I was so excited to get this audio from @macmillan.audio @netgalley and @alex.michaelides . From the first moments of the book, I was drawn in and couldn’t wait to figure it out. Similar to The Silent Patient, The Fury keeps the twists coming until the very end in believable, while still shocking, ways. I highly recommend this for your next thriller or mystery. This takes the whodunnit theme and gives it some psychological elevation and twists. Words I’d use for this one are fun, frightening, intriguing, mysterious.

Thank you so much to @netgalley @celadonbooks @macmillan.audio for the ARC/ALC of The Fury! Big thanks to Celadon for the gifted book and amazing promo book!

🧿 𝙈𝙮 𝙏𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙨 🧿
I switched off reading and listening to the audiobook of The Fury! I don’t read a lot of books with unreliable narrators, so it’s hard to know what to think of them. They are simultaneously interesting and annoying. They are taking you through the story through their eyes, even when they are describing someone else’s point of view.

Our narrator is Elliott, and he seemed somewhat shady from the beginning but I was never sure how shady he could be. Suspicion is thrown nearly on every character in this book at some point. Rightfully so, because there was a murder to solve!

This cast of characters is alone on a private Greek island, where a murder takes place. There’s a famous movie star, Lana, her family, friends and the staff. Timelines are all over the place. Just be prepared to whip your head back and forth on this one a bit! It definitely takes you on a wild ride!

🎧 𝙉𝙖𝙧𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 🎧
Alex Jennings does a great job narrating the character of Elliott. I don’t think I could have imagined him in any other way. He was easy to understand and I could speed up my narration easily and still understand him. He definitely kept the tone of the character mysterious, intriguing, and believable as a solid character.

🧿 𝙔𝙤𝙪 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙗𝙤𝙤𝙠 𝙞𝙛 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚:
🔹 Unreliable Narrators
🔹 Murder Mysteries
🔹 Unexpected Twists & Turns
🔹 Crazy Multiple Timelines

Picture this, private island, friendship, actors, theatrics, murder. Now read this book.

I always love a good Alex Michaelides book! A thriller told in such a theatrical way with all the twists and turns you can imagine. I couldn’t predict the way this would have gone if you asked me in the beginning. A wild ride from the start. I do feel like I have a little bit of anticipation fatigue, I feel like it was a little bit of a drag. I thought I knew what would happen and then it would keep going 😂

Thank you for the opportunity to listen to the audiobook as an ARC. The narrator goes back and forth, telling about his life and reading the novel, which is very confusing to begin with. I found it difficult to follow, and hold my interest. It wasn't a favorite of mine, like The Silent Patient, by Alex Michaelides.

I received a physical arc from Celadon Books which I was enjoying quite a bit, and wanted to check out the audiobook.

I bounced right off Jennings and his female voices and went back to the physical book. That said. Here is my review of it!

Also I think I'm onto his "series" of patients but no one wants to discuss the theory with me 🤣

...

https://onereadingnurse.com/2024/01/18/arc-review-the-fury-by-alex-michaelides/

...

Even if I didn’t know the author, I’d probably be sold at a closed door mystery on a reclusive Greek island. I love the descriptions of the ruin, the beaches, the sea in all it’s colors, the olive groves…you know, everything that makes me want to go to a Greek island. I love the atmosphere and sense of hospitality that the author captures and then contrasts with the dark unfolding of the mystery.

The characters are very hard to read throughout and that’s kind of where the book lost me. We know from the first chapter that we are dealing with an unreliable narrator, so everything he says we have to take with a grain of salt. I felt like Act 1 of the book compared to looking at a really dirty window at a picture, then each subsequent act someone cleaned a little more window until the picture got clear. Even at the end, it was hard to tell if Elliot (the narrator) was still coloring things or finally being truthful.

It was also hard to tell who was actually thinking what. Elliot colored a lot of things into his own voice but then the chapter would devolve into conversation or another character’s internal thoughts or conversation, and often times I couldn’t tell if it was still Elliot musing or something that was actually happening.

That all said, this was a fast paced and slightly addicting book. I liked seeing things become clearer as we went. There really was a pretty good mystery going on, but to me it was more a mystery of what was real and what wasn’t vs. who murdered whom. Michaelides puts a heavy psychological spin into his books … which is a good segue into my theory

It has been noted by other reviewers that Michaelides tends to “spoil” The Silent Patient at the end of each novel. I mean yes, he kind of does, but I think he’s intending people to read TSP first, to introduce the asylum, and then each subsequent book is going to be the story of another inmate. Am I wrong? He is providing the spoiler but how else would we know that he is loosely tying the books together. Also, if you’ve read more than one of his books, the twist is the same in each one. Soooo… Yeah. It was pretty clear based off of how many times Elliott mentioned his therapist that he was a patient. Michaelides is going to have to shake up the twists now or at least he will have to make us guess who the inmate is.

So yes, this is my theory.

While it is not necessary to read The Silent Patient before reading his other books, I think it is intended to be read first. After that, it won’t matter what order we read in.

My first take is that this story reminds me so much of the movie Clue (based on the board game). It's a total whodunnit. You know that a murder takes place and the story reveals what happened but you never really know until the end. I had several different theories going on throughout listening. Stories with lots of twists are turns are so exciting.
For an audiobook, I thought this was a fun listening experience. The narrator really brought Elliot Chase to life. This was probably the fastest that I've ever listened to a book, I needed to know what happened next. I am a romance reader primarily and this story gives you some flavor of a love triangle and unrequited love which I really enjoyed and kept me engaged.

Part of me loves books about people "stranded." On a remote island, on a crumbling house overlooking a cliff, on the edge of a forest... This always peaks my interest, but they kind of all have the same pattern, don't they? Even if the twists aren't the same.

Obviously, I read the Silent Patient a few years ago and loved it. A couple years later, I read The Maidens and was dreadfully unimpressed. This book places me somewhere in between. I can say that I definitely enjoyed this one, even if I didn't LOVE it. It took some long and winding roads to get to the point of the story and I found myself thinking "Come on!! Just get us there!" But! I was thrown off more than a few times. I thought, oh, this person has to be the murderer. But it could be this person??? Noooo it could be someone entirely different. So I enjoyed the end result, even if the journey was a bit tedious.

Will I continue to read Alex Michaelides? Yes. Based on this novel, I'd read a dozen more of these, just because I gobble them up and end up thinking about it long past the time it ends.

This was my first book by Alex Michaelides and I was left underwhelmed.

I think people are either going to love it or think “meh”. I’m in the “meh” category. The storytelling was a bit all over the place and messy for me. Add in an extremely unreliable narrator and I was left confused half the time but maybe that was the point. Lol I was expecting a darker and more suspenseful thriller and it definitely wasn’t. I think overall it was just a strange book for me.

The extremely short chapters did keep the book moving, otherwise I think it would’ve taken me a long time to get through this one. The pacing was slow, but the short chapters helped.

Did this have the potential to be an excellent psychological thriller? Yes. Unfortunately it wasn’t executed very well for me.

I have really enjoyed all the books that I've read from this author. This book was very atmospheric and I enjoyed the setting immensely. However, it was a bit all over the place. It was definitely an interesting concept and I liked the unreliable narrator, it just felt somewhat sloppy.

This book was so so good. Definitely one of the top books of the year! And I absolutely adored how much I didn't love the characters! It truly made the book great.
I enjoyed the audio and the narrator was PERFECT for this book!
And that ending - whew. Didn't see that coming!

The Fury by Alex Michaelides was a wild ride from start to finish. Each time I thought I knew what was happening, the story would be turned on its head. I ended up reading this in one sitting because I couldn't put it down.

This was neither my favorite nor least favorite by Michaelides. I think what he does well here is an unreliable narrator that you’re not sure if you like or not (not unlike my favorite of his, The Silent Patient-which frankly set my bar for the author incredibly high). I think where this book lacks is in pacing and I found one of the main characters a bit insufferable insofar as the fickleness she was portrayed to have-but perhaps that was just a choice I didn’t love. Overall I thought the twist was pulled off decently (I had a feeling the narrator had done a bad deed but not the one he did).

UPDATE: I reread the novel in audiobook format, and I'm changing my rating to 5 stars.

Michaelides has made a name for himself writing very twisted, unpredictable and addictive mysteries. It is hard to believe that this is only his third book. Our narrator is Elliot Chase, who breaks the fourth wall and tells us readers what happened when he traveled to his friend’s private island. From the beginning, he makes clear that there was a crime, but that this is not a whodunit but a whydunit. Following the usual path of classic murder mysteries, there is an isolated island with a small cast of visitors/suspects and it is soon clear that there is no one else. But then the twists keep coming one after the other. At some point it seems like the author is close to jumping the shark and some turns were preposterous in retrospect. However, I was so involved in the plot that I didn’t even notice. Most of the characters are unlikable. The narrator is also unreliable. As he says from the beginning, he doesn’t lie, but he hides some facts until the plot exposes them. I didn’t enjoy this one as much as the previous novels because, in retrospect, it seems to be trying too hard to surprise the reader. It is still an entertaining, addictive book.

Note for the audiobook format: Alex Jennings does such a great job as a narrator, that I changed my rating to five stars. He is funny, entertaining and sounds just like Elliot should, but also nails down the accents and distinctive voices of all the rest of the characters. If you can, go with the audiobook, the production value and performance is worth it.

I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, #NetGalley/# Celadon Books.

3.75 stars

Intriguing. Dramatic. Unexpected. Not quite the story (genre or specific details) that I was anticipating, but it was interesting nonetheless. The writing style was fun at times, and others it felt unnecessarily cheesy. I haven’t read anything else by the author yet, I don’t think, but I’ll be curious to see if this is the usual storytelling method or a choice unique to this particular book.

**4.5-stars**

The Fury, the latest from Alex Michaelides, is a unique and unsettling Tragedy from which I couldn't look away. This kept my head spinning all the way through. We love that!

I've thoroughly enjoyed this author's previous novels, so had been highly anticipating this. I started to see some early reviews though that made question if I would like it. Luckily, I found this to be engaging and intriguing from the very start. Our narrator, Elliot, addresses the fact that he is our narrator. It's like we are sitting with him, having some drinks, and he is telling us a story from his life.

I absolutely adore that kind of narrative. It always makes me feel like I am actually a part of the action, or more fittingly in this case, of the friend group.

Elliott relates to us the details of an ill-fated trip he took with his best friend, Lana, a retired movie star, her husband, Jason, their mutual friend, Kate, also an actress, Lana's son Leo, an aspiring actor, and Lana's assistant, to a remote Greek island for a weekend getaway.

We know what starts out as a beautiful holiday, ends up to be anything but. The group gets trapped on the island due to high winds. Emotions and tensions are running high. The claustrophobic nature of their excursion becomes palpable. This strain could be blamed for the violence and death that ultimately occurs, couldn't it? Or is something much deeper lurking under the surface that leads to the bloody and chaotic conclusion?

Y'all, I was absolutely swept up into this story. I know that some Reviewers have mentioned that it was slow for them, but I didn't have the same experience with it. I had the audiobook and listened to the first 70% just while adulting, doing my cleaning and other errands, one Saturday.

I was obsessed with learning all I could about the characters and couldn't help but continuing on. The narrative structure is out of the ordinary, but I loved how it was done. Michaelides kept me guessing. It also should be noted that I am a huge fan of unreliable narrators and Elliott fits that moniker to a tee.

I wouldn't say this is a simple story to read, and I can see how it wouldn't be for everyone. I can also see how some may find it slow. There is quite a bit of develop in the beginning, building out our group and their relationships.However, for those who enjoy some mental gymnastics, mixed with great character work, an unreliable narrator and tension so thick you could cut it with a knife, this is sure to be a success.

If any of these descriptors are buzzwords for you, give it a go. You may like it, you may not, but either way, it's sure to be a memorable experience.

A few other aspects of this book that worked for my tastes were the remote location, particularly the fact that it is set on an island, I live on an island, so tend to love to see that, the cast of unlikable characters and the teeny bit of character crossover from The Maidens and The Silent Patient. No, you don't need to read either of those novels prior to reading this, but for those who have, those little name drops can be a lot of fun.

While this doesn't have the same level of mystery as The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, it did sort of remind me of that in some ways. I think the vibe of mild confusion mixed with enjoyment is quite similar. If you enjoyed that one, you may enjoy this as well. Overall, I think this is just so fun. It's clever and engaging and yes, also a tad confusing at times. I'd definitely read it again, maybe try and pick up some subtleties I might have missed this time around.

Thank you so much to the publisher, Macmillan Audio and Celadon Books, for providing me with a copy to read and review. This was a great reading experience for me and I'm happy to have a copy on my shelves.
I can't wait to see what Michaelides comes up with next!!

A closed-room murder mystery, told by an unreliable narrator, set on a Greek island owned by a famous actress.

I like the anticipation and puzzle of a closed-room mystery, and this story with its twists and turns will leave you guessing until the end.

Overall, this book did not grab me in - I am not sure if it was the audio narrator, the unlikeable characters, or the slow, meandering storyline. Even though this wasn’t my favorite mystery, I am still looking forward to reading The Silent Patient which has received so many rave reviews.

Upon starting the book, we meet Elliot, a man who offers us a chair to tell us a story. Elliot tells us a story of how a famous actress that he knows was killed. Elliot is unreliable, making the reader question if what we are hearing is true or not. He also talks about himself in the 3rd person, which may make readers not want to read the book. The book had a slow start that was a little hard to get through. The ending was good, with a few twists that I did not see coming. I enjoyed the audiobook narration.

Just be aware that there is a spoiler for The Silent Patient at the end of the book. Maybe read that one first is spoilers aren’t your thing.

Thank you to Caledon Books and NetGalley for the audio ARC.

The book was engaging and interesting from start to finish. The narrator was also well spoken and really caught your attention while reading the story.

Michaelides took a risk with the format of this one and I am still trying to decide if he pulled it off. The story is being told by Elliot who talks to the reader as if to a friend. This makes for a slow pacing - which isn't always a deal breaker for me even with thriller/mysteries, but I wasn't as drawn in which is what usually makes me ok with a slower pace. However, the last third of the book does pick up and there are some twists I didn't see coming. I listened to the audio of this book and I did like narration. I give the book 3.5 stars.

Thank you Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for an advance copy of this audiobook for review.

WHAT DID I JUST LISTEN TO!?!

Phew ... what a ride this book is! I absolutely loved the narration by Alex Jennings (I KNEW I recognized that voice!!!) and I loved how the story felt like it was being told directly to me - just like two friends sitting in front of a fire. The setting is perfection - a Greek tragedy set against the private island owned by a famous actress; it's just rife with intrigue. This book is such a roller coaster with twists and turns you will never see coming. It was almost frustrating how masterfully Michaelides weaves this tale and never lets your figure out the dramatic conclusion. I especially loved the shout-out at the end to The Silent Patient and The Maidens!