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.

    Golden
    Golden
    Golden
    Audiobook5 hours

    Golden

    Written by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

    Narrated by Jenna Lamia

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    When Lissy James moves from California to Oklahoma, she finds herself in the middle of a teenage nightmare: a social scene to rival a Hollywood movie. And if understanding the hierarchy of the Goldens vs. the Nons isn't hard enough, Lissy's ever growing Aura Vision is getting harder and harder to hide, and if she's not careful, she's going to become a Non faster than you can say "freak."

    But it's becoming clear that Emory High has a few secrets of its own. Around the halls, the term "special powers" goes way beyond one's ability to attract the opposite sex, and there may be something more evil than the A-crowd lurking in the classrooms. Lissy can see a lot more than the average girl, but she's about to learn the hard way that things aren't always as they appear and you can't always judge a girl by her lip gloss.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJul 25, 2006
    ISBN9781423311911
    Golden
    Author

    Jennifer Lynn Barnes

    Jennifer Lynn Barnes, author of the New York Times YA best seller and popular BookTok series The Inheritance Games has written more than a dozen critically acclaimed young adult novels, including the highly praised Raised by Wolves trilogy. A former competitive cheerleader, teen model, and comic book geek, she wrote her first book at the age of nineteen and has even written original pilot scripts for television networks like USA and MTV. She has a PhD in developmental psychology from Yale University and teaches at the University of Oklahoma. You can visit her online at www.jenniferlynnbarnes.com or follow her on Twitter @jenlynnbarnes.

    Related to Golden

    Related audiobooks

    YA School & Education For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      HOW TO… Install Google Play Store on your Amazon Fire tablet

      Jan 4, 2023

      What you need: Amazon Fire tablet (2018 onwards) Time required: 30 minutes What do Duolingo, Gmail and Firefox have in common? Despite being among the most popular apps on Android and iOS, none of them can be downloaded through the Amazon Appstore. T

      6 min read

    • Article

      Under The Whispering Door

      Nov 3, 2021

      ▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 376 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author TJ Klune ▶ Publisher Tor An uneven yet goodhearted hybrid of Dead Like Me and The Good Place, Under The Whispering Door ponders what happens when you don’t start actually living your l

      1 min read

    • Article

      That Particular Sunday

      Jul 6, 2023

      That Particular Sunday
      26 min read

    • Article

      La Bohème

      Mar 1, 2022

      ON A SATURDAY or Sunday afternoon in the cold early months of 1988, I sat alone at a table for two in a Greenwich Village diner, twenty-four years old, hopelessly young, my notebook open in front of me. At the table next to mine were three people, al

      13 min read

    • Article

      The Family Plot

      May 7, 2020

      The Family Plot
      10 min read

    • Article

      Lineal Gaps

      Apr 6, 2021

      Lineal Gaps
      15 min read

    • Article

      Cricket Ceague

      Apr 1, 2019

      Penelope Berkeley, age 9 Mars Hill, NC Night had fallen, and Luna awoke from where she had been sleeping in a cornfield. She moved steadily through the stalks with barely a sound, keeping her eyes on the glittering glass rooftop of the greenhouse in

      7 min read

    • Article

      After “The End”

      Oct 10, 2022

      I walked down the road with a hunched back and a wet cigarette in my mouth—the fire had died a while back. My hands were tucked into the pockets of my jacket, and my hair fell over my face, limiting my sight. But I wasn’t really seeing where I was go

      10 min read

    • Article

      I Confronted My School Bullies

      Jul 3, 2019

      I Confronted My School Bullies
      6 min read

    • Article

      Klara

      May 21, 2020

      Klara
      28 min read

    • Article

      Table Talk

      Sep 1, 2023

      Table Talk
      10 min read

    • Article

      THE PRINCE of All Stars

      Sep 3, 2020

      THE PRINCE of All Stars
      9 min read

    • Article

      Girls On The Playground

      Feb 18, 2021

      Girls On The Playground
      15 min read

    • Article

      The Space Between Us

      Oct 9, 2019

      The Space Between Us
      8 min read

    • Article

      Mother Tongue

      Feb 24, 2021

      Mother Tongue
      12 min read

    • Article

      Survival Mode

      Jan 12, 2022

      Survival Mode
      4 min read

    • Article

      Birthday Surprise

      Sep 17, 2021

      Birthday Surprise
      5 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

      The Billboard

      Nov 25, 2019

      The Billboard
      4 min read

    • Article

      Love, Lust, and More

      Feb 12, 2020

      Fleetwood Mac was singing She is dancing away from you now, and I squirmed in my seat. Kabir was rubbing my thigh as he drove, a gesture I once thought was reserved for me. Bah! I also used to think he only took naked selfies in bed with me, but then

      11 min read

    • Article

      How Postcards From My Mother Helped Me Survive Childhood

      Mar 3, 2017

      For years, my mother wrote to me every day. I’d been sent away to boarding school and for the first weeks was forbidden to call home­. I was eleven. This was just before mobile phones came beeping and clicking into the lives of everyday people. I di

      4 min read

    • Article

      The MOTHER ODE

      Apr 18, 2022

      The MOTHER ODE
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Golden

    3.5/5

    96 ratings11 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      All the women in Lissy's family have the Sight - a psychic gift that Lissy would be more than glad to give up. After all, the Sight caused the family to move from California to Oklahoma because her mother's gift is finding lost things. Only she didn't find the kidnapped child before he was murdered and public sentiment has turned against her.Lissy's gift is growing. Now she sees connections between people. This doesn't help in her new high school which is divided between the Goldens - the popular, beautiful people - and the Nons. She is thrown together with Lilah whose mother is dating Lissy's uncle and her crew of Goldens but soon finds her own crew with Nons Audra and Dylan. Something evil is happening at her high school but she can't convince her mother and grandmother that her new math teacher is evil. This leaves Lissy, Audra, Dylan and Lissy's younger sister Lexie to find out what is going on and stop it before there are more deaths. This is the author's first book and was written when she was nineteen. It has some rough edges but was an enjoyable paranormal story.
    • 4/5
      This one grew on me and I'm looking forward to reading the sequel, Platinum.
    • 3/5
      This book started off slow and a bit juvenile but as it went on, I found that I was starting to like Lissy and really liked all her snarkiness. I thought she was hilarious. Then about halfway there was suddenly a story and a mystery to solve and I was really enjoying it. I read that Jennifer Lynn Barnes wrote this book when she was 19 and, if that's the case, that would definitely explain some of the juvenile-ishness (like my word there) of the book. One of the best parts of the story was that, although there was a romance, there wasn't really. It was more the promise of a romance to come and I like that. I wanted more from the characters and I'm a little sad to see that the second book switches over to Lilah's point of view. Maybe there'll be more about Lissy and Dylan in it ;)

      About the audiobook: The narrator, Jenna Lamia is wonderful. I've listened to her in other audiobooks and she does a terrific job. One thing that threw me off was this story had a lot of music thrown into the production and every time I thought it was my cell phone going off and started looking for my phone before I realized it was the audiobook.

      Overall, this is a fun, light listen.
    • 4/5
      I really liked the way Golden ended, tying up loose ends but also leaving enough questions to make me want to read the sequel, Platinum. Golden is about Lissy, a girl from California, who is moving to Oklahoma. Each female member of Lissy's family has some form of "sight." In Lissy's case, she sees auras. Her life in her new high school is complicated by the "Goldens" who are the popular kids that bully all the "Nons," everyone else in school. Lissy isn't sure if she wants to be a "Golden" or a "Non" because the "Nons" she meets seem much easier to get along with and more down to earth. Her natural clumsiness; however, makes her seem destined to be a "Non." The mystery begins when Lissy promptly throws up and passes out the first time she sees her new math teacher. Even though everyone tells her how wonderful he is, his aura tells Lissy something completely different.The one problem I had with this story, was that as much as Lissy wanted to appear "normal" to others, she seemed to spend an awful lot of her time obsessing over the auras she saw surrounding everyone around her. Otherwise, I enjoyed Lissy's attempts to navigate the overdeveloped social scene of her new high school and her struggle to figure out the mystery of Mr. Kissler.
    • 4/5
      The beginning is slow, but once you get into it, Golden is a novel that is hard to put down. There were revelations that actually surprised me once the mystery started to unravel. Because while this is very much your typical unpopular-girl-trying-to-navigate-her-way-through-high-school sort of book, it also has a rather intriguing mystery attached to it. I was definitely more interested in this than Lissy's analyses about how much of a freak she is, so it's a good thing that the mystery takes over in the latter half of the novel.While it's a good story, it's apparent that the author was nineteen when she wrote this. The characters lack complexity and a lot of the conflict is superficial. I know it's probably supposed to be the point that all the "Goldens," or popular kids, at the high school are unintelligent and shallow, but I like to have a little more realism in the characters I read about. The only interesting character is Lilah, the leader of the "Goldens" because she's hard to figure out.Even though I don't usually like music and sound effects in audiobooks, I did like the music that signaled the end of every section. It was different each time and perfectly complemented the tone of the story at the time. The integration is so well done that I hardly noticed that there was background music playing (which is a sign of a good soundtrack, in my opinion). Jenna Lamia also does a good job in portraying Lissy. I was sure she was a high school student, which turned out not to be the case.I would say that Golden is a good beach read. It's quick, has a decent plot, and a really good ending. Young adult paranormal fans -- this one's for you!
    • 3/5
      Paranormal elements ina sweet, non-gritty way. This book read like someone had turned on the light in a spooky house. I found the esoteric slant slightly off-putting, and I found myself skipping the sections in italics because I didn't get them. As far as I could tell, it didn't matter much to the story whether they were there or not. The book was very well written though, so despite not really liking the novel as a whole, I could appreciate the pretty parts.
    • 3/5
      I read Tattoo by the same author, and really liked it, and that's what prompted me to pick up this book. Unfortunately, I read the first four chapters, which was more than 50 pages, and the writing just did not grab me in the same fashion. Golden seems to be about a girl, Lissy James, who can see people's auras. She moves from California to Oklahoma, and immediately runs into a group a girls reminiscent of Mean Girls, known as Goldens. These are the popular, cool kids. Everyone else is known as a Non which means non-player. Lissy ends up being befriended by some nons and that's where I stopped reading. I just didn't feel compelled to continue, and I've decided there are too many incredible books out there to waste my time on books that are just okay.
    • 3/5
      When Lissy and Lexie’s family is forced to leave California for a small town in Oklahoma, Lissy is determined to act normal and be accepted. That is cue to suppress her mysterious but often just inconvenient Seer ability to see people’s auras: different colors for different personalities. Yeah, an ingredient for “freak,” right?At Emory High, the cliques are terrible. You are either a Golden—the popular and the gorgeous—or you are a Non. It doesn’t help that the triumvirate of the Golden girls seems to have it in for Lissy, simple because of her awkwardness. Well, and a few things that involve her freaky ability to see auras.Lissy finds companionship in her friends Audra and Dylan as she reluctant grows into her Seer abilities and begins to figure out the extent of her power. However, there’s also a powerful evil lurking in the hallways of Emory High. Lissy needs to find out who it is and how to defeat it before it destroys her magical family and everyone she knows.The story is interesting but the writing falls flat. None of the characters have time to grow into three-dimensional figures for me. Jennifer Lynn Barnes has a while to go before she will be fully developed. At least she’s still young.
    • 4/5
      This book was pretty good. Kind of weird at first but it has a good story once you get going.
    • 4/5
      Lissy belongs to a long line of women who each have different powers. Lissy's power is she can see a person's aura, and she hates it. When her family moves from California to Oklahoma, Lissy decides she is going to be as normal as possible. On her first day of school, though, her power changes and stregthens. Plus she has to deal with the school politics of the Goldens (popular kids) and the Nons (everyone else). And then to top it all off her new math teacher has the worst sort of aura.I enjoyed this story very much. There was humor and intrigue and a very interesting plot. The book finished like the author planned on writing at least another book to follow. I will defiantly watch to see if Barnes does.
    • 3/5
      Paranormal elements ina sweet, non-gritty way. This book read like someone had turned on the light in a spooky house. I found the esoteric slant slightly off-putting, and I found myself skipping the sections in italics because I didn't get them. As far as I could tell, it didn't matter much to the story whether they were there or not. The book was very well written though, so despite not really liking the novel as a whole, I could appreciate the pretty parts.