Reviewed by Annika
TITLE: Who We Are
SERIES: Bear Otter and the Kid #2
AUTHOR: TJ Klune
NARRATOR: Charlie David
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
RELEASE DATE: October 1, 2013
LENGTH: 12 hours, 42 minutes
BLURB:
Bear, Otter, and the Kid survived last summer with their hearts and souls intact. They’ve moved into the Green Monstrosity, and Bear is finally able to admit his love for the man who saved him from himself.
But that’s not the end of their story. How could it be?
The boys find that life doesn’t stop just because they got their happily ever after. There’s still the custody battle for the Kid. The return of Otter’s parents. A first trip to a gay bar. The Kid goes to therapy, and Mrs. Paquinn decides that Bigfoot is real. Anna and Creed do… well, whatever it is Anna and Creed do. There are newfound jealousies, the return of old enemies, bad poetry, and misanthropic seagulls. And through it all, Bear struggles to understand his mother’s abandonment of him and his brother, only to delve deeper into their shared past. What he finds there will alter their lives forever and help him realize what it’ll take to become who they’re supposed to be.
Family is not always defined by blood. It’s defined by those who make us whole—those who make us who we are.
REVIEW:
Who We Are picks up about two weeks after Bear, Otter, and the Kid ended. We find the guys on the verge of moving into the green monstrosity, the Kid skipping a grade moving up to fifth grade, and Bear in the process of trying to get custody for the Kid. And that’s just the start of it. Anna and Creed, now dating, are there to lend a hand, as is Mrs Paquinn. In short, this book is about family, the one you were born into, but more importantly the one you chose.
This book, or rather series, has its own kind of humour, it is OTT and Klune all the way. With everything froma vegetarian ecoterrorist-in-training to Bears insane word vomits about lesbian penguins and Craigslist (don’t even ask) there is no way to predict the things that will be thrown at you next. It kept things interesting, that’s for sure.
As far as the audio goes, music was added to this book as well, but I wished they’d at least kept the same melody as for the previous books as this one was even more intrusive. And music playing over the narration is a big no for me. I’m here for the words, not the tunes. Well, when Bear was singing Duran Duran is another thing completely and something I can totally get behind as that was actually part of the story.
Another thing that I’m not a fan of is a change in narration for the same series. I don’t mean to say that I don’t enjoy Charlie David’s narration, because I did and I do. It’s just that I like consistency. If the couple or POV had changed with the book, that would have been another story, but this book is still narrated by Bear. Anyway, back to Charlie David, he is a talented narrator and did a great job with this book. I love how he always adds feelings to his narration to really emphasise what the characters are feeling. My only niggle was that I wasn’t sold on his voice for the Kid, it sounded way too grown up. But then again I do recognise that portraying a kid accurately must be very difficult.
family is not defined by blood. It’s not always who you’re born to that you’re stuck with. It’s what you want it to be, what you make of it. It’s the people around you who see you at your worst and are not afraid to pick up the pieces when you fall apart./…/ It’s the people who you fight for. It’s the people you’d lay down your life for. It’s the scariest thing in the world, but, if you let it, it’s also the greatest.
RATING: 
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