What Boys Learn

By: Andromeda Romano-Lax

Narrated by: Eva Kaminsky, Michael Crouch

From the author of The Deepest Lake comes a gripping novel of psychological suspense that unravels a mother’s worst fear—that her son may have played a part in the murders of two teenage girls in a wealthy Chicago suburb.

Over one terrible weekend, two teenage girls are found dead in a wealthy Chicago suburb. As the community mourns, Abby Rosso, the girls’ high school counselor, begins to suspect that her son, Benjamin, was secretly involved in their lives—and possibly, their deaths.

Abby doesn’t want to believe Benjamin hurt anyone. But she’s seen the warning signs before. Two decades ago, her brother was imprisoned for a disturbing crime—he was only a little older than Benjamin is now. And Abby has more troubling memories from her own adolescence that confirm what boys and men are capable of. As Abby searches for the truth about what happened to her students, she’s forced to face the question: Has she been making excuses for Benjamin for years?

Swirling with sharp questions about family, memory, and psychopathy, What Boys Learn is a twisty thriller about how boys are raised—and what they are taught they can get away with.

©2026 Andromeda Romano-Lax (P)2026 Recorded Books

Meh

Abby Rosso is an example of someone who should never be a counselor. Her ability to assess whether men (and her son Benjamin) should be trusted is nonexistent, almost as if she’s a magnet attracting unhealthy men.

WHAT BOYS LEARN explores nature vs nurture as Abby worries that Benjamin has inherited her brother’s antisocial personality disorder. On suspension from her private school counseling job after the apparent suicide if a student she advised, Abby talks ethics out of one side of her mouth while allowing Ben to have therapy with her former professor and also having him hypnotize her too.

I really wanted to love WHAT BOYS LEARN, hoping to get DEFENDING JACOB vibes but neither Abby nor Benjamin was compelling enough for me to care. An interesting backstory doesn’t make a character interesting without nuance.

If you approach WHAT BOYS LEARN with low expectations, you won’t be disappointed.

Great read!

This was a great book! It came recommended by some of my favorite authors so I decided to read it and am glad I did! It was twisty, it was thought provoking, it was a great read! Abby finds something in her teenage son’s room that makes her think he might be involved in a murder of two classmates. Benjamin, her son, is not like other kids his age, he struggles with socialization, with anger, with talking about things, he has had behavioral problems his whole life. He struggles with empathy and thinking how others think. She fears he may have done something or may do something. Abby also has a brother who is serving time for a crime and he is a sociopath, this contributes to her fears for her own son. This all makes you think about these traits in people, there is a spectrum of sociopathy, like Autism, not everyone has the same traits and not everyone with these traits will commit crimes or do horrible things. There are twists in the book and Benjamin is put in situations where he has to choose right or wrong and we are able to see what kind of person he is. I loved it! I couldn’t get enough and wanted to see what was going to happen. Definitely recommend!

Good Idea, poor execution

I actually paid for this one and listened to it on audio after seeing it heavily marketed as a thriller—and I really wanted it to pull me out of a reading slump.

Unfortunately… it didn’t.

I’m not sure if my frustration came more from the female main character, Abby—who felt increasingly clueless and repetitive—or from the narrator’s delivery. Her voice frequently dropped so low that I had to crank up the volume just to avoid missing important details, which made the listening experience more tiring than immersive.

The story itself is long—over 12 hours—and for much of it, I found myself just wanting it to be over. That said, the premise and backstory are genuinely strong, and the final couple of hours were easily the best part. If the pacing had been tighter and the redundancy trimmed, this might have landed very differently.

I understand the need for backstory to ground the story, but much of it felt repetitive and unnecessary, causing the plot to drag instead of build tension.

Final thoughts:
A solid idea with potential, but uneven pacing and a frustrating audio experience made this one miss the mark for me.

⭐️⭐️½ / 5
Better in concept than execution — and possibly better read than listened to.

The story builds to a Hitchcockian, pulse elevating climax!

It is interesting and satisfying to see how the characters evolve due to the events they experience. I was held in suspense. I would like to say more, but I don't want to be a spoiler.

tell me you hate men without telling me you hate men

This book was 💩an absolute chore. Bloated, preachy, and painfully self-indulgent. I’m giving myself five stars for surviving it. The author’s blatant hostility toward men and nonstop political grandstanding hijacked what was supposed to be a thriller. If I can clearly identify an author’s political ideology while reading fiction, they’ve failed full stop. I didn’t sign up for a lecture on Me Too, gender politics, or leftist talking points; I wanted a story. Instead, the author sacrificed plot, pacing, and character development to push an agenda. Any potential enjoyment was beaten into submission long before the final chapter. The only satisfying moment was when the book finally ended.