsewhere. If you want an audiobook that’ll make you laugh, wince, and question why we perform sanity in the first place? Step up to the plate.