Distress Signals

By: Catherine Ryan Howard

Narrated by: Alan Smyth, Bronson Pinchot, Suzanne Toren

Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's Summary

The acclaimed debut thriller from the internationally bestselling author of The Liar’s Girl and 56 Days 

The day Adam Dunne’s girlfriend, Sarah, fails to return from a Barcelona business trip, his perfect life begins to fall apart. Days later, the arrival of her passport and a note that reads “I’m sorry—S” sets off real alarm bells. He vows to do whatever it takes to find her. 

Adam is puzzled when he connects Sarah to a cruise ship called the Celebrate - and to a woman, Estelle, who disappeared from the same ship in eerily similar circumstances almost exactly a year before. 

To get answers, Adam must confront some difficult truths about his relationship with Sarah. He must do things of which he never thought himself capable. And he must try to outwit a predator who seems to have found the perfect hunting ground.  

©2016 Catherine Ryan Howard (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Finally! A great book!

This was a very well written story! It was superbly played out- one piece of the puzzle shifting into place at just the right moment to keep the questions turning in your head as you were propelled further into the mystery. After being SO disappointed in Behind Her Eyes and it's sell out, paranormal ending, this book was a gem of a find. This is the book that should be made into a movie. LOVED IT!

Good But Tedious

I really like this author and LOVED The Liar's Girl, but this one wasn't my favorite.

It starts off great but really starts to get bogged down halfway through. It just got too boring and tedious there for a while. I really disliked Peter's character and the setting of the cruise ship to begin with. The idea of slogging through a whole bunch of chapters on the ship with this creepy guy was too depressing. It went on and on. It would have been much more compelling if Peter was a different kind of character. I had a feeling of where it was headed and decided to just skip to the end. Picked a random chapter close to the end and happened to pick the one with the whole solution laid out and I was completely right lol. Saved myself a lot of grief having to actually get there.
She really knows how to create tension and she's a wonderful writer. I just found the setting and characters annoying in this one. If I had known it was mostly set on a cruise ship I wouldn't have even started it.

Still, I highly recommend this author. Looking forward to the ones i haven't read yet.

Like the Liar's Girl the narration is fine, but the audio is terrible. It is too quiet and sounds muffled. They need a better studio or something!

Gripping

Best book I've listened to so far on Audible. Lately I'm choosing a lot of psychological suspense and almost all claim to be like Gone Girl or Girl on a Train, and none of them came even close until this one. I listened whenever possible and while I had a few things figured out, there were some twists I didn't see coming.

Totally implausible

Don't think too much about the plot...it starts off with an intriguing set-up, but, OMG, the motivations of the culprit are totally implausible. And the sub-plot is really unnecessary. Waaay to drawn out as well.

Cool concept, mediocre execution

The idea for this story was pretty cool. The writing was okay, not fantastic. The characters were annoying and some felt entirely unnecessary. The main character Adam was a bit of an idiot and naive beyond belief. His emotions were a little forced and tried to ‘guide’ the reader way too often. The end of the novel was a let down. The beginning was decent with a good build up, but after about 1/3rd it started to get frustrating and a little dull.

Horrible

This story is boring, predictable, and incredibly long winded. There were parts that it felt like the writer was just putting in parts just to meet a word quota.

And the story was incredibly hard to follow along when listening. Not enough distinction between characters. And the whole story about the French family was lost on me. I have no idea what the point was on that.

I listened the whole way in hopes it would get better but it didn’t. Just chalk it up to hours of my life I’ll never get back.

I Don't Understand

This novel was actually two separate novels, with no meaningful plot connections. Was the entire biography of the French psychopath simply a red herring? The story of the Irish writer and his missing girlfriend would have been better standing alone. I hate it when the predictable ending is, "Huh?"

Twisty and diabolical.

This book begins with a traditional mystery: what happened to Sarah? As each question is answered, more spring up. Interwoven with the mystery is a dark psychological thriller, the threads of which are pulled tighter and tighter as the stories progress ultimately leading to a diabolical conclusion. Mwa ha ha ha ha!

far-fetched...but engrossing/uniq (spoiler alert)

Great whodunit . . . very entertaining and the writing was good too . . . However, there was a character (Peter) that did something that seemed very out-of-character / far fetched. . .but it wasn't impossible to believe

I'm looking forward to the release Howard's 2nd novel, next spring, even if the title contains the word GIRL. ....I guess her agent forced her to do that . . . LOL

AMAZING !!!!

All of it was amazing. The story characters, the narrators and the emotional roller coaster! It was a Freebie from Audible. Now I have a new author to listen to. Thanks Audible.