Takes One to Know One

By: Susan Isaacs

Narrated by: Mia Barron

Just a few years ago, Corie Geller was busting terrorists as an agent for the FBI. But at 35, she traded in her badge for the stability of marriage and motherhood. Now Corie is married to the brilliant and remarkably handsome Judge Josh Geller and is the adoptive mother of his lovely 14-year-old daughter. Between cooking meals and playing chauffeur, Corie scouts Arabic fiction for a few literary agencies and, on Wednesdays, has lunch with her fellow Shorehaven freelancers at a so-so French restaurant. Life is, as they say, fine.

But at her weekly lunches, Corie senses that something's off. Pete Delaney, a milquetoast package designer, always shows up early, sits in the same spot (often with a different phone in hand), and keeps one eye on the Jeep he parks in the lot across the street. Corie intuitively feels that Pete is hiding something - and as someone who is accustomed to keeping her FBI past from her new neighbors, she should know. But does Pete really have a shady alternate life, or is Corie just imagining things, desperate to add some spark to her humdrum suburban existence? She decides that the only way to find out is to dust off her FBI toolkit and take a deep dive into Pete Delaney's affairs.

Always sassy, smart, and wickedly witty, Susan Isaacs is at her formidable best in a novel that is both bitingly wry and ominously thrilling.

©2019 Susan Isaacs (P)2019 Recorded Books

Loved it

Really enjoyed! Although at times a little repetitive and too much detail, but a fun listen.

Outstanding!

The narrator captured every nuance. I was mesmerized by the way she performed the excellent storyline.

great writing ruined by terrible reading

I literally could not get past the first half hour of the story because I was so bothered by the fact that the narrator had an unpleasant voice and manner in her rating of this book and also seemed like the absolute wrong person to read it.

About four hours too long.

I really enjoy a cozy crime, and this fits that genre. The plot is good, but for real, listen to the first 2-3 hours and then skip to the last 2 hours and voila, you can save your brain a bunch of unnecessary repetition that doesn’t further the plot.

Not too bad but a lot of details

I enjoyed the book but there were a lot of rather boring details. The voices of the different characters were not very convincing but for the most part I could tell that they were different characters. Overall, not a bad story.

Great pairing: story + reader = success

Loved the reader for this story! Book was full of intrigue and suspense! Not too much, but just enough to keep you hooked! I didn’t love the ending, it could have been a little more creative.

Unusually boring for this author

This book isn't about anything; unbearably bad accents in performance. Voice is shrieky, and the "Long Island" accent is obviously just bad coaching on a non-NY actress.

DNF. Vapid and plotless.

I've given this book five hours of my life that I'll never get back. If you love hoards of boring and sometimes offensive details of life as an affluent suburbanite (the immigrant cleaning guy washing the inside of the protagonist's garbage cans was particularly tone-deaf), and if you don't want a story to be interesting, just pick up this book. For the first five hours, the protagonist, an ex-FBI agent now married to a super rich judge and lamenting the decorating taste of the dead first wife, mercilessly stalks a guy from her business lunch group just because he's not chatty. Honestly, the descriptions of this guy line up with neurodivergence, like Asperger's, and her suspicion that he's a dangerous criminal based on what's observed is just offensive. Then she stalks the guy, as if that's not offensive. I kept listening to find out if the target is actually evil, but after five hours, I decided I deserve better.

Perfectly decent performance by the reader.

Struggled to stay with the story

I was so anxious to listen to this book based on the author’s biography and reviews of previous books. The banter and dialogue alternate between witty and snarky. But _it_goes_ nowhere. Nowhere for long enough for you not to care. Bored Privileged housewife, former FBI agent, who is suspicious of a member of a lunch group formed to bring together people who work from home. He’s unusually dull. So is the plot. Not going to finish. Will return. Narrator made a valiant effort though.