The Other Child

By: Lucy Atkins

Narrated by: Katharine Mangold

Sometimes a lie seems kinder than the truth...but what happens when that lie destroys everything you love?

When Tess is sent to photograph Greg, a high-profile paediatric heart surgeon, she sees something troubled in his face and feels instantly drawn to him. Their relationship quickly deepens, but then Tess, single mother to nine-year-old Joe, falls pregnant, and Greg is offered the job of a lifetime back in his hometown of Boston. Before she knows it, Tess is married and relocating to the States. But life in an affluent American suburb proves anything but straightforward.

Unsettling things keep happening in the large rented house, Joe is distressed, the next-door neighbours are in crisis, and Tess is sure that someone is watching her. Greg's work is all-consuming, and, as the baby's birth looms, he grows more and more unreachable. Something is very wrong, Tess knows it, and then she makes a jaw-dropping discovery....

©2015 Lucy Atkins (P)2015 WF Howes

pretty good

better than average listen , kept me guessing till the end so all in all a good book.

Meh

It was just ok. I don't regret listening to it, but I'll forget about it shortly, I'm sure.

Torn, but ultimately worthy...

I listened to this quickly as the story intrigued me from the beginning and once I got further into the mystery of it, I just had to find out what was going to happen! There were a couple of loopholes in the story the reader may never know (although as it ended, I couldn't help but to wonder if there may be a sequel to this one). The characters were interesting, if not wholly developed. In the middle area of the story, some parts drag a bit, but then would pick up quickly again. I believe the protagonist was in denial for most of the story, as the real answer (but not the motives behind it) was quite obvious to me soon after the mystery began unravelling. The twist for me was the nature of the actual motive behind it all, which is revealed to the reader a bit too late in the story to wrap it up nicely in my opinion. The narrator's voice in general had no discernible accent to me besides American. She has a nice cadence and she did a great job reading; however, it did seem a bit off by production perhaps as the story is told from the viewpoint of Tess, the main wife and mother, who had just moved to the U.S. after having lived in Britain her entire life. I am not quite sure why a British reader wasn't chosen, but it did not ruin the story for me.
It was hard for me to put this one down, however, and I feel it was definitely worth a credit!

Um, well

The performance through me on this one. The reader seemed so nervous at the start and the trading was fast and jerky, but it definitely got better. The story seemed immature and so convoluted at the end I had to keep rewinding to try and understand what was going on.