A Simple Favor
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3.9 • 98 Ratings
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Soon to be a major motion picture from Lionsgate starring Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively and Henry Golding, and directed by Paul Feig
She’s your best friend. She knows all your secrets. That’s why she’s so dangerous.
A single mother's life is turned upside down when her best friend vanishes in this chilling debut thriller in the vein of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train.
It starts with a simple favor—an ordinary kindness mothers do for one another. When her best friend, Emily, asks Stephanie to pick up her son Nicky after school, she happily says yes. Nicky and her son, Miles, are classmates and best friends, and the five-year-olds love being together—just like she and Emily. A widow and stay-at-home mommy blogger living in woodsy suburban Connecticut, Stephanie was lonely until she met Emily, a sophisticated PR executive whose job in Manhattan demands so much of her time.
But Emily doesn’t come back. She doesn’t answer calls or return texts. Stephanie knows something is terribly wrong—Emily would never leave Nicky, no matter what the police say. Terrified, she reaches out to her blog readers for help. She also reaches out to Emily’s husband, the handsome, reticent Sean, offering emotional support. It’s the least she can do for her best friend. Then, she and Sean receive shocking news. Emily is dead. The nightmare of her disappearance is over.
Or is it? Because soon, Stephanie will begin to see that nothing—not friendship, love, or even an ordinary favor—is as simple as it seems.
A Simple Favor is a remarkable tale of psychological suspense—a clever and twisting free-fall of a ride filled with betrayals and reversals, twists and turns, secrets and revelations, love and loyalty, murder and revenge. Darcey Bell masterfully ratchets up the tension in a taut, unsettling, and completely absorbing story that holds you in its grip until the final page.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Darcey Bell’s A Simple Favor is the kind of entertaining, keep-you-up-listening-all-night thriller we look out for. Mommy-blogger Stephanie’s BFF Emily has just gone missing; her disappearance sets off an avalanche of shocking revelations, as we discover that Emily, Stephanie, and Emily’s husband, Sean, have all been hiding scandalous secrets from one another. Narrated by a small cast of brilliant voice actors, this audiobook kept tricking us into thinking we understood the characters’ true motivations. But then the next delicious twist would throw us off course—and keep us glued to our headphones.
Customer Reviews
Ego v. Love
Though this book was very ego driven, sometimes mindless and invoking amateur sleuthing, I think what saved it for me was Stephanie. Emily was complex but egotistical. Stephanie did have some pitfalls of “what are you doing?!” silent screaming we do to ourselves when we read books. But I think her love and compassion makes her the heroine in this book. Overall, the story sometimes was on the cliff of outlandish especially in the sociopathic nature of Emily, but Stephanie ringed the “wrong place,wrong time” bell and turned out not to be a victim, but a successor in proving wrongdoers will be brought to justice, not matter how much emotional scars you wear.
Good book. Terrible ending. Very anti climactic.
Disappointing ending.