Audiobook Review: Aisle Nine by Ian X. Cho

Publisher’s Book Description: “It’s Black Friday—and the apocalypse is on sale!

Ever since the world filled with portals to hell and bloodthirsty demons started popping out on the reg, Jasper’s life has gotten worse and worse. A teenage nobody with no friends or family, he is plagued by the life he can’t remember and the person he’s sure he’s supposed to be.

Jasper spends his days working as a checkout clerk at the Here For You discount mart, where a hell portal in aisle nine means danger every shift. But at least here he can be near the girl he’s crushing on—Kyle Kuan, a junior member of the monster-fighting Vanguard—who seems to hate Jasper for reasons he can’t remember or understand.

But when Jasper and Kyle learn they both share a frightening vision of the impending apocalypse, they’re forced to team up and uncover the uncomfortable truth about the hell portals and the demons that haunt the world. Because the true monsters are not always what they seem, the past is not always what we wish, and like it or not, on Black Friday, all hell will break loose in aisle nine.

Perfect for fans of Grasshopper Jungle or The Last of Us comes Aisle Nine, the debut young adult novel from rising YA star lan X. Cho.

Karen’s Thoughts: When they were announcing the ALA Youth Media Awards, Aisle Nine was announced as a Morris Award finalist. Then I saw my co-blogger, Amanda, share on Bluesky that she liked the book. Amanda is the person in this world that I trust most when it comes to kidlit book knowledge; she’s amazingly well-read and because I know her personally as well as a co-blogger, I know that she is wicked smart and we share a lot of commonality. So I listened to this book because Amanda told me to. You should always listen to Amanda.

The best thing about this book is that it is fun with a capital F. It’s been a while since I have read a book that is just this gloriously goofy and fun. While reading it I kept thinking of things like A Bad Day for Voodoo by Jeff Strand and Hold Me Closer Necromancer by Lish McBride (another Morris Award finalist). Like Aisle Nine both of these titles combine macabre horror with gut-busting humor.

And I could stop there, because sometimes this book is fun is enough of an endorsement in and of itself. However, this book also has some meat on its bones. We live in a capitalistic society where the billionaires are literally trying to take over the world (no seriously, that’s what is happening), and Aisle Nine has some thought provoking discussion about both capitalism and technology, and the way the two work together to distract us, misinform us, and keep us looking in one direction while they try and carry out their nefarious plans against us in the other.

There are scenes in Aisle Nine where literal demons are shooting out of a portal to hell in Aisle Nine of a market and customers are complaining about having to take a moment to stop shopping while employees work to clean up spilled demon guts and honestly, it’s a pretty believable scenario at this point. The idea of “clean up on Aisle Nine” takes on whole new meanings, and it’s amusing in part because we’ve all seen those customers. Hopefully we endeavor not to be those customers.

Aisle Nine is wild, wacky and wonderful. It’s glorious fun that also asks us to examine ourselves and the world we live in. I listened to the audio book and it was a great delivery, kudos to the narrator Jacob McNatt. I highly recommend giving this a listen.

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