ALC review
Thriller Missing Secrets
Narrated by Emma Woods.
I didn't like that there was only one narrator with multiple Povs so there should of been more, it was confusing I don't recommend listening to the audio it's all over the place and you don't know whose povs it is. I do recommend reading the actual book or ebook. each character has a purpose in the story and come to a shocking conclusion.
Cate and her son, Archie, are reported missing by her husband, Oliver. This book is told in several people point of view. Lexi, the substitute teacher takes over Cate's class.
Nobody is who they seem and everyone holds secrets all related to Cate's disappearance. Lexi is determined to find Cate and Archie and she begins to get threats to stop her to searching for them.
Oliver is suspected of murdering his wife and his son. He is determined to prove himself innocent.there so many side characters like the receptionist and the neighbor who hold so their own secrets. And you find your self with answer at the very end of the book.

The Teacher's Secret starts out slow and is very much a slow burn with very little thriller qualities. It picks up around the halfway mark, but most of the action occurs at the end. There are a lot of characters and details can get confusing via audio making the story challenging to follow. Overall, it was ok and somewhat entertaining. The narration was clear and well executed, but the story just fell flat for me.

Thank you NetGalley and the Publisher for the ARC of The Teacher's Secret.

This book started out slow and continued that way. I never felt like it was a thriller as it didn't have any parts that made you feel that way. I had the story figured after reading a few chapters but persevered through to the end to confirm my suspicions. The only thing that was a bit of a surprise was what happens at the very end.

The Narrator did a great job and was easy to listen to and understand.

When Kate, a well liked teacher at primary school, and her son Archie don't return home on a Friday evening, the whole town starts to worry and search.
Lexi, the new substitute teacher to take over Kates's class, gets a little bit too involved in her disappearance that even the police are asking her questions.
Everyone from this little town seems to have secrets.

An average thriller, not one I loved but the narration kept me going to see the end. Told in quite a few POVs, which did make it a little bit tricky trying to keep up with everyone's stories and secrets.
The ending felt a little too predictable, however some might not guess it.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

This was an okay story, but it wasn't anything spectacular or gripping. It's a good popcorn thriller if you're looking for an easy listen! I picked this up especially since I was a teacher - this being about a teacher caught my attention. There were some twists and turns, but it was kind of predictable at moments. This was my first time reading a Lauren North story, but I'm interested in maybe picking up more in the future.

This book was a bit slow for me and lexi really irrirated me I’m not sure why. Unfortunately I was disappointed by this book it had so much potential.

Impressive narrator - subtle voices without being pantomime.

I really enjoyed this - yes, the ending is a little contrived and characters not being recognised seems unbelievable but you can forgive for the plot and quality of the writing

I feel like this book could've done better at keeping my attention. However, it was a roller coaster and I did not see the twists and turns coming.

A popcorn thriller in all the best ways, this was impossible to tear myself away from! If you love suburban thrillers full of complicated relationships, juicy secrets, and twisty turns, this is for you.

Premise - a mother and child go missing and the father/husband, head teacher at a local school, is at the center of the scandal. What is he hiding? Was his family really taken or is the wife playing a game? What are the other members of the community hiding? No one is innocent!

The conversational, confessional voice, multiple POV storytelling, and quick (but not too quick for gossip) pace all absolutely worked for me. I HAD to find out who the bad guy was! Excuse me while I go buy all of Lauren North’s backlist.

📚 Series or Standalone: standalone
📚 Genre: thriller
📚 Target Age Group: adult
📚 Cliffhanger: no

✨ Will I Reread: yes
✨ Recommended For: fans of Frieda McFadden, Daniel Hurst

💕 Characters: 5/5
💕 Writing: 5/5 (not in a high art sense, but in a fun, functional prose that gets out of the way of the story sense)
💕 Plot: 5/5
💕 Pacing: 5/5
💕 Unputdownability: 5/5
💕 Enjoyment: 5/5
💕 Book Cover: 5/5

Thanks, NetGalley and Bookouture, for the gifted ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Teacher's Secret written by Lauren North and narrated by Emma Woods is a stunning thriller that could happen in any village, any town to anyone.

A teacher and her child go missing. Her husband, the Headmaster, continues to go to work. The new, mysterious substitute who hasn't given a copy of her references to the snooping head of the PTA, the ambitious reception class teacher who still lives at home. The school and village link them, but how else are they connected?

Firstly, Emma Woods' performance in this audiobook is exemplary, outsanding, stellar. The different characters each clearly defined, he dark psycopathy of the antagonist, the various personalities of the PTA and mums, the teachers and key protagonists, let alone the narration throughout. I was absolutely blown away by Woods' skill

Not only was the narration exceptional, the writing was too. In a thriller where there is not one antagonist, not one guilty party, but multiple guilty parties, multiple pov's, it takes a certain level of skill to balance it all with a logical progression, keeping the suspense on the bubble without giving anything away, letting that storyline come to the boil. Beautifully written, relatable and utterly, utterly terrifying in its plausibility

In my top audiobooks of the year for ceratin and worth far far more than 5 stars on all counts. I cannot recommend this audiobook enough and I will also be buying the book because is it that good. Absolutely blinding

Thank you to Netgalley,Bolinda Audio, the author Lauren North and the narrator Emma Woods for this exceptional ALC. My review is left voluntarily and all opinions are my own

Thank you NetGalley for this arc of The Teacher's Secret. This was an okay thriller to me. I have read better. I think there were too many uninteresting tid bits that I didn't need in my thriller. At the 50% mark I really was going to DNF it because I was just not getting the thrill it was supposed to give. This is a thriller for those that are just getting into the genre. Overall, just a mediocre thriller.

Suspenseful and thrilling end, with a slower, and sometimes confusing, start — I had to restart the audiobook several times to listen again and make sure I knew which POV was telling the story. There were several characters telling the story which added to the intrigue and overall fullness of the book, but was difficult in the beginning. Lauren adds at the end that this is a different style and genre of writing for her, but overall I think she did a great job bringing the pieces together.

I loved that the story unfolded as we learned more information and backstory, and I started predicting the end and had some correct suspicions (which sometimes is a bummer since I like being surprised/thrown off more). There were really great characters and stories intertwined, and I really enjoyed the main character Lexi.

I look forward to more novels by Lauren North!

Thanks to NetGalley for an audiobook in exchange for my review.

When well-liked teacher Cate Walker and her son, Archie, walk away from school one day and aren't seen or heard from again the entire town gets involved with the search. From Cate's husband to the brand-new substitute teacher, the police are speaking to everyone..... but in this small town, Cate & Archie's location isn't the only secret.

I wanted to like this one; the premise was interesting and the narration was pretty good, but there were at least three main female characters plus a bunch of secondary characters and some male main characters and I really, really struggled to keep them all straight. None of them were especially distinctive and being narrated by the same person (talented though she is) didn't help. I would try more from this author, but only if there were way fewer POVs.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for this audio.

What a great book!!! It had me hooked from page one!! I couldn’t stop listening to it. It had me guessing the entire time. This was a first for me by this author and it will not be my last!

wow this book was quite a ride! the title fits for damn near every character in the book. so. many. secrets. I enjoyed this book very much!

This audiobook was your average thriller! It wasn’t too exciting, but it wasn’t horrible. It was from the perspective of a few different people, which was a little frustrating as everyone seemed to have secrets, but it took what seemed like forever to get a glimpse of what those secrets were. Their first few perspectives were just “they can’t find out” type monologues.

I listened to this audiobook at 1.75x, and it was a good pace. The narrator was good and easy to understand.

All in all, it wasn’t the most thrilling book, and had some horrible characters. But it was entertaining enough to finish.

An ordinary afternoon Cate Walker and her son Archie walk out of the school where she is a respected teacher and he a pupil and aren’t seen again. Lexi, the primary narrator of the story, is a substitute teacher brought in to cover Cate’s classes. She is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery but with threatening messages and a potential stalker it’s clear someone is trying to stop her. Top of the suspect list is Oliver, the headmaster who also happens to be Cate’s husband. Well the husband always tops the suspect list in issues like this, especially a husband who’s been having an affair. But with the perspective of a sinister sounding unnamed second narrator is there more to this than meets the eye?
Ooh I enjoyed this! Unreliable narrator(s), school gate politics and lots of secrets send the reader in multiple directions. Red herrings, a relatable setting for many readers, and love to hate characters this makes an intriguing read, right up to the final twist.

Audiobook was not the way for me to read this. There’s too many povs and there’s no real way to differentiate them because the narrator uses the same tone/voice for a majority of them. The only time she changes it up a little bit is when she is speaking as Oliver and the unknown person’s POV. She actually does a better job differentiating more when she’s speaking as a side character, the school’s main governess.

I had a really hard time with this thriller as the multiple POVs just didn’t seem like they worked well for the story. There’s too much random info dropped on the reader and it doesn’t actually pick up until over halfway through. Reading this via audiobook was hard as I kept getting some POVs mixed up. More specifically Gemma’s and James’s sister who I can’t recall what the name was. I might actually have the names mixed up right now. To be honest I don’t understand the reason behind having these two POVs included considering they don’t really add anything besides too much information, useless details and trying to throw the reader off. I would rather of stuck out with having only Oliver and Lexi’s POV. The unknown character would have been fine as well so the author could have kept the multiple POVs like she wanted to try. Having 5 though was way too much for a story like this.

Now the story was kind of meh for me. I wanted to be excited and curious as to what happened to Cate and Archie but there was just so many jumbled perspectives we have to go through before things actually pick up. The plot itself seemed like it couldn’t decide on what it wanted to do. There’s so many extra stories that just feel unnecessary.They don’t really matter to the plot at all and taking them out wouldn’t have changed the story at all. I just wasn’t a fan of the plot as well unfortunately. It dragged too much and listening to it via audiobook only made it confusing on both what the point of some of the POVs were and who it was.

The final reveal felt too predictable and I was disappointed in both the ending and epilogue. Maybe I would have enjoyed this in a physical format but even though I felt like the audiobook brought it down a bit I’m not truly sure if a different format would even matter.

The Teacher's Secret by Lauren North
Narrated by Emma Woods

I received an advance review copy for free thanks to NetGalley and Bolinda Audio and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Blurb

On an ordinary Friday afternoon, popular teacher Mrs Walker and her eight-year-old son leave the school playground. But they never make it home…

Being called in as a substitute teacher to replace a missing teacher – and mother – is the hardest job I’ve ever done. Cate Walker should still be here, in the role she loves. Her son Archie should be sitting in class with his friends. But instead they've disappeared and nobody has heard from them since…

At drop-off and pick-up, the other parents are hunched together anxiously. I can see the confusion in their children’s faces. The whole village is full of whispered rumours: that Archie and Cate will never be found, that someone else will soon be next… and that Cate's charismatic husband, Oliver – our headteacher – is involved.

After the chilling way Oliver looked at me on my first morning, the thought makes my blood turn to ice. I'm determined to uncover what’s really happened to Cate and Archie, especially after I find photos in Cate’s classroom cupboard that change everything…

Then an anonymous note turns up threatening me. My home is broken into while I sleep. I know the longer I stay at this school, the more danger I’m in.

But whoever’s trying to scare me doesn’t know who I am – or why I’m really here.

Or just how far I’ll go to expose the truth…

My Opinion

My first Lauren North book, but definitely not my last. There are a lot of secrets in this book making it hard to work out what actually happened before the reveals come. This was such an interesting read, with each of the main characters having something that they are hiding. I started reading this book (and finished it) when I had other books that I should have been reading - it was just too addictive to put down.

Rating 4/5

I enjoyed this listen. I did start at 2x the speed and had to drop it to 1.75x the speed due to the British accent, but I was just fine from there on. This is told from several point of views, which lead me to great confusion until I got the hang of who was who at about 60% of the way through. There were so many Easter eggs dropped into this book that you really have no idea who is a bad guy. Everyone has secrets it seems. Those secrets are eventually revealed towards the end of the book wrapping it all neatly together. My biggest complaint about the book is the jarring music playing at the beginning of some of the chapters, not all, but many. It just doesn't fit with the book. I've only had music in maybe two audio books that I felt ok with it being in it, this is not one of them. Please drop the music. The narrator did do a good job, especially with having so many different POVs to contend with. Thank you for the opportunity to listen to this book, I enjoyed it. #TheTeachersSecret #NetGalley