Thank you for the ARC of this audiobook! I have been a fan of previous work by the author and was very intrigued by the synopsis of this book.

I did like the narrator, though his female American accent was really bad. But otherwise I enjoyed listening to him. Ultimately this really felt like a draft versus a final novel. There are times throughout that Elliot talks about not boring his audience and knowing how important that was and unfortunately a lot of the time I was very bored. The concept was really interesting and what the author tried to do with ties to this play and a callback on other great mystery writers (Agatha Christie) was really clever, but the entire middle section on the Kid just completely took me out of the book. I will still read the next book the author puts out, but this didn't do it for me.

This story reminds me of the newest Knives Out film where a group of friends vacation together to an island and murder is awaiting them there. The plots differ slightly but overall, same vibe. I really enjoyed the narrator, fantastic! Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for a copy of this audiobook for an honest review.

For my thoughts on the book overall, please refer to the review left on the book copy.
As for the audiobook, I was a huge fan of this narrator. His accent, tone, and pacing were perfectly suited for this thriller. The whole story has a real “Knives Out” feel to it in my opinion and I absolutely loved that.

So often I listen to audiobooks and think "man, this would be so much better if I read a physical copy." I am a physical copy book through and through and I often find myself having a tough time enjoying books on audio. But this is one book that as I was listening to it, I found myself thinking, "I'm so glad I'm listening to this book instead of reading a physical copy."

The narrator is so fabulous- I love the way he speaks to the readers and how he is so totally unreliable, but in a kind of fun way. I should also say I'm not a super big thriller reader and oftentimes when I do like thrillers, it's because they're a little slower moving and slightly more character-driven (which I know some people don't enjoy).

I actually enjoyed the journey of the book more than the ending (I liked the first half much better than the second half). There were lots of twists at the end, but they weren't totalllly believable to me.

I sadly have yet to read The Silent Patient, so I can't compare it to that... But I liked The Fury SO much better than The Maidens.

Overall, I enjoyed the process of reading this book and recommend grabbing the audio version!

Rating - 4.5 stars

Wow! An unrealiable narrator at his best!

Thanks to MacMillan Audio & NetGalley for the ALC!

Alex Jennings as this ‘narrator’ was simply brilliant! His voice was playful, humorous and filled with charm at the right moments, while also serious, grave and weighing heavy with emotion at the others. I absolutely loved the audiobook. I think it’s what made me enjoy and appreciate this thriller better.

Despite this book being all over booksta, I highly recommend you head blindly into this and not read the blurb/synopsis beforehand.

After the sin way peak and dip of #TheSilentPatient and #TheMaidens, I think the author has hit the peak again with #TheFury.

Set in a gorgeous isolated Greek Island, apparently guarded by Aura, the Goddess of the breeze or you know, ‘the fur(y)I’ous wind when she is angry, the narration of the story begins, with backgrounds, recaps from the past and the circumstances leading up to the present.

There’s murder, love, jealousy, hatred, lies, secrets, betrayals, politics, friendships and mind games that turn and twist at impossible angles - you can barely keep up with them all.

As the narrator makes it clear, this is not a ‘whodunnit’, but the focus is more on the ‘whydunnit’. The story unravels layer by layer and what lies at the core of it, will surely make your head spin, wondering whether you read it right or not.

None of the characters are likeable, adding spice to the list of aforesaid eclectic mix ingredients, including this mysterious narrator obviously - but strangely I found him so interesting and was dying to know what he was getting up to!

The ending made me stop right in my tracks, as I struggled to come to terms, grappling with disbelief at the kind of conclusion. Huh! I had no idea what to make of it for a bit. But that's where the fun lies - when you try to disentangle this story & understand it for what it is! So do give it a try!

This is one of those books you might end up loving or totally unable to get into. But as mentioned before, the audiobook make a world of difference to my experience in this case.

Definitely recommend to mystery thriller fans!

Screenplay writer Elliot Chase is one of five people invited to former movie star Lana Farrar’s private greek island for a getaway. Before the trip is over, one of them ends up dead.

This book reads like a screenplay, broken up into five acts. We learn about the lives, secrets and possible murder motives of everyone on the island. I really enjoyed this book & was left guessing up until the very end. Like all of his books, there are references to Greek mythology and to characters in his previous books. I’m already looking forward to his next book!

Thanks to NetGalley and Celadon books for providing me with a copy of this audiobook.

This is my first book by Alex Michaelides, and based on this alone, it will probably be my last. The good news - the audiobook is fairly short, only 8ish hours. The bad news... it feels like 20.

The story held a lot of promise, and as others have commented, it harkens back to the "good old days" of mysteries like And Then There Were None. However, this has none of the nuance and too much of the self-promotion.

I enjoyed the idea of the narrator breaking the 4th wall. "He" is very upfront at the beginning of this "true story" that he will be "making up" some things based on his intimate knowledge of the players. So, I guess the author thought that this excused all of the giant leaps of faith that a reader has to make. It doesn't. And that's part of the problem of the story. You are supposed to be engrossed by the narrator/main character, but he's just not engrossing - or very likable. In fact, none of the characters are very likable. Which is a problem when you are trying to get people to keep reading/listening.

As for the voice narration... it was inconsistent. At times, I appreciated the flippant tone, but at others it was grating and inappropriate. He just sounded smug, which didn't really fit what was being said. It was a pass for me.

The story dragged, and by the time that twists were revealed, I had guessed most of them, and the others were the type of eye-rolling, head shaking, tropes overused but presented as shocking.

The settings were nice, a few of the characters were vaguely of interest - but not enough to keep my interested. Overall, I was just really disappointed. I had hoped for an exciting mystery with glamorous characters and exotic locations but instead I got a dime-story detective story told by a very unreliable narrator.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ALC in exchange for my honest opinions.

This was a really good book! It did take me a little bit to get used to the writing style but it was worth sticking around for. Love an unreliable narrator and a book that keeps me guessing!! Thanks to NetGalley for the chance to review!

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for an advanced copy of this audiobook.

I really enjoyed The Fury, and it's my favorite of Alex Michaelides's books. The audiobook narrator, Alex Jennings (who has been in The Crown and Victoria, among many other theater and film productions), was great, and the mystery and unreliable narrator Elliot kept me wondering what would happen next. While you may be able to predict some of The Fury, it's still an enjoyable ride. Elliot tells the tale of his relationship with aging former movie star Lana Farrar and a vacation gone wrong to her private Greek island. The Fury is less a classic whodunnit and more of a why-dunnit, exploring the motives and backstory of the individual characters. I enjoyed the 5-act play structure as well as the non-linear storytelling format.

Unique story telling in the latest from Alex Michaelides just works with this narrator. I liked the character introductions and the way the author presented them. As the story is told, past events and childhoods are revealed and, when they all end up vacationing together on a private greek island, not everyone will be alive to leave.

Alex Michaelides does it again! The synopsis in general calls the attention I love the writing of this book so much something about just having a “narrator” hits differently did I mention the short chapters? This book had me guessing till the very end I couldn’t put it down!

This is my first book by Alex Michaelides. The story was okay. I didn't find it great. I will give Alex Jennings, the narrator, who did a great job bringing this book to life.

The Fury by Alex Michaelides is a thriller set on an isolated Greek island.

If you haven't read The Silent Patient yet (I haven't) there's a significant spoiler in the epilogue of this book.

The book is told through a non-linear, first-person metafiction perspective via our unreliable narrator, Elliot. Elliot is a close friend of a reclusive ex-movie star who invited a group of friends to her private Greek island to escape the London weather.

The audiobook narrator, Alex Jennings, does a phenomenal job. His performance was great, but I found the overall package a little lackluster.

The structure is written like a five-act play, which I found interesting. But the first two acts are the longest of the bunch and I found the plot a bit meandering.

I did have one literal jaw-drop moment during my read, so there are plenty of twists and turns to keep the interest of most people. Act V, the final act, is the strongest part of the whole book.

The book is written "For Uma" and Michaelides thanks Uma Thurman in the Acknowledgements, so I'm curious if he wrote this for her to play eventually.

CW: emotional abuse, physical abuse (implied), bullying, assault, firearms, death, toxic relationships, infidelity, gaslighting, blood, suicidal ideation, sexual violence

A book like this does not, in my opinion, deserve a spoiler warning. Because there is no universe where one of the major “twists” is that the seemingly platonic friendship between a man and a woman was actually the man’s one-sided love for her for the entire time. The Fury so desperately tries to convince you that it is not like those other thrillers of the same genre - a group of individuals trapped on an island, a mysterious death. The author basically tells you this outright, on the page. But in doing so it creates a plot and character dynamic that is so patently uninteresting it felt like Alex Michaelides took the outline of every character in those types of books and left them there, unfinished.

Everything about this story feels very lazy, not poorly written exactly, but just like the most basic character archetypes were chosen and thrown together. A beautiful, enigmatic woman with far reaching celebrity (even more one the nose, named Lana as well). The husband is cheating on his wife with her best friend dynamic. And perhaps most egregious, Elliot’s role as the narrator and his friendship with Lana.

Nothing about this book made me want to DNF, but that was mostly the inherent draw to come back to it with the question - ​​”That can’t be it, right?” And when it was, it was disappointing. But I had also finished the book, so it could be a win in that way.

Thank you to the publisher Macmillan Audio for providing an audiobook ARC via NetGalley for an honest review.

This audio version of The Fury was narrated by Alex Jennings. Alex Michaelides books are suspenseful and exciting, and Alex Jennings narration made it all the more so. He did a great job with the accents of various characters and I had no trouble deciphering who was speaking. With British, American and Greek characters, I found Alex Jennings' accents to be believable as well.
I love a thriller set on an exotic island, and The Fury did not disappoint. The story was full of twists and turns, and truly I didn't know how it would end. While it didn't have the shock at the end like Silent Patient, it was a well-written thriller. The characters were well-definite and backstories helped to related to their actions.

A few quick notes: unlikeable characters, a nonlinear timeline, and a narrator who’s over-the-top pretentious (which I think is the point of Elliot Chase).

I think this book would be great for people who enjoy twisty plots. However, I was able to predict the ending and wasn't surprised by it. I tried both the audiobook and physical book, and I preferred the physical version. Although Alex Jennings did an excellent job of portraying Elliot Chase, I found Elliot's character to be too pretentious when listening to the audiobook. Overall, The Fury is a quick read, which is a plus because I found parts a little dull. If it had been longer, I probably would have DNF’d it.

I listened to the audiobook version of The Fury and did not love the narrator, so maybe I would have liked this book better if I read it instead of listening.

The Fury started off so slow. It took me a couple of false starts to get into it, and I didn’t get invested until about a third of the way into the book.

The characters were all supposed to be obsessed with Lana Farrar, who is a reclusive ex–movie star, but I didn’t find her character very interesting. The narrator told us over and over how amazing she was but never showed us anything deep about her. Most of the characters were very surface-level. My favorite character was “The Fury,” or the wind on the island. The Fury was given the most poetic descriptions and was the most interesting of the bunch.

The narrator often broke the fourth wall by talking directly to the reader, which was interesting. The format of this book, in general, was very unique. As someone who likes a more traditional storyline format, that wasn’t my favorite.

I kept reading because the author dangled the prospect of an incredible twist at the end, but it meandered so long to get there that by the time it came, it wasn’t very surprising or worthwhile. My favorite part of the book was the ending, where everything was tied up well. It was interesting but not very shocking. I’m glad I read it because everyone on Instagram was talking about it, and I had FOMO, but definitely not my favorite book of the year so far.

I have read and completely enjoyed a few books from Alex Michaelides. This was not one of them. I usually get along with books with unreliable narrators, but after awhile this one frustrated me. I enjoyed about the first 50% of the book, but after that were so many twists that were not really twists that I eventually just felt confused and wanted the book to be done. At the end I wondered what the whole point was. Three stars because this is probably a book for a lot of readers, but it just wasn’t for me.

3/5 Stars

Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for an audio ARC of this book.

The Fury by Alex Michaelides was not what I expected. I really liked the authors two prior books, so I was excited to read this one. I was also thrilled to get the audiobook when I saw who was narrating. Alex Jennings was an excellent narrator.

All that said, I didn’t love the book. I don’t know if I over hyped it, or if it just wasn’t as much of a thriller as his previous works. There were some great twists at the end. However, the first half-plus was just so slow and felt rather repetitive. I think the structure of the story was part of why I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

This voice actor is incredible. It was almost a dreamy story because of the narrator LOL.

Overall I did find some lulls during this performance but that was because of the details being drawn out in the story but overall I loved it!