Mother Dear

A Thriller

By: Nova Lee Maier, Jozef van der Voort - translator

Narrated by: Karen Peakes

There’s only one thing worse than doing the unthinkable: what you’re willing to do to hide it.

Helen lives a decent, uncomplicated life. Satisfied in her career, she’s raising three happy teenagers, and her family has the most envied house on the street. Admittedly, she’s growing just a little disenchanted with her marriage to her workaholic husband, Werner. But that’s nothing she can’t fix. Then one day Helen comes home to something completely unexpected that threatens to shatter her carefully cultivated world.

For disaffected, young petty criminals Ralf and Brian, it was a scheme to make some cash: a quick home invasion. The targets they’ve chosen are Helen and Werner. Just as planned, Brian disappears into Helen and Werner’s house. And he never comes out again.

But Helen’s nightmare is just beginning. She can’t possibly imagine how much worse it can get or just how far she’ll need to go to protect her family.

©2015 Nova Lee Maier; 2018 translation copyright Jozef van der Voort (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved

Story is worth the listen, but The narration is horrible!

This story Kept you interested and although slightly predictable with where is was heading it still had some twists and turns you didn’t expect coming along the way.

The narrator was horrible and the voices she made were cringy... almost had to stop because it was so bad!

Entertaining story

I like the author and all the twists and turns but found part of it hard to swallow. Very clever author.

Surprise, Surprise!

At first I was quite angry, that I chose this book. while the narration was wonderful, I kept thinking tired plot, tired cliches, and I just new how the story would end. Was I in for a surprise. took a 180 degree turn, all my ideas on how it would turnout proved wrong. I am humbled, and ecstatic to report that this is a wonderful listen. Great writing and great narration. Definitely giving this 5/5 stars, two thumbs up. Everyone needs to listen to this one.

It could have been very good

The story was very interesting and had a lot of promise, but the ending unexpected and somewhat unclear. **SPOILER ALERT** Why was Brian in the house, robbery gone bad or was he hired to stage a murder? After the scene on the cliff unfolds, what happens to the daughter and how did she deal with the truth about her father? How possibly can a nurse methodically carry frozen body parts into work and dispose of them, day after day and get away with it? What actually happened to the Father, and did the daughter witness it? Was she involved? Why did Ralf end up agreeing to drive around Europe with the Father's car to throw off any suspicion? How was the Fathers disappearance explained? The letters to "Mother" were tossed in at the end to justify Werner's falling out of love with his wife, but I don't remember much in earlier part of the book about the writing of the letters or that they would become a crucial part of the story. The mystery built up and built up and then at the end, poof it ended without any satisfaction.

Hard time relating

I think the book was well written and very well performed, I just had a difficult time relating to the lead character. I think its because I live in the United States and our gun laws are so much different (at least right now). I had a hard time getting past it, it seemed so odd. I don't want to give anything away or I would explain further.