Darlene's Book Nook: #Audiobook #Review: 4 out of 5 stars for The Liar's Girl by Catherine Ryan Howard @cathryanhoward @BlackstoneAudio

Thursday, March 29, 2018

#Audiobook #Review: 4 out of 5 stars for The Liar's Girl by Catherine Ryan Howard @cathryanhoward @BlackstoneAudio

TITLE: The Liar's Girl

AUTHOR: Catherine Ryan Howard

NARRATORS: Alana Kerr Collins, Alan Smyth, Gary Furlong

PUBLISHER: Blackstone Audio

PUBLICATION DATE: February 27, 2018

FORMAT: Unabridged audiobook

LENGTH: 10 hrs and 25 mins

GENRE: Mystery

ISBN: 9781504782487

Will Hurley was an attractive, charming, and impressive student at Dublin's elite St. John's College -- and Ireland's most prolific serial killer. Having stalked his five young victims, he drowned them in the muddy waters of the Grand Canal. Sentenced to life imprisonment when he was just nineteen, Will is locked away in the city's Central Psychiatric Hospital.

Freshman Alison Smith moved to the Big Smoke to enroll in St. John's and soon fell hard for Will Hurley. Her world bloomed...and then imploded when Liz, her best friend, became the latest victim of the Canal Killer -- and the Canal Killer turned out to be the boy who'd been sleeping in her bed. Alison fled to the Netherlands and, in ten years, has never once looked back.

When a young woman's body is found in the Grand Canal, Garda detectives visit Will to see if he can assist them in solving what looks like a copycat killing. Instead, Will tells them he has something new to confess -- but there's only one person he's prepared to confess it to.

The last thing Alison wants is to be pulled back into the past she's worked so hard to leave behind. Reluctantly, she returns to the city she hasn't set foot in for more than a decade to face the man who murdered the woman she was supposed to become.

Only to discover that, until now, Will has left out the worst part of all...

MY REVIEW:

I received a complimentary copy of this audiobook for voluntary review consideration.

Howard has, once again, hooked me!

Allison is devastated when her best friend, Liz, is murdered. Her boyfriend, Will, is not only convicted of the crime but of several other murders in the same area where female college students have been dumped in the Grand Canal in Dublin. With the serial killer locked away in a psychiatric hospital, all is quiet...at least for a while. When the body of another female college student is found in the Grand Canal a decade later, Will is questioned and the police wonder whether he worked with a partner all those years ago or whether this is a copycat killer. The police contact Allison, and ask if she would visit Will in the hopes that he will open up to her. Will claims that there is no copycat, but that the one responsible for the recent murders and the ones all those years ago is one and the same. Allison agrees to help Will prove his innocence.

The book is mostly told from two points of view -- Allison and Will -- in a dual timeline (then and now). Periodically, there is a third point of view from the killer.

I really enjoyed Howard's new mystery. There was a lot of suspense, and the narratives told from the killer's point of view were so creepy and gave me the heebie-jeebies! I was blindsided by the twist, and I love it when an author can do that to me!

The three points of view are narrated by three different people: Alana Kerr Collins, Alan Smyth, and Gary Furlong. I immediately recognized Alan Smyth, who narrated Howard's previous release, Distress Signals. Just as he did in that audiobook, Smyth had me riveted from start to finish. Collins and Furlong also had me engaged with their portrayals of Allison and Will. Each of the narrators totally sucked me into the story, and it was a great listen! Here is a sample of the narration:

MY RATING:

4 stars!! It was really good, and you should put it on your TBR if you enjoy mysteries. Thanks again to Blackstone Audio for the opportunity to review this audiobook.

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