Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

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

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Chaperone
    The Chaperone
    The Chaperone
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Chaperone

    Written by M Hendrix

    Narrated by Laura Knight Keating

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Like every young woman in New America, Stella knows the rules: Embrace
    purity. Navigate the world with care. Respect your chaperone.
    Girls in New America must have a chaperone at all times. Because of this, Stella is
    never alone. She can’t go out by herself or learn about the world. She can’t even
    spend time with boys except at formal Visitations. Still, Stella feels lucky that her
    chaperone, Sister Helen, is like a friend to her. And then the unthinkable happens.
    Sister Helen dies suddenly, and Stella feels lost. Especially when she’s assigned a
    new chaperone just days later.
    Sister Laura is … different. She has radical ideas about what Stella should be doing.
    She leaves Stella alone in public, and even knows how to get into the “Hush Hush”
    parties, where all kinds of forbidden things happen. As Stella spends more time
    with Sister Laura, she begins to question everything she’s been taught. What if the
    Constables’ rules don’t actually protect girls? What if they were never meant to
    keep them safe?
    Once Stella glimpses both real freedom and the dark truths behind New America,
    she has no choice but to fight back against the world she knows, risking everything
    to set out on a dangerous journey across what used to be the United States.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJun 6, 2023
    ISBN9781705060766
    Author

    M Hendrix

    M Hendrix is the author of two previous books. She lives in Bowling Green, Kentucky, with her husband, novelist David Bell. The Chaperone is her YA debut. Learn more at mhendrixwrites.com.

    Related to The Chaperone

    Related audiobooks

    YA Dystopian For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      2 Students Allegedly Cheated Apple Out Of Nearly $900,000 In Fake iPhone Scheme

      Apr 5, 2019

      Prosecutors say it was an elaborate deception that involved roping in friends and family, while using nonsensical pseudonyms and a slew of mailing addresses. The plot seems to have come from China.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Phillip B. Williams

      Dec 15, 2017

      The masters are yet dead. Wanting to be human,I tried to rewrite The Waste Land. The canon’s reachcasts ruinous light. The masters’ pens breachthis page where, above, my own hand spectates. Babylonrisen, exorcism in reverse, whose nature upended now?

      6 min read

    • Article

      Fix Common Issues

      Nov 15, 2021

      Fix Common Issues
      1 min read

    • Article

      Blackberries

      Apr 5, 2023

      Blackberries
      24 min read

    • Article

      Thirteen

      Jan 30, 2020

      Thirteen
      21 min read

    • Article

      Daughters’ Bodies

      Dec 1, 2019

      WHEN I’M about to go away to college, my grandmother dies and my mother silently puts herself up for adoption. LOOKING FOR SOMEONE TO ADOPT ME: Kind, lonely, beautiful woman in her 50s. Dead husband. No children. Cooks and cleans. 4’11 and 90 lbs. Gu

      20 min read

    • Article

      Coming To Terms

      May 25, 2021

      Coming To Terms
      14 min read

    • Article

      Finding Peace—and Briefly, Freedom—at My Grandfather’s Funeral

      Oct 11, 2019

      “Saying goodbye with the people who loved him—and me—I remember that I am not the tomb that imprisons me.”

      6 min read

    • Article

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time

      Dec 1, 2023

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time
      9 min read

    • Article

      Honey

      May 18, 2020

      It’s dark in here but I don’t mind. I wish I had a cushion, though. The floor is hard and I have pulled my knees close to my chest, arms around them, to try to keep warm. It’s a strange place to hide but I find the familiar scents of my family comfor

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Billboard

      Nov 25, 2019

      The Billboard
      4 min read

    • Article

      Six Stories

      Sep 8, 2020

      I’m on the train, traveling alone, with two seats to myself. I have to use the restroom. Without thinking about it carefully, I ask a couple across the aisle if they would please watch my things for me for a moment. Then I take a closer look at them

      8 min read

    • Article

      Come with Me

      Dec 1, 2022

      Come with Me
      12 min read

    • Article

      Begin Again

      Jun 14, 2022

      My grandfather came to live with me. There was nowhere else for him to go. What had happened to all his children? Death, decay, exile—I hardly know. My own parents died of pain. But I must not be too gloomy, at the beginning, or you will leave me, an

      6 min read

    • Article

      In a Silent Way

      Nov 25, 2023

      In a Silent Way
      3 min read

    • Article

      Touch

      Nov 4, 2021

      Touch
      8 min read

    • Article

      A Father’s Touch

      Jan 30, 2021

      A Father’s Touch
      5 min read

    • Article

      Nuclear

      Oct 7, 2021

      Nuclear
      7 min read

    • Article

      Cricket League

      Sep 1, 2022

      First prize 10 and under Tang Li, age 9 Palmetto Bay, FL My name is Anisa. I was in Hawaii on vacation. I enjoyed sipping refreshing drinks, overlooking the turquoise ocean, and dancing with others, before I overheard that the priceless Fire Ring wa

      10 min read

    • Article

      The Eulogy

      Jul 13, 2022

      The Eulogy
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Child Catcher

      Dec 30, 2021

      The Child Catcher
      5 min read

    • Article

      Side Gig

      Aug 8, 2019

      Side Gig
      6 min read

    • Article

      I’ll Burn You Alive

      Aug 19, 2021

      I’ll Burn You Alive
      5 min read

    • Article

      Summer Reads

      Dec 30, 2019

      Summer Reads
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Bathroom

      Jun 10, 2024

      Content Disclosure: Sexual Innuendo The garage light flips on like a flashbulb, freezing me in a mug shot. “Del, you out here?” my wife says sleepily as she steps down the cement riser. She looks at me standing before the window; then her attention i

      12 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Chaperone

    3.5/5

    9 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      First sentence: I hear it while I'm in my room getting ready for Sunday Visitation.Premise/plot: The Chaperone is YA dystopian. The premise is that a 'New America' has arisen and is super strict. (Think SHINY HAPPY PEOPLE documentary-ish). Stella Graham, our protagonist, is a high schooler who has lived under the care and guidance of a chaperone--as most young girls do--from the time she came of age [aka her period started]. This one begins with the death of her first chaperone, Sister Helen. (That's not a spoiler. It's literally the second sentence of the novel.) Stella has grown up in New America. She doesn't remember a Before. She has nothing to compare it to. No one talks about it--at least not in a fair, representative way. Perhaps they talk about it in a revisionist way. New America is AWESOME, don't you know. It's so wonderful that young girls, women are respected, valued, cherished, protected. There are rules for women [girls] and rules for men [boys]. The only tiny glimpse of 'before' she's been exposed to are a few books that her chaperone has encouraged her to read. Sister Laura is her new chaperone...and under her "care" and "guidance" well Stella becomes an independent thinker. She goes from a rule-follower to rule breaker like in a day. [Okay, perhaps I exaggerate. Let's be fair. Three days.] Will Stella submit to all the rules and conform??? Or will she find a way to be independent, expressive, and FREE according to her own definition?My thoughts: I do have thoughts. First, I don't fault The Chaperone for being written with a hammer instead of a pen. That's the way of many dystopian novels. Exaggerate to the point of absurdity. Take an inkling of a perceived problem and magnify it by ten thousand. Hammer your world view for a couple of hundred pages. So I don't fault it for that. It is exactly what you think it will be. Conservative values and views magnified by a million and taken to the point of absurdity so they are unrecognizable. This isn't switch and bait. Again, can't fault it for that. I like it when a book delivers on a premise.What I don't necessarily enjoy/appreciate about this one is the characterization and timing. I think Stella's coming of age is inevitable. The novel would be very short indeed if it wasn't about Stella's journey from rule-follower to rule-breaker. I think it was too instant to be believable. I don't know that the book takes into account how thoroughly "normal" and "ordinary" Stella's upbringing would have seemed. You can't be raised in something--immersed for sixteen to eighteen years in something--and not have it be a foundational, as natural as breathing, way of life. New America formed before her parents were married. She's known no other way of life. Her friends have not known another way of life. Sneaking a few books over the past few years doesn't seem "enough" to push from committed believer to total skeptic. (Not that the book is a god/religion thing). And the catalyst we're supposed to buy into...is her being left unchaperoned for like five or ten minutes. (I think at a library? some public place?) Sister Laura "hid" from view. She had Stella in view, but Stella could not see her. Stella's response was panic, worry, despair. After this initial "trauma" Stella has a complete and total realization--hey I believe nothing and I want out. Again, I just don't buy it. Too instant. Too fast. Not enough time spent wavering, doubting, considering, reasoning with one self. Just GIRL POWER. MUST RAISE UP AND ROAR. I think I would have found Stella more compelling if there was an actual-actual struggle, a journey--a metamorphosis. I also found it a bit shaky on WHY. I'll try to explain. If Stella had been being courted by Mateo (or another boy she found cute, attractive, desirable, ideal), would she have been eager to leave New America? If she had been allowed to 'follow her heart' and get to know the boy of her dreams, would she have ever considered leaving New America? If she hadn't been being courted or pursued by young men [and men] she had NO interest in, no attraction, no desire, just pure yuck factor, would the story have played out differently? Would she have EVER realized that New America was less than ideal if her hormones hadn't been influencing her? That is, if she'd been in control of WHO she dated/courted....if she'd been allowed a say in whether or not she said I do or I don't....would it have been an issue???? This wasn't so much about god (or God) or a particular religion or practice of religion. (Again, don't care one way or another. Perhaps it's better that it wasn't so much geared that way). But Stella's idea of freedom mainly consists in freedom to express one's sexuality, to act on sexual desires, to be free to be sexual on one's own term. I thought the world-building had potential. I thought it was more often than not shallow and one-dimensional....as opposed to immersive and believable. Again, I thought there could be potential with the premise/concept. Just it felt a little too instant and convenient.
    • 3/5
      Overall a good story, just not much substance. Really just a teen version of the handmaids tale. There was no real explanation of how the state of the country came to the way it was and I was left with more questions than answers.
    • 4/5
      Chilling dystopian tale that has echoes of some of the worst political machinations going on today. Good read, intriguing characters and an ending that allows the reader to ponder whit might come next.