Story Rating: 4.5 Stars 

Narrator (s) Rating: 4 Stars

Narrators: Elizabeth Knowelden, Moira Quirk, Clare Corbett, Deepa Samuel, Fajer Al-Kaisi, Steve West, Gail Shalan, Rachael Beresford

Publisher: Brilliance Auto

Genre: Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Tags: Contemporary, Mystery, Suspense, Soap Opera (ish), Thriller

Length: 9 hours and 44 minutes

Reviewer: Cindi

Purchase At: Amazon and Audible

Blurb –

Three women. Three smouldering secrets. Who will make it out alive?

It’s 5 November, and a woman awakens to a nightmare. Bound and gagged, she lies trapped in the heart of a towering bonfire. As the smoke thickens, panic sets in – she’s moments away from being engulfed in flames. How did it come to this?

Rewind eleven months: Margot, a faded TV star, and her long-suffering friend Anna watch as glamorous Liv and her flawless family move into their street. The three women soon fabricate the perfect pretence of friendship, but each harbours her own deadly secret – and newcomer Liv senses something is terribly wrong beneath the polished exteriors.

As cracks widen in the veneer of perfection and lies escalate out of control, tension ignites. Bonfire Night is approaching and someone is set to burn…But who will it be?

Review –

This is my very first audiobook. Every time I’ve tried one, my ADHD got in the way. My mind wanders, and I simply can’t concentrate for longer than a few minutes here and there. I got a new Kindle (Scribe) this week that came with a month of free Audible. I thought I’d try again. You Killed Me First popped up on a recommendation – this was after I’d tried the samples of a lot of my favorites that didn’t work for me – so I took a chance, and here I am. It took me a little longer to get through it, but I did finish it.

There’s a lot happening in this story. There are several narrators, listed above, but I had a difficult time figuring out who was who at times. There was one chapter, Zain’s, that a man narrated. All other men in the book were done by a woman or women.

The book starts with what’s referred to as ‘Bonfire Night’ throughout the book. The author then takes us back to a year or so before to show how and why the person was ‘in’ the bonfire. It continues on until a few months after.

Everything starts when Liv, Brandon, and their two children move into a nice house in a cul-de-sac. There are your typical nosy neighbors, Margot and Anna, who, of course, have to introduce themselves.

I absolutely despised Margot from the first page, and I still despised her on the last one. She was a snobby, condescending witch to everyone, especially Anna. She would justify her actions by finding blame in everyone but herself, again, especially Anna. Margot was never wrong, even when it was quite obvious to the reader/listener that she was. She was a former pop star who would do anything to get back into the spotlight after a public scandal kicked her out of it. She was a bad mother, a horrible wife, and an even worse friend.

As for Anna, she was a doormat who allowed Margot to walk all over her. If it wasn’t a weight comment, it was something else. Anna never said anything back. Ever.

Liv, on the other hand, had no problem saying things to Margot. Her passive aggressiveness was fun to watch, and she always did it with the fakest of smiles. Liv wasn’t perfect, but compared to the other two, she was probably the most sane of the bunch. Someone she knew in the past made an appearance in the book. Unfortunately, that’s about the extent of what was said about her ‘wild child’ years or whatever that were mentioned a time or two. There’s something she and her husband did before to earn money, but if the author wanted the reader to see that as scandalous, it didn’t happen with me. I was thinking, “Good for you,” instead of clutching my pearls. 🙂 Liv has the perfect life, the perfect marriage, the perfect family. She does, however, have secrets that even her husband isn’t aware of.

Margot has a husband who can’t stand her, and two children who basically parent themselves – who also can’t stand her. Every single thing Margot does is for Margot. This is proven when she has a ‘coming out’ party for her nonbinary child. The child may have come out to the family, but it wasn’t their mother’s place to out them to everybody else. She even had photographers and journalists there covering the party so that Margot could say, “See! Look at me! I’m supporting my child.” It was total cringe.

Anna has Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID. I had a hard time buying that. I’m no professional by any means, but I’ve read over a dozen nonfiction books and seen a lot of documentaries by people who actually do have DID, and I just wasn’t seeing it here. At no point did Anna black out, lose time, or do anything without remembering doing it. She simply heard voices in her head, with those voices being people she actually knew at some point in her life. She called them her passengers. There were no new personalities in there, and yes, I know that no two cases are alike. I may not agree with the DID diagnosis, but I did like the thing with the voices because they told a lot of the story. The folks in her head were more entertaining than she was, honestly.

This book was Mean Girls meets Desperate Housewives. All three of these women have their own agenda, especially Anna. That surprised me because she came across as the most bland and boring person in the cul-de-sac, even with the voices in her head. She even had a bland and boring husband, Drew. Even so, she, they, had the biggest issues in their past. I was surprised as each secret was revealed.

The first half of the book dragged a little as the author introduced the characters and their stories. The second half is when everything started speeding up. Secrets are exposed, some of which I didn’t see coming. There are quite a few twists and turns. I will say that I didn’t know who the bad guy was. It actually never crossed my mind that it was this person. My not being able to figure it out – when I almost always do in these types of books – is a major plus.

The entire book is about these three women hating each other while pretending to be the best of friends. There’s blackmail, murder, infidelity (definitely didn’t see that one coming), and even a hit-and-run, but that’s just the women. There are also three husbands in the background who have their own things going on. Well, except one. That one pretty much just lived his life thinking everything was totally fine in the world, though he was a big flirt. His wife made sure she kept him oblivious.

This is told in multiple points-of-view. With so many of the narrators sounding similar, I found myself going back and replaying parts to see which character was talking at any given time. With this being my first full-length audiobook, that took quite a bit away from the story for me. It also could’ve been my ADHD brain, so there’s that as well.

The only real issue I had is that I felt that it was much too long. It was just too busy and too detail-heavy in some places. So much was said during the first half that didn’t really say much, yet when I needed more, it simply wasn’t there. That’s not a dig at the author because the book is actually quite good. It’s just my opinion.

I totally was not expecting the ending or what happened leading up to it.

Overall, it was a good story. It kept me guessing and, again, I hadn’t figured out who the bad guy was until they were revealed. But this person was in no way the ONLY bad guy. Almost every single character in the book, minus the children, was pretty bad. I wouldn’t have minded even a little bit if they had all gone out with a bang in that bonfire that night.

This was a good first audiobook for me. With my ADHD, I’ll never be able to sit and chill while listening to audiobooks. I’m not able to sit and chill when I’m not listening to a book. I’m giving myself a pat on the back for finally being able to finish one. 🙂

My first by this author. I’ll definitely be checking out more of their work. I love a good mystery/thriller, and You Killed Me First definitely kept me guessing.