The Lucky One

By: Caroline Overington

Narrated by: Jennifer Vuletic

Keep your secrets. Tell your lies. The gripping new psychological thriller from the author of the bestselling The One Who Got Away.
An old castle ...

For more than 150 years, a grand house known as Alden Castle has stood proudly in the rolling hills of California's wine country, home to a family weighed down by secrets and debt.

A fresh body ...

When the castle is sold, billionaire developers move in, only to discover one skeleton after another - including a fresh corpse - rotting in the old family cemetery.

An unsolved mystery ...

As three generations of the well-respected Alden-Stowe family come under scrutiny, police unearth a twisted web of rivalries, alliances, deceit, and treachery.

A gold-digger wife, a demented patriarch, a daughter in the grip of first love ... Who has lied? Who will survive? And who, amidst all the horror and betrayal, is the lucky one?

'The Lucky One will leave you breathlessly turning every page to find out just whodunnit. It's a brilliant novel, and you'll struggle to put it down just until you know who the lucky one is.' Better Reading

Meh again

As another reviewer said, Meh….I tried to like it, I stuck it out to the end. But, I think the ending gave up on itself. I’ll admit, I did not see it coming. The last chapter just didn’t jive with the rest of the book.

Great twist at the end

Book was slow in the middle. I listened to beginning and got real bored with the middle so I skipped to the trial.

A bit disappointed

This was the next-to-the-last audiobook of Caroline Overington's that I binged one after the other in quick succession. I had been immensely impressed until this one. The Australian writer and narrator forgot they were using American English a few times. Most of the characters were unpleasant; not a single bright bulb in the pack; listening to their inane dribble was tense. The plot did not allow for an adequate moment of clarity and truth until the twisted, unexpected ending which is typical of the author.

Wrong Narrator for this book

The story was fine, with a couple of twists at the end. But the mispronunciation of words got to me. I almost quit listening several times.

Meh

The book, including the sample, starts out with a small town police detective and his rookie sidekick who just happens to be his daughter. I thought that might be kind of fun, but they were barely in the story. It soon changed POV to another character for the bulk of the story. Plus, I soon tired of all the jokes regarding how "old" he was and his lack of "hipness" with Twitter and blogs etc.

It played as more of a family drama than any grand mystery, but then in the last 10 minutes, there are so many revelations that connected so many seemingly unconnected threads that it was more like "oh puhleeze" vs "wow what a twist!"

And, since I'm complaining anyway, something that bugged me that really wasn't a big deal, and I would have just silently put up with if not for the insane ending pushing me to review... The story takes place in California and all the characters are from there, but the narrator has a Canadian accent. I know, big deal, but all those subtle pronunciation differences (been, about, again) just sort of threw me out of the story. Nothing against Canadian accents. The only reason I can (or at least think I can) recognize it is because of all the stories I've listened to that take place there. It's that the narrator not matching location is a personal pet peeve of mine.

All in all it wasn't terrible, but I truly hated the last ten minutes and I regret the use of one of my credits for it. Oh, and there was one point where it said to put in a new CD for the next part, so the audio must be copied over from CD. That was amusing however.