The Completionist

By: Siobhan Adcock

Narrated by: Jacques Roy

One of Entertainment Weekly’s “10 prescient new feminist dystopias to read after The Handmaid’s Tale”; one of the “11 Best Summer Books Of 2018” by Women's Health; this “perfect beach book” (Entertainment Report) follows the search for a missing sister in a near-future world where infertility has produced a dangerous underground.

“Find her. You need to keep looking, no matter what. I’m afraid of what might’ve happened to her. You be afraid too.” After months of disturbing behavior, Gardner Quinn has vanished. Her older sister Fredericka is desperate to find her, but Fred is also pregnant—miraculously so, in a near-future America struggling with infertility. So she entrusts the job to their brother, Carter.

Carter, young but jaded, is in need of an assignment. Just home from war, his search for his sister is a welcome distraction from mysterious physical symptoms he can’t ignore, not to mention his increasing escape into the bottom of a glass.

Carter’s efforts to find Gardner lead him into a desperate underworld, where he begins to grasp the risks she took on as a Nurse Completionist. But his investigation also leads back to their father, a veteran of a decades-long war just like Carter himself, who may be concealing a painful truth, one that neither Carter nor Fredericka is ready to face.

“Fans of dystopian novels will love Siobhan Adcock’s disturbing speculation on just how bad things can get when resources are rare and personal lives are heavily policed” (Booklist). In the tradition of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Completionist is speculative fiction at its very best: it will “transport you to an entirely new world” (PopSugar) while revealing our own world in bold and unexpected ways.

great concept, not ideal for audiobook

I did enjoy this story- interesting premise, well- executed. however, if you are on the fence about reading or listening, I would not recommend listening. Much of the story is told in electronic communications, so it doesn't narrate very smoothly. Long strings of text exchanges or numbers are better read with eyes.