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The Good Son

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The Good Son

By: Jacquelyn Mitchard
Narrated by: Vivienne Leheny
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About this listen

From one of America’s most acclaimed storytellers comes a powerful, emotionally charged novel of family, redemption and a mother’s love.

What do you do when the person you love best becomes unrecognisable to you? For Thea, the answer is simple and agonising: you keep loving him somehow.

Stefan was just seventeen when he went to prison for the murder of his girlfriend, Belinda, a crime he has no memory of committing. Three years later, he’s released to a world that refuses to let him move on. Belinda’s mother, once Thea’s good friend, galvanises the community to rally against him. Neighbours, employers, even some members of Thea’s own family turn away.

Meanwhile Thea struggles to understand her only son and begins to suspect darker forces are at play. If there is so much she never knew about Stefan, what other hidden secrets has she yet to uncover — especially the shocking truth about the night Belinda died?

©2022 Jacquelyn Mitchard (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers Coming of Age Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Women's Fiction Crime Emotionally Gripping
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Really makes you grateful and has life lessons about judgement and enduring friendship, thank you.

Really enjoyed twist at the end.

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I did not like the monotonous voice of the presenter. She didn't change her voice for different characters.

American accent

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This book was such a long slog, I kept with it till the end in case it redeemed itself. It didn't.
I also didn't enjoy the narrator so that didn't help but this story was wholly self indulgent from every characters perspective. Whether this is a true representation of how selfishly all parties of a situation like this would behave, I am fortunate enough not to know. The predictable twist could be seen coming through the inclusion of annoying character presentations that added little to the story but only served to provide the ending.

Predictable and wordy

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The story was slow and aspects were not believable. The characters needed to be developed more, particularly the husband/father.

Slow and not enough character development

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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.