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.

    My Life With The Walter Boys
    My Life With The Walter Boys
    My Life With The Walter Boys
    Audiobook9 hours

    My Life With The Walter Boys

    Written by Ali Novak

    Narrated by Renée Chambliss

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Soon to be adapted for TV by Netflix!

    Jackie does not like surprises. Chaos is the enemy! The best way to get her successful, busy parents to notice her is to be perfect. The perfect look, the perfect grades-the perfect daughter. And then . . .

    Surprise #1: Jackie's family dies in a freak car accident.

    Surprise #2: Jackie has to move cross-country to live with the Walters-her new guardians.

    Surprise #3: The Walters have twelve sons. (Well, eleven, but Parker acts like a boy anyway.)

    Now Jackie must trade in her Type A personality and New York City apartment for a Colorado ranch and all the wild Walter boys who come with it. Jackie is surrounded by the enemy-loud, dirty, annoying boys who have no concept of personal space. Okay, several of the oldest guys are flat-out gorgeous. But still annoying. She's not stuck-up or boring-no matter what they say-but proving it is another matter. How can she fit in and move on when she needs to keep her parents' memory alive by living up to the promise of perfect?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateOct 14, 2014
    ISBN9781494575991
    My Life With The Walter Boys
    Author

    Ali Novak

    Born and raised in Wisconsin, Ali Novak is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of contemporary young adult novels. She started writing her debut book, My Life with the Walter Boys, when she was only fifteen. Since then, her work has received more than 150 million reads online. When she isn't writing, Novak enjoys traveling with her husband, Jared; binding fan fiction; and reading any type of fantasy novel she can get her hands on. You can follow her on Wattpad, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok @authoralinovak;

    Related to My Life With The Walter Boys

    Related audiobooks

    YA Family For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Coming To Terms

      May 25, 2021

      Coming To Terms
      14 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      I The teenaged girl is searching for a placethat goes through, the holeto put the tampon inside. When she finds itshe asks her mother, Is this where the penis would go?Yes, her mother explains.Then I will never have sex. II Sweltering New York City.

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Leather Coat

      Apr 4, 2024

      The Leather Coat
      6 min read

    • Article

      Philip Roth

      Jun 4, 2018

      Philip Roth
      25 min read

    • Article

      Penny

      Jul 2, 2020

      Penny
      6 min read

    • Article

      Hell Is A City in Texas

      Jun 14, 2021

      Hell Is A City in Texas
      10 min read

    • Article

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time

      Dec 1, 2023

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time
      9 min read

    • Article

      I’ll Not Risk Myself

      Feb 10, 2024

      My phone reception is better outside the laundromat, so I spend most of my time waiting for laundry on the bench near the door. I don’t talk with my friends, but I surf the news. I like to know what’s going on. I don’t like people to know about me, t

      13 min read

    • Article

      The Lives of Bryan

      Jun 1, 2023

      The Lives of Bryan
      19 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 Family Plot

      May 7, 2020

      The Family Plot
      10 min read

    • Article

      Where the HEART IS

      Dec 20, 2022

      Where the HEART IS
      4 min read

    • Article

      Now That I’ve Arrived

      Dec 30, 2020

      Now That I’ve Arrived
      5 min read

    • Article

      You Exist Too Much

      Jun 5, 2020

      You Exist Too Much
      9 min read

    • Article

      A Temporary Arrangement

      Oct 2, 2023

      A Temporary Arrangement
      19 min read

    • Article

      Girls On The Playground

      Feb 18, 2021

      Girls On The Playground
      15 min read

    • Article

      All Of Us Here

      Jun 4, 2020

      All Of Us Here
      6 min read

    • Article

      TOWN & COUNTRY

      Jun 1, 2022

      TOWN & COUNTRY
      3 min read

    • Article

      Rising Sign

      Feb 4, 2021

      Rising Sign
      10 min read

    • Article

      Come with Me

      Dec 1, 2022

      Come with Me
      12 min read

    • Article

      I Never Called Her Momma

      Sep 13, 2023

      I Never Called Her Momma
      39 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

      Festival

      Sep 15, 2018

      My husband, who loved festivals, who was a great fan of festivals, wanted to get to the square in time for the first band at eleven o’clock. From bed, the dog and I watched him dress. He tried on various T-shirts, declaring some of them too tight and

      13 min read

    • Article

      The Last Friend on Earth

      May 4, 2023

      It was as if Doreen Saunders had been waiting for me, passing the time until my arrival. She might as well have been sitting in a rocking chair, knitting needles clicking, jam tarts cooling on the side, the door wide open, waiting for the next visito

      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for My Life With The Walter Boys

    4/5

    192 ratings13 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Just watched the new show based on this book, and absolutely loved it!! I was a little surprised to realise how different the book was to the show. I think I liked the plot line of the show more (controversial, I know).
    • 5/5
      adorable. differs from the show, I think I definitely prefer this version
    • 5/5
      Absolutely loved THIS! Great Story.. can't wait for the T.V series
    • 5/5
      It was cuuute. Although I have so many questions regarding Jackie and Cole, what happens after NYC?
    • 5/5
      I remember reading this book when it was still on an app called Wattpad. I also have the paperback book as well. This is one of my favorite books!!! I’m about to listen to it!
    • 5/5
      A fun, light and easy read. Recommend if you’re into YA novel types with love triangles and all the usual drama they bring.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Fghui hydrogen Guilherme juggernaut hugging a black and black white white shirt
    • 5/5
      Jackie's learned that making and following lists helps keep her life orderly and predictable. Daughter of wealthy, successful parents, she would love to be as free and creative as her older sister, but knows she's more like her father. When a bad case of the flu lands her on the couch one night, it saves her life, but breaks her inside. The rest of her family is killed in an auto accident.Her uncle foists her on her mother's best friend from college who she barely knows and it's the beginning of major culture shock in numerous ways. Instead of a penthouse apartment with maids, chauffeurs and art museum memberships, she finds herself living in a haphazardly constructed ranch house in rural Colorado. Instead of one sophisticated sister, she's dropped into a family with eleven boys and one tomboy girl. Instead of going to a private school with girls she's known for years, she's attending a public school that's scary and huge.I expected Jackie to be somewhat snobbish, given her family wealth and veneer, but she was anything but. Instead, we have a girl trying to survive while being heckled and pranked by those she's living with, most of whom resent her addition to an already crowded household. When older brothers Cole and Alex, are attracted to her, it's not only stressful, but very confusing as is the reaction of the girls who befriend her, primarily because they think it will get them close to the hot guys she's now living with.I liked the book and empathized with Jackie a lot. She didn't have much choice in her upbringing or what happened after she lost her parents. Coming from a high expectation family and having little dating/guy experience because she attended an all girls school, she was a fish out of water much of the time, especially when Alex and Cole were after her.Verdict: a fun read and one school and public libraries should consider for their collections.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      The first time I ever read My Life With the Walter Boys was probably three years ago on Wattpad. Honestly, it was my favorite eBook I had ever read at the time. As soon as I found out that it was published, I just had to buy it and read it again. Although I love the story, and I love the characters, there are things that bother me about it. Jackie Howard is a girl from the Upper East Side in New York City, and when her life takes a turn for the worse and her famous parents and sister are killed in a car crash while she's sick at home, she is left to be looked after by a family member- who is never home. It's then decided that she is going to move all the way to Colorado with Katherine Walter- a woman who was good friends with her mother. But wait, that's not all. Katherine has kids. A bunch of kids. Twelve, to be exact. Twelve BOYS and of course, they're all gorgeous. But wait... one of these boys is actually a girl, who acts like a boy. The real issue here is who are these people? There are so many characters in this novel that it's hard to keep track. Half the boys in the novel hardly make appearances, so when they do, we're left looking at the first chapter where she lists out each boy, how old they are, and what they like to do (another problem that I will be addressing soon). On top of the twelve boys, Katherine, her husband, Jackie, her group of friends, the boy's friends, and family, it's just overwhelming sometimes to keep track of them all. Now, addressing the issue above, the book has a serious 'show, don't tell issue'. Ali Novak does a whole lot of telling us how things are, rather than showing. Jackie tells us how she feels about her family dying, but yet she doesn't really have the actions to prove it. In the first chapter, there is a scene where she and Katherine are on the plane going to Colorado, where Katherine tells Jackie everything she needs to know about the boys... and girl, who Jackie doesn't even find out is a girl until they all meet- you'd think that Katherine would tell her that she had a girl too rather than addressing her, too as a boy. Jackie takes out a pen and paper and writes the twelve names down, and then writes how old they are and what they like to do. Specifics. What's the fun in being told what they like? Why not have Jackie meet the boys (and girl) and THEN find out about them? This is only heightened by the fact that Jackie spends most of the book trying to get to know them. There's also Jackie's character. She had lost her whole entire family, and yet she seems to get over it pretty fast, only having blips of hating herself and being sad. She relives the accident a couple times, but not a significant amount. She's a girl from the upper east side with a good head on her shoulders, but yet half the time she acts like a girl from well, Colorado. The first sentence of the whole book was about how she didn't ever own a single pair of jeans- her mom was a fashion designer, and she believed in making an impact and dressing up. If that's what she believed in though, what did she wear while she was in Colorado? There was only a couple of times where she addressed what she changed into, and it was all designer, and if I remember right, each time they were destroyed (spaghetti incident?). Yet there are scenes where she's climbing trees like she's a natural. I think that if I lived on the Upper East Side of New York City my whole life, I would have an issue with living on a ranch and climbing trees and getting muddy. I mean I love that kind of thing, but city life is a whole lot different than a life on a ranch. There are lots of different stories about the Upper East Side. It Girl, The Ivy, and my personal favorite, Gossip Girl. In all of these, there are snobby girls with hidden agendas and even the nicest girls make mistakes and befriend the wrong person. Yet Jackie's life seems... boring. She had one friend that we really know of, and brief love interests, and went to the ballet more than ever having a social life. She lived on the top floor of an amazing hotel. Both her parents were famous. Her mother, a famous fashion designer. Yet the only time we really ever hear about her moms fashion shows and her life are when she's talking about how she doesn't wear jeans, but her mom used them a lot in her fashion shows, and when Cole sees the picture of her model sister in her room and asks about her. The love triangle. Ugh. I have a love-hate relationship with them. They can be entertaining when done well, and just... bad sometimes. This one was somewhere in between. It was okay, I guess, but for some reason I didn't forgive Alex, one of the Walter boys, as easily as Jackie did. But I can't get into it that much without spoiling it. Why is every single boy popular and gorgeous? Even the Geeky Alex, who spends most of his time playing a game online, and Danny, Cole's fraternal twin who loves drama and is in the school's production of Romeo and Juliette as Romeo. I'm not trying to say that a geek is supposed to look like a geek or anything, but if Alex spends every waking moment in his room with this moldy pizzas and crusty socks playing this online game, and he's never in lunch because he's always in the library playing, how is he one of the most popular guys in school? The Walter boys are treated like gods, and the love triangle between Jackie, Cole and Alex is somewhat awkward, especially because the one she is meant to be with isn't even concentrated on, making us ask about a second book, which could even be the whole idea. Other than all the issues in the book I've talked about, the book is actually really good. We fall in love with the characters that are highlighted, it's just a lot of the main problems that make the book what it is is kind of... lost. There is just something magical about it, though, that has kept me hooked and made me want to read it and not put it down. I would recommend this book to teens and anyone who loves a funny, light hearted tale of romance.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      I’m an only child and for as long as I can remember I’ve loved big families. Some of my favorite movies, books, and shows growing up had lots of kids. They didn’t even need to be families (Babysitters Club, Daddy Day Care and Camp), but I did prefer the families. Cheaper by the Dozen, Yours, Mine and Ours, Full House, even those reality tv shows with the huge families. I just couldn’t get enough of them. Ever since I was a kid I wanted to be a Weasley. I just love big families. So needless to say when I found out about My Life With the Walter Boys I knew I had to read it.It took awhile for me to get my hands on this book but when I finally did I couldn’t wait to start it. I really enjoyed it, though I feel like the main reason I liked it as much as I did was because of the fact that there was a big family. It was probably a three star book for me, but I had to give it four because of how big and crazy the family was. There is just something about the loud, hectic, messy fun the comes with big families that I just can’t get enough of. I just eat this stuff up.Even though I doubt I will enjoy Ali Novaks other book, The Heartbreakers, as much as this one. I’m still excited to read it. I probably should have read that one first. I am planning on read My Life as a Walter Boy soon.
    • 4/5
      Much of the story felt a little forced - Jackie is grieving, but the emotion of her grieving is never really given expression. It feels very removed. One thing I did like about the novel was the idea that Jackie was hiding from her grief in her need to control her life and to control her relationships. Choosing the "safe" brother over the one she really felt emotion about was a perfect example of this. Part of my feelings about this book are probably due to the narration, which felt false.
    • 4/5
      I finally picked this up after seeing it on a Madison bookstore display last spring. The author, a Wisconsin native, had recently graduated from the UW Madison creative writing program. New Yorker Jackie Sinclair is sixteen when her parents and sister are killed in a car crash. When her uncle isn't able to care for Jackie, she is picked up by a new guardian, her mother's best friend from college. On the trip back to Colorado, Jackie learns she will feel more like a duck out of water than just the locale would indicate. The Walter family already consists of 12 kids, Jackie will turn it into a baker's dozen. The boys, of course, are gorgeous and shake up Jackie's preppy, one track mind and as the story moves on, you can see how good they are for each other. Since they range from older than Jackie to five year old twins, the book hits on a lot of situations in a short amount of time. I had no idea until I got to the note at the end of the story, about what a interesting path to publication it had. Novak wrote this story at 15. It was picked up by a 'real' publisher off of wattpad after having a lot of hits.
    • 4/5
      Sex and Sensibility. She was goody-two-shoes. He was an obnoxious rascal. They both wanted the same thing, their place in the family. They would find even more in each other. But first they would have to grow up and learn to compromise. Jackie has lived her whole life trying to fit in with her fashion designer mom, business man dad and beautiful loving older sister. She has molded herself into the perfect student , an organized fashion plate with no room for disorder. After losing her family, her life is turned upside down, when she goes from her perfectly ordered life in a New York penthouse apartment to a ranch in Colorado. There are 11 boys in the family, whose greatest pleasure in life is causing chaos in Jackie’s. It will take to time to convince the boys, and herself, that she belongs there. First she has to break out of her comfortable, orderly shell not only to fit in with the family, but find out who she really is now. She will make mistakes, fall in love, make friends and discover a family that would love her even if she wasn’t perfect. I read this in an ARC and loved the book. It is a contemporary fiction, a romance, with humor, and a coming of age tale with all the required teen angst. It has a few flaws, one of the boys brings his one night stands home, after losing his sports scholarship, Cole becomes a player on another field without much rhyme or reason. The one small sister in the family of 11 boys, is almost lost in the storyline. But is it still a good read and guys it isn’t fantasy! Which I do love.