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The Crooked House cover art

The Crooked House

By: Christobel Kent
Narrated by: Rachel Atkins
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Editor reviews

One of the most suspenseful audiobooks on the market, The Crooked House is written by Christobel Kent and grippingly narrated by Rachel Atkins. This complete and unabridged psychological thriller will have you listening compulsively. Alison, the young lone survivor in her family’s massacre, has moved into a new life. It’s not until adulthood when she realises she will never be happy until she finds closure with her past. Is Alison’s return to the scene of her family's murder putting her in the path of this monstrous killer again? A brilliant listen for thriller enthusiasts and newcomers alike. Available now from Audible.

Summary

One fateful night. One unthinkable family tragedy. One survivor. This is Alison's story.

Perfect for fans of The Girl on the Train and Apple Tree Yard, this stunning psychological thriller follows one woman's search for the truth about her family history. Alison is as close to anonymous as she can get: With no ties and a backroom job, hers is a life lived under the radar. But once Alison was someone else: Once she was Esme, a teenager whose bedroom sat at the top of a remote house on a bleak estuary. A girl whose family, if not happy exactly, was no unhappier than anyone else's - or so she thought.

Then one night violence was unleashed in the crooked house, in a nightmare that only Alison survived and from which she's been running ever since. Only when she falls for the charismatic Paul does Alison realise that to have any chance of happiness, she must return to her old life and face a closed community full of dark secrets.

As she seeks to uncover the truth of what happened that terrible night, Alison begins to question everything she thought she knew. Is there anyone she can trust?

©2015 Christobel Kent (P)2015 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"An utterly compulsive psychological thriller. I loved it." (SJ Watson, author of Before I Go to Sleep, on The Crooked House)
"Brilliant...A spooky, gripping and affecting story." (Louise Doughty, author of Apple Tree Yard, in the Guardian)
"Compulsive, unsettling and scary as hell." ( Sunday Mirror)
"Echoes of Christie and du Maurier in this fine thriller." ( Sunday Times)
"Demands to be devoured in one sitting." ( Good Housekeeping)

What listeners say about The Crooked House

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars
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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Dreadful!!!

Very disappointed with this story! Predictable characters and a ridiculous "twist" so obvious from the start I can't believe someone thought this was worth publishing! Will avoid this author like the plague and the narrator too!

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9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Best book Iv listened to this year

Fabulous story. Great characters, kept me guessing the whole way through - so credible. Loved every bit of this book! I'm now going to my next Christobel Kent book!

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Hard work

I found this quite hard going. I had to keep re-listening to bits as I was completely confused about what was happening as the story went on. I'm still not entirely sure. It kept jumping back and forward in time but there were no pauses so you had to try to work this out yourself a lot of the time.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Insipid thriller

The heroine's family members were brutally killed when she was 13. After the tragedy Esme changed her name and went to live with her aunt in Cornwall. After her studies she works in London where she meets Paul. He receives a wedding invitation which will take her back to her native Norfolk. She will then confront her past. The plot is more or less obvious from the very start; the supporting cast of characters are fairly uninteresting and devoid of true mystery. The writing is repetitive with extremely heavy 'cliffhangers'. The narrator did a good job except for the working class people of Norfolk who for some reason had vaguely Cockney or London accents. By the time the truth was revealed I was not in the least surprised and I didn't much care by then.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

A place and people forgotten by the world

The best parts of the story are the descriptions of the bleak estuary environment. This is a place easily accessible from Liverpool Street Station but at the same time remote and inescapable by the local people who scratch out a meagre living. Outsiders are not always welcomed by a suspicious and closed in community, and it is therefore of little surprise that this was the scene of a horrific family massacre. This is the story is of Alison, the sole survivor who is trying to find out the truth about what happened when she was a child. This is further embellished by her peculiar relationship with her much older boyfriend and his sinister ex-girlfriend. This part is very like the Daphne Du Maurier book Rebecca, and is very enjoyable. Unfortunately the unravelling of the murder mystery does become confused and muddled, and I had to wind the book back several times to maintain my grip.

The slightly over the top ending does draw matters to a satisfying conclusion and so I am therefore more than happy to give this a four star rating. The author is clearly talented and I am interested in reading more from her.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Hated this book!

Would you try another book written by Christobel Kent or narrated by Rachel Atkins?

No.

What could Christobel Kent have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

No idea.

Would you be willing to try another one of Rachel Atkins’s performances?

No.

You didn’t love this book--but did it have any redeeming qualities?

No.

Any additional comments?

I found this book very boring and hard going. I kept drifting off and having to repeat what I'd listened to. I tried to make it to the end but couldn't bear to listen to the last hour and couldn't have cared less how it ended.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Overlong and confusing

I did enjoy this book in parts and stuck it out to the very end but to be honest it was a long and arduous journey and many times I didn't think I'd make it.

There are lots of characters in this book who play various parts in our heroines life. However, they are not well drawn and tend to meld into one another. The ending was not really a surprise and actually I'd lost interest by that point. Sorry!

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars
  • V
  • 24-05-15

Found it confusing

The author jumps about so much it is hard to follow. Also I found the narrator would end sentences in a very quiet tone which made it difficult to hear. The story was a bit far fetched and you never quite understood why the male character did what he did.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Man alive this took some warming to.

This book is so sloooooow to start that I almost gave up several times. If you're a bloke don't bother. It blathers on & on about how she (the main character) feels about everything. She's forever 'holding her breath' etc. It's just damned annoying. That said, if you can make it through the first 2/3rds of the book the remainder is good.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Plenty of Red Herrings

Narrated by an actress who clearly knows how to give an audio book just the right amount of tension and character, this is a good, twisty read. I did have the real villain pegged from the first few chapters, but then I wrote thrillers too, and the author threw enough smoke and mirrors into the narrative along the way to make me question my number one suspect and certainly wonder how they were going to be worked into the narrative. My only niggle was a few times when the writing seemed to deliberately holding back on revelations in order to confuse the issue, but other than that a gripping read and a vivid evocation of place. By the end you can certainly taste the salt in the air.

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3 people found this helpful