This audiobook reminds me of the babysitter club but with braiding and more relevance to today's issues. The narrators, Erin Ruth Walker, Tyla Collier, and Jade Wheeler, did an excellent job with these characters. They each added a little sparkle to each of these characters.

Each girl had there own home. Life issues. One girl with an absent father, a girl coming to terms with a new family and father and the loss of her mother and one more girl who now has a new sister

All three girls venture out there to start a braiding business, and they have to deal with old and new friendships, getting to know each other and the hatters - there will always be hatters.

This book is an excellent coming-of-age story for someone in an elementary school.

I enjoyed the whole thing.

Book Title: The Braid Girls
Author: Sherri Winston
Narrator: Erin Ruth Walker, Tyla Collier, and Jade Wheeler
Publisher: Dreamscape Media
Genre: Middle School
Pub Date: June 13, 2023
My Rating: 3.4
Pages: 272

Maggie and Deija both twelve years old and are best friends.
Maggie has the support of her parents. We soon find out that her Dad has another daughter Callie that he didn’t know about, When Callie’s mother dies she goes to live with her dad.
At first Maggie is bent out of sorts with this arrangement.

Daija has the love of her mother but her mom Kiki and Dad are separated and they have no financial support from him.
Deija wants to take ballet classes but knows that her mother doesn’t have the money and needs to find a way to earn some money.
She and Maggie decide to start a hair braiding business while at summer camp. They decided they would charge $25-$40, (I have seen beautiful braiding and this certainly seems to be reasonable.) Callie also attends the camp and turns out to be a talented braider, as well as a jewelry artist, She is more than happy to help and the business which turns out to be successful.

I know I am not the target audience for the story; I am a guidance counselor and enjoy reading a story that I can recommend to students. In this case I liked the story but wasn’t a big fan of the narrators; however that might just be me and this age group may love it. I

Want to thank NetGalley and Dreamscape Media/Storm Publishing Ltd. for granting me this audiobook!
Publishing Release Date scheduled for June 13, 2023.

Maggie and Daija have plans to earn money over the summer by braiding hair at summer camp. But then Maggie's half-sister, Callie arrives and the three girls struggle to figure out how to go into business together and how to handle sudden new business rivals across the street. The Braid Girls is a great middle grade novel about the value of communication and honesty and the need to understand that everyone has their own priorities and struggles, but that friends and family always make it easier.

I enjoyed The Braid Girls, and would definitely recommend it for middle grade readers who want a book about friendship, step-families, or trying to earn some summer savings. It was a lot of fun too. It had enough to interest me as an adult, though it is a very short and contained story.

I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Erin Ruth Walker; Tyla Collier; Jade Wheeler. I'm not sure if it was a writing issue or a narration issue, but several times during conversations between the girls, I found myself struggling to keep track of who was talking. Other than that, the audio was great. 3.5 stars rounded up.

Thanks to Dreamscape Media and Netgalley for an audioARC in exchange for an honest review.

A tale of 3 very different young girls who spend a summer together and discover their true personalities. Of what it means to lose a parent and carry on, venture into the world and make a little something, of their own this summer vacation.

As these 3 start of their new business of braiding, life almost seems a bliss but not a lasting one. With competition arriving just next door, they are derailed from their all-planned lives and landed into this abyss of a summer they will always remember.

The book is intended to be for middle grades and would serve as a beautiful example of how to approach opportunities and obstacles in life. With a pinch of jealousy and a great deal of heartwarming moments, the book had me all into this short story. Needless to say, the book had a good pacing and structure throughout.
Pondering what I would have liked more as an adult is to see a bit more background to the past lives of one of the characters and maybe a glimpse of the future in the epilogue.

Thankyou @netgalley @dreamscape_media and @iamsherriwinston for the Digital ARC

I really enjoyed this book. I connected with the fact that my father had a whole other family. Also at 33 years old I’m teaching myself to braid. It’s something I wish I had learned as a child. Many of my students braid hair and I tell them how it is a great skill and a lucrative profession.