Perfect Little Children

A Novel

By: Sophie Hannah

Narrated by: Laura Kirman

Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

The New York Times best-selling author of The Monogram Murders and Woman with a Secret returns with a sharp, captivating, and expertly plotted tale of psychological suspense.

All Beth has to do is drive her son to his soccer game, watch him play, and then return home. Just because she knows her ex-best friend lives near the field, that doesn’t mean she has to drive past her house and try to catch a glimpse of her.

Why would Beth do that and risk dredging up painful memories? She hasn’t seen Flora for 12 years. She doesn’t want to see her today - or ever again. But she can’t resist. She parks outside the open gates of Newnham House, watches from across the road as Flora arrives, and calls to her children Thomas and Emily to get out of the car.

Except.... There’s something terribly wrong. Flora looks the same, only older. Twelve years ago, Thomas and Emily were five and three years old. Today, they look precisely as they did then. They are Thomas and Emily without a doubt, but they haven’t changed at all. They are no taller, no older. Why haven’t they grown? How is it possible that they haven’t grown up?

©2020 Sophie Hannah (P)2020 HarperAudio

English accent

The story was very good, however I found it difficult to listen to a book being read in an accent.

Weak

This storyline had potential but turned out to be a little shabby. The teenage daughter was very annoying I suppose that is a touch of realism to a very far fetched plot.

Utterly un-put-downable.

Wow. This is the best book I've listened to this year. I disagree with any quibbles about the narration, it was also exceedingly good.

Loved the story!

Very different story than my usual read. It was so good. I stayed in the car sometimes to listen more!! Loved the voices!

wow

best performance I've experienced, the story was a bit weird and long but overall satisfied

Excellent narration, enjoyable story

The performance was great — I really don’t understand negative reviews about the narration. If anything, the performance lifted the story. This is only the second Sophie Hannah book I’ve listened to outside of the Poirot stories, but I enjoyed both. Not 5 stars or anything, but solid and held my interest the entire time.

Ok story

The narration was terrible when the narrator switched characters;grating,almost indecipherable at times.
An unfortunate distraction

Don’t bother!

Listening to the audio version of this book is like literal torture. Like, you are literally torturing yourself from the moment you put it on.

The actress is fine when she’s using a regular voice as the main character, but then she puts on some godawful accent for all the male characters and the teenage characters — it is unbearable!! I had to stop listening and just search for spoilers to find out how the text ended, it was that bad.

And possibly, if the story was better MAYBE I could have tolerated the audio a bit more (MAYBE) but the entire story is pages upon pages of dialogue (my autocorrect wanted to change dialogue to diarrhea and that would have been apt).

Do yourself a favor and save your credit.

Awful

Contrived. Ridiculous. Excruciatingly boring. The characters were one-dimensional and stupid. The plot was absolutely unbelievable. I actually fast forwarded through parts just to see what the explanation was. Shouldn’t have bothered.

Horrible!

Boring and totally unrealistic. Probably the worst audible I’ve ever listened to. Don’t waste your credit.