The Surrogate

By: Louise Jensen

Narrated by: Alex Tregear

Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

You know that feeling? When you want something so badly, you almost feel you'd kill for it?

Be careful what you wish for....

Kat and her husband Nick have tried everything to become parents, and are on the point of giving up. Then a chance encounter with Kat's childhood friend Lisa gives Kat and Nick one last chance to achieve their dream.

But Kat and Lisa's history hides dark secrets.

And there is more to Lisa than meets the eye.

As dangerous cracks start to appear in Kat's perfect picture of happily-ever-after, she realizes that she must face her fear of the past to save her family....

From the number-one best-selling author of The Sister and The Gift, this is an unputdownable psychological thriller which asks how far we will go to create our perfect family.

©2017 Louise Jensen (P)2017 Bookouture

Thought it would be predictable, but it was just weird.

At first I thought it was a pretty predictable story about a surrogate getting revenge on an old friend. But it twisted and changed and just got weird. I could’ve done without the west side story that, it just didn’t fit and seem like it was just stuck in there. Without spoilers the ending was disappointing and had a lot of holes. The narrator was great, but the story was lacking, the characters were weak, and the ending was just horrible.

Loved it!!!

Not at all what I expected and I mean that in a good way!! I found myself with my jaw hanging open more than once as I listened to the many twists and turns. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and the narrator as she really kept the story alive with her tone. I will say that I listened to it at X1.5 speed because some of her pauses were really long, but the change in speed made it perfect!

Wow !

I really had to soak this book in, it was intense. The ending was perfect for a psychological thriller. This is so far her best book.☆☆☆☆☆Totally worth the credit.

Wow!!!

Oh my gosh!!!!!!! Wow!!!!! Love the twists and how everything connects. But also hated how it turned out. How do I love and hate the same book at the same time?!?!? I’m torn.
It’s so well done. It’s so...dark, evil, cold?!?!? I don’t even know how to explain. But it’s freaking awesome at the same time! Yep, I’m a total psycho. This confirms it.

Exciting with twists!

Great audible reading and an exciting story--hard to put down! A complex story that is totally engrossing.

Annoying, Idiotic, Self-Consumed Main Character!

This story really annoyed me! The book really stretched the idea that people will believe anything if they are desperate enough. I kept thinking, "how dumb is this lady?" I found ALL the characters highy annoying but the main character was the worst. The way she fawned over children was really the only scary thing about this story. What a needy person and yet everyone let her get away with her narcisstic behavior and catered to her.

I wanted to see her utterly destroyed by the end of the book. The book stressed me out and it was more of a soap opera than a thriller! The ending was not plausible. The only good thing was the narrator who gave a stellar performance. She really plays a great paranoid psychopath.

A thrilling page turner

Once again Louise Jensen weaves an intricate thriller with plenty of suspense, twists and turns. Kat, Nick, Lisa and Richard all have unspeakable guilty secrets, which keeps readers on our toes right to the drammatic end and surprising epilogue. Family secrets, violence, lies, misunderstandings and betrayal in a novel in which everyone has plenty of dark secrets to hide. It is told mostly by Lisa in the present tense which makes events feel real and urgent. The writing is brilliant,. I love the author's use of metaphor and the brilliant way we look into the characters' minds and motivations. Especially for lovers of complex and suspenseful contemporary, family dramas and psychological thrillers.

** Spoilers **

The “Unreliable Narrator / Now and Then” thriller genre is one of my favourites, but this one annoyed me.

For most of the story, we are lead to believe that Lisa is not pregnant and she is bamboozling Nick and Kat. I thought the story would have been much more interesting if we would have known what was going on in Lisa’s head. Her POV of how she hopes to pull off this grand deception. Turns out, low and behold, she WAS pregnant but was acting shifty for a completely different set of reasons. So much for my idea about her POV!

The other twist about how Nick and Kat and Jake were linked together by events in the past was just too over the top for me. I felt like the story veered off track at that point and it was no longer a drama about a creepy surrogate; it was like the ending to a different story. When Lisa’s “contribution” to the convoluted mess is piled on, it was the ridiculous cherry on top!

What makes thrillers fun to read is that you can see how the events could possibly unfold and that’s what makes them scary; this one was just too far fetched.

Decent thriller, horrible ending

Decent thriller, crappy ending, *spoiler alert* The title character is a 'boo hop poor me' whiner plus a beast of a narcissist who wins out in the end.

O. M. G.....

This was a pleasant surprise for me! Just when I thought I knew exactly what was going on, I DIDN'T! Enjoy!