Review: Fractured by Catherine McKenzie (audio)

Title:Fractured

Author:Catherine McKenzie

Narrator:Teri Clark Linden, Scott Merriman, Amy McFadden & James Foster

Published:October 2016, Brilliance Audio

Length:9 hours 37 minutes

Source:Publisher

Welcome, neighbor!

Julie Prentice and her family move
across the country to the idyllic Mount Adams district of Cincinnati,
hoping to evade the stalker who’s been terrorizing them ever since the
publication of her bestselling novel, The Murder Game. Since
Julie doesn’t know anyone in her new town, when she meets her neighbor
John Dunbar, their instant connection brings measured hope for a new
beginning. But she never imagines that a simple, benign conversation
with him could set her life spinning so far off course.

We know where you live….

After
a series of misunderstandings, Julie and her family become the target
of increasingly unsettling harassment. Has Julie’s stalker found her, or
are her neighbors out to get her, too? As tension in the neighborhood
rises, new friends turn into enemies, and the results are deadly.

My thoughts:This is a crazy, psychology mystery that had me hooked from the very beginning. I first became a fan of Catherine McKenzie when I read her previous book, Smoke – loved it!!! – and so of course I jumped at the opportunity to read and review her latest book – and what a ride it was!

This book is quite different from her last book, which I think is good! I like when authors don’t always do the same old thing – it shows they have more than one trick up their sleeve! And what’s cool with this book is that it’s based around an author having just written a best seller – and that book is actually being published under that author‘s name – yes, you can now go buy The Murder Game by Julie Apple, the main character of this book! How cool is that?

But back to this book…oh my, between the crazy stalker and the silliness of the new neighborhood and all the rules that busy-body Cindy has taken it upon herself to create, I found myself flipping between being frantic with worry and laughing out loud! An incident happens and you aren’t sure who is involved until the very end – and believe me, I was desperately making guesses, rewinding my audio trying to see if I had missed some major clue…but no – it isn’t until almost the very end that you realize who is all involved. 

The story is cleverly told and you can’t help but get caught up in it. The time flip going back and forth from the present to about a year prior is a bit confusing at first, but you quickly catch on and it very slowly gives you little clues, like a jigsaw puzzle coming together piece by piece. 

This is the second book I’ve now read by Catherine McKenzie and I am definitely a fan. Now I’m off to pick up The Murder Game…

Audio thoughts:This was a fun book to listen to as it had multiple narrators – and they all did a great job. I’ve only ever listened to Amy McFadden before, so the others were all new to me, but they were enjoyable to listen to and having different voices, especially for the alternating chapters of Julie and John helped keep those parts of the story separate, and whoever was doing the neighborhood newsletters from Cindy – their voice was perfect – perfectly over–the-top for all her crazy rules and such. It was a great book to listen to, full of emotion and suspense and tension when needed, but just the amount of humor, too.