Imperfect women is a story of three strong women going through the difficult times of growing apart as friends, but being pulled close again after someone’s disappearance.
The three parts read from the three women gave an interesting variety of views and insights.
I was very taken aback from the reveal!
A must read!

The audible book was a little difficult to get into. I am not a great lover of dialects and found the voice a little annoying.
However the deep characterisations were very interesting if not always believable.
I recognise that this is a very well written book and will be reading it when it’s published. Perhaps this type of in depth book is not my thing.

I really liked Our Kind of Cruelty by the same author and had high hopes for her next book. I must admit that I was disappointed. The premise was promising and the writing wasn’t bad but the story was slow, repetitive and ridden with cliches. To be honest, I was glad when I finished it. I didn’t like the narration either- the voice was unnatural and irritating, especially when the narrator was trying to speak in male voices.

True crime podcasts are hugely popular these days and Rachel Krall is a very well known podcaster searching for answers to unsolved crimes. She finds a plea for help in a note left on her windshield, which leaves Rachel shaken. People might know her voice, but few would know her on sight. And this won’t be the first note she finds. With season three of her podcast on the line, Rachel begins to look into the case of a popular and well loved local swim star who has been accused of raping a high school girl, who just happens to be the town police chief’s granddaughter. While she tries to untangle the complex and explosive case, Rachel keeps getting notes from someone who wants to know what happened to her sister, Jenny, 25 years before. The official cause of death was accidental drowning, but the note writer knows she was murdered and there may be a connection between Rachel’s current podcast and the truth about what happened to Jenny all those years ago. Readers may make the connection before Rachel does, but this is still an exciting and timely read. A stellar cast of narrators bring this book to life

I listened to this as my first NetGalley audiobook arc and found it a strange mixture of dislike and interesting at the same time.

The three disloyal friends in "Imperfect Women" were totally selfish and unlikable and the men in their lives even more so. I found the tale was depressing but just had to keep listening to find out what happened.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this audiobook for review. I hope my next one is more cheerful!

#ImperfectWomen #NetGalley

This book wasn’t really for me, the idea behind it was brilliant, but I just don’t think it was executed properly :(

So sad because the story had so Much potential but it just didn’t grip me. and I regularly found myself getting distracted, which is not what you want especially when listening to an audiobook,

I might give the ebook a go at some point and see if I have any more luck reading it instead of listening.

I absolutely loved Our Kind of Cruelty and was excited to see a new book from Araminta Hall. I really liked the sound of Imperfect Women but it fell short for me. I am not really sure what it was, a combination of the story dragging out and the attitudes of the 3 main characters. Perhaps my expectations were too high. It was a good story but not quite as good as I was hoping.

Imperfect Women, these 3 are definitely that. It is thestory of 3 women, friends since university. When one of them is murdered their secrets start to come out. Eleanor, Mary and Nancy all led very different lives. They all envied each other and wanted what the others had. But when they really find out about each other they may find that they don’t really.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hachette UK for my advanced copy of this book book is to read.

This was a very twisted tale. It took me a while to get to grips with the characters. But once I’d sorted it, I could see the normality of the twisted relationships. The characters are troubled and mixed up, friendships based on deceit and distrust. It was hard to guess who’d done it, kept you guessing throughout. Good compelling read.

I read and loved Araminta Hall’s previous novel Our Kind of Cruelty so when I spotted her forthcoming audiobook on NetGalley I couldn’t download it fast enough!

Imperfect Women is about three women: Eleanor, Nancy and Mary who have all been friends since University. The novel opens with Eleanor getting a late night phone call from Nancy’s husband Robert to say she hasn’t come home. It turns out that Nancy has been murdered. The novel is told in three parts: First we get Eleanor’s story, then it goes back in time and we get Nancy’s perspective right up until her murder, and then we end with Mary’s point of view.

I love novels that explore female friendships, I find them endlessly fascinating. There are so many complexities and perceived slights, jealousies and drama that has happened between these three women over the years. Two are married with children, one has remained single and childless. Two each have an affair, and one has a husband who has had multiple affairs over the years. This leads to insecurities, and sometimes a lack of understanding and compassion between the women. Also, three is so often a crowd and even though Eleanor, Nancy and Mary are all adults in their 40s there is still a sense of jealousy whenever two meet without the other. It felt really believable to me.

This is a thriller and the mystery running through the novel about who Nancy was meeting the night she was killed, and who might have killed her does keep you gripped. I worked out one of these things but not the other so was on the edge of my seat as the reveals start to come.

The narrator of this audio book, Helen Keeley, is excellent! She really captures the emotion and the tension within each of the three women in the novel. There’s a definite difference between each of the character’s voices which meant I always knew whose perspective I was listening to. I’ll definitely be looking out for more books read by Helen Keeley in the future!

I really enjoyed this novel, it really grabs you from the opening chapter and it keeps you hooked right until the very end. I recommend this one!

I listened to this book as an audiobook and really enjoyed it.
10hrs and 57minutes long and While I liked the narrator she did have a habit of making the characters come across as Whingey....That being said the characters in this story were pretty whingey 😂
I grew to like Nancy and Mary eventually but none of them were particularly endearing and I actively disliked Robert and Marcus!
Overall a good story which kept me engaged throughout and kept me guessing.

I am unable to review this as the audio book will not download to my device - the Net Galley App has glaring issues, which is noted in all the IoS app reviews as everyone seems to be having the same issue. Quite frustrating!

First of all, hooray for audiobooks on NetGalley! I’m an avid listener as well as reader so this is a really welcome addition now the chapter-skipping fault has been resolved.
The story is nicely structured, each of three parts told from the perspective of Eleanor, Nancy and Mary; a bombshell is dropped right in the centre and there are a couple more later on – well I didn’t see them coming anyway. If these people who have known each other for so long can’t work out what’s going on in each other’s lives, how can the reader? My loyalties and sympathy shifted as I read, first thinking one person was hard done by, then discovering the events that had landed them there.
I found the characters complex and believable. For example, I found Eleanor exasperating at times, too naïve and unworldly for someone that intelligent who had seen so much in her working life. I guess, though, that just makes her more realistic – people aren’t neat whole packages. It really struck me how Araminta Hall showed that we act differently with different people and that in turn they see us differently; perhaps we even become a different person in each of our relationships.
From the description, I don’t think I would normally have chosen this book, but I was keen to try out the new platform and this was the one that caught my eye first. I’m so glad it did. I was soon caught up in the story. Just when you think it’s a fairly conventional look at modern life, the relationships of three women with very different personalities and lives, there’s a big reveal that pulls the rug out from under you.

I haven’t read a thriller for a little while and this one was the perfect one to listen to! I was pleasantly surprised at how many twists and turns there was in this book about 3 friends, and I really enjoyed the unexpected outcomes and secrets about them being revealed along the way. I felt like I was figuring out what was happening then a curve ball was thrown in the mix. Very well written and it was a great thriller to come back too. I would be bordering on calling it a suspense novel rather than psychological thriller though, but nonetheless, I still really enjoyed it.

The narrator of this book was brilliant! She really gave this story the mysterious and tense feeling that it needed throughout. She has a fantastic voice for audio as it’s full of suspense, tension and almost comes across as quite dark in places. She switches into different character modes so easily and portrays anguish, grief, guilt and distress with such great tone and expression. Her voice really was perfect for the reading of this brilliant story.

Excellent narration but an utterly boring story.

The book is relatively well written, but in a very simplistic manner. The choice of words is simple and limited.

The characters are boring, utterly unlikable cliches. The women are valid and weak, making decisions which they then blame on the men as opposed to owning up to their mistakes. The men are boorish oats or the stereotypical staid but boring husband. Ultimately welfare caricatures of stereotypes, it's not possible to identify or empathise with any of them as they are just too unrealistic.

I do feel sorry for the children in this novel, who are brought up only when it suits the tenuous plot, and are otherwise marginalised. Both the men and women in the novel, including those that express their love and devotion to their offspring or friends children, place their own vapid and unfulfilling carnal desires far above any thoughtfully may have for the children.

The story is too simple, even the slight true that the end is very predictable.

As much as I usually love books of this genre, I honestly couldn't wait to finish this one from about a quarter of threat through, an opinion which never changed.

Thank you to Hachette Audio U.K. Orion for making available the audiobook edition via NetGalley of ‘Imperfect Women’ by Araminta Hall in exchange for an honest review. It is due to be published on 4 August along with its ebook edition.

It was narrated by Helen Keeley and has a running time of 10 hours, 57 minutes if listened to at 1x.

This is a domestic drama/suspense that focuses on the interwoven lives of three women: Eleanor, Nancy, and Mary. They had become friends at university and continue to be close. Eleanor has never married and focused instead on her career, Nancy married her college sweetheart, and Mary had an affair with her married professor becoming his second wife after falling pregnant.

What makes this a work of suspense rather than a straight-forward relationship drama is that in the opening chapter Eleanor is called in the early morning by Nancy’s husband, Robert, worried that Nancy hadn’t come home the night before. Eleanor knows that her friend has been having an affair and that she had been trying to finish it as her lover had become obsessive. Then the police turn up with news that Nancy’s body had been found!

The novel is split into three sections. The first is told from Eleanor’s point of view. The second section moves back in time and presents Nancy’s story right up to the point of her death. The final section focuses upon Mary and resolves the mystery.

There isn’t much of a police presence in the novel, which was a little surprising given the circumstances of Nancy’s death. Still, the focus was mainly upon the complex dynamics between these three women.

The only problem with listening to an audiobook on its own without a physical or digital book to hand is that it is difficult to go back and pick up on a plot point or get clarification on something said between characters earlier on.

I was not familiar with Helen Keeley’s work on other audiobooks though found her voice mellow and very suitable to capture the voices of the main characters, who are women in their forties. I noted that when a character such as DS Daniels, who has a bit of a more working class London accent, speaks she gives him a less polished and rougher voice. I found her narration seamless and very easy to listen to.

Overall, I felt that this was an engaging story that was a good blend of suspense and women’s fiction and that Araminta Hall had avoided the flashier aspects of the psychological thriller sub-genre to create a more reflective novel that explored long standing friendships between women as well as the often complex choices faced by women as time passes.

#ImperfectWomen #NetGalley

This was my first book (audio) from NetGalley. I enjoyed the narrator and thought she presented the book very well.
With regard to the book I unfortunately did not warm to any of the 3 characters, who had met at university and become life long friends. The story was ok however to some degree predictable as I guessed some of the twists before they were revealed.
I would try another novel from this author though as I have seen some good online reviews.

It's not a bad story, although not all innovative, but it's too slow for my taste.
It takes a long time for things to start ´move and even then they move in a slow pace. If this were cut short by half at least perhaps it could have engaged me more. As it was, I finished it just for the sake of finishing, already distanced from the story and characters, and it's unfortunately a book I'll soon forget.
However, if you are a reader that's more interested in delving into the characters motives and psyches than in a fast moving plot, this si the novel for you.

The narrator of the audiobook does a very good job with all the voices.

I'd like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

Unable to download netgalley shelf so unable to listen to this book
Tried several ways. It the the problem is my phone
It's very easy to request audio books

A really enjoyable book filled with mystery. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Imperfect Women. I loved the relationships between the three friends and how friendships that had lasted for years soon sped off in different directions. This book left me guessing right till the end hence why I had to listen to it all so quickly, I just had to know how it was going to end. The many different sides in this book worked well to tell the story from every point of view and although the book is complex in its narration it is easy to follow the story and tie all the viewpoints together.
The narration of this audiobook was clear and the readers voice fit nicely with the story. I though one or two of the accents were ever so slightly off but this really didn’t affect the story in any way. All in all a fantastic audiobook.

I have got 3 hours in to this book but I just cannot connect with it. I kept trying for this long as I loved Araminta's last book, and I listen to audiobooks religiously, but I couldn't get into the storyline or the characters I'm afraid.

Thank you for the chance to read it anyway, and apologies. I know others will love it!