Thank you Simon & Schuster Audio for the ALC and Atria Books, #partner, for the advanced copy of A Likely Story in exchange for my honest review.
Publisher: Atria Books / Simon & Schuster ALC
Published: March 14, 2023
Summary:
The only child of an iconic American novelist discovers a shocking tangle of family secrets that upends everything she thought she knew about her parents, her gilded childhood, and her own stalled writing career.
Growing up in the nineties in New York City as the only child of famous parents was both a blessing and a curse for Isabelle Manning. Her beautiful society hostess mother, Claire, and New York Times bestselling author father, Ward, were the city’s intellectual It couple. Ward’s glamorous obligations often took him away from Isabelle, but Claire made sure her childhood was always filled with magic and love.
Now an adult, all Isabelle wants is to be a successful writer like her father but after many false starts and the unexpected death of her mother, she faces her upcoming thirty-fifth birthday alone and on the verge of a breakdown. Her anxiety only skyrockets when she uncovers some shocking truths about her parents and begins wondering if everything she knew about her family was all based on an elaborate lie.
Wry, wise, and propulsive, A Likely Story is punctuated with fragments of a compulsively readable book-within-a-book about a woman determined to steal back the spotlight from a man who has cheated his way to the top. The characters seem eerily familiar but is the plot based on fact? And more importantly, who is the author?
My thoughts:
I was thrilled when Cindy from the Thoughts of a Page Podcast selected this book for her Patreon group to read early as I had already had my eye on it. I mean, let’s just look at the great cover – it certainly is eye-catching and I was so excited to know that I would have a group to discuss this with once I read it.
I am a huge fan of the book-within-a-book trope and I just loved how it played out here. Add in the NYC/Long Island settings and this reader was one happy gal. Even with characters that you aren’t quite sure if you should like or not, I found myself invested in this story, with that air of intrigue as to just what was really going on. Family dramas are always a huge win for me and this one was filled with just that. These characters we get to meet here are so flawed and messy that you can’t help but want to spend the time it takes to really get to know them and find what it is that motivates them to make the decisions they do, whether you agree with their decisions or not.
This is a layered story that delves into quite a few topics that just beg to be discussed, really making it a great book choice for book clubs. It’s not necessarily a fast-paced story, but if you like character-driven stories with a little scandal, some family drama and dysfunction, a bit of social commentary and characters that just beg to be picked apart, this one is for you! This is Leigh Abramson’s debut novel and I think she did remarkably well with it and will definitely be keeping an eye out for what comes next from her!
Audio thoughts:
This was narrated by a full cast and I really appreciated that. Having the story told from multiple points of view was tricky enough – though I did appreciate and enjoy that aspect of the story – but I think the story benefited from the different narrators and I thought they did a great job with their respective parts. All narrators – Mia Barron, Cynthia Farrell, James Fouhey, Adam Grupper and Devon Sorvari – were new-to-me – which is surprising as I listen to so many audiobooks, but that happens from time to time.
