Losing You

A Novel

By: Nicci French

Narrated by: Imogen Church

Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

In this thrilling stand-alone novel from the internationally best-selling author of the Frieda Klein series, a woman’s frantic search for her missing daughter unveils a nefarious web of secrets and lies.

Nina Landry awakens on her 40th birthday, anticipating a day filled with excitement. She, her new boyfriend, and her two children are taking a trip - leaving their home on Sandling Island, off the coast of England, for a dream vacation. As soon as her 15-year-old daughter, Charlie, returns from a sleepover, they can get ready to leave.

But Charlie doesn’t come home at the expected time. Nina can’t believe of all days, Charlie has chosen this day to be late. As minutes and then hours tick by, Nina’s annoyance soon changes to concern, and then to a chilling certainty that something terrible has happened.

The police insist there’s no reason to worry - yet. Teenagers are unreliable, impulsive. Nina always thought she and Charlie had a solid, trusting relationship, but seeking out Charlie’s friends for clues to her whereabouts makes her reconsider. How well does Nina know her daughter, really? How well can a parent ever know a child? And will everything Nina doesn’t know - about Charlie, her neighbors, even the friends and family closest to them - prove fatal...?

Losing You once again proves that Nicci French is at the height of their storytelling powers in a clever, mind-bending thriller that has listeners guessing at every twist and turn.

©2020 Nicci French (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers

great until the end

a good page turner ruined by an unsatisfactory explanation if why the perpetrator did what he did...I felt so disappointed at the end...like I missed a whole chapter.

Just OK

Way too much inner dialogue by the main character. I usually don’t mind inner dialogue, but it was at least half the book.

Excellent!

This is truly one of the very best books I have ever listened to. I highly recommend it!

Fantastic!!!

This book was not so much a mystery as it was an exercise in empathy! Both the author and the narrator succeeded in catching what every parent would if their child should disappear!!! I was drawn in immediately and could not wait to get back to it. Very well done. This was the first book by Nicci French I have read and I will look into more. Imogen Church is my favorite, I will listen to anything she reads. She doesn't read a book, she tells a story! Bravo to both!!!

Performance should have 20 stars!

I know without a shadow of a doubt that anything read by Imogen Church will be a smashing success! This was no exception. Nicki French spun an intriguing tale of suspense with rich characters set in a sea mist landscape. I only wish it had been longer.... I didn't want it to end. Add this to your list!

predictable

found Nina beyond frustrating and what was attempting to come across as a mother doing whatever it takes to find her daughter, ends up being repetitive and so many SMH because so obvious moments it just wasn't happening for me.

The best of the best!

I have read another title by Nicci French which was enjoyable, but “Losing You” was superb! I found myself replaying paragraphs for the beauty of the writing, not something I’m inclined to do listening to a mystery.

The story begins with the manic events of a pending overseas Christmas vacation slamming into that worst of all imaginable scenarios - the loss of a child.

As the family deals with the breath stopping reality of their missing daughter and sister, the mother lives the agony of waiting for appropriate police response while channeling that visceral energy into finding her daughter herself. The reader/listener is dragged like a pinball, behind this character we are living through and with to the smashing conclusion of the story,

Nicci French gives us all of the main character‘s vision, feelings, fear and urgency with prose as beautiful as the story is heartbreaking.

Imogen Church blends her flawless narration to the breakneck pace of Nicci French’s writing. This narrator is to books what John Williams is to movies.

“Losing You” will never let you go.

Extremely dragged out and way too dramatic

This is an example of how to take a perfectly good storyline and make a bad book out of it. The whole thing is just way too dragged out, we wait 6!! hours until the first major plot twist happens and ironically that’s when things get flaccid. The whole catharsis feels rushed which is the funniest because we just spent 7 hours waiting for the big finish and it just didn’t deliver. At all. There is no explanation (only presumptions) to why things happened the way they did, there is no follow up. Good wins, bad loses, end of story. Why? Because that’s how it’s supposed to be.
Also, the performance. My God it was so unnecessarily dramatic it made me cringe and it kind of ruined the experience for me. I have no doubt that some people enjoy this, but for me it was way too much.

Very INTENSE

I’ve read their whole series but this was my first stand-alone. It was excellent but really intense! Outstanding narration. I usually avoid stories re kids and pets. Had trouble putting it down. Finished at 4 a.m. this morning. Great listen but going back to no stories about kids.

Drags along

Way too much drama and introspection by main character. Found myself tuning out for minutes at a time. So little actually happened