The Teacher's Secret written by Lauren North and narrated by Emma Woods is a stunning thriller that could happen in any village, any town to anyone.

A teacher and her child go missing. Her husband, the Headmaster, continues to go to work. The new, mysterious substitute who hasn't given a copy of her references to the snooping head of the PTA, the ambitious reception class teacher who still lives at home. The school and village link them, but how else are they connected?

Firstly, Emma Woods' performance in this audiobook is exemplary, outsanding, stellar. The different characters each clearly defined, he dark psycopathy of the antagonist, the various personalities of the PTA and mums, the teachers and key protagonists, let alone the narration throughout. I was absolutely blown away by Woods' skill

Not only was the narration exceptional, the writing was too. In a thriller where there is not one antagonist, not one guilty party, but multiple guilty parties, multiple pov's, it takes a certain level of skill to balance it all with a logical progression, keeping the suspense on the bubble without giving anything away, letting that storyline come to the boil. Beautifully written, relatable and utterly, utterly terrifying in its plausibility

In my top audiobooks of the year for ceratin and worth far far more than 5 stars on all counts. I cannot recommend this audiobook enough and I will also be buying the book because is it that good. Absolutely blinding

Thank you to Netgalley,Bolinda Audio, the author Lauren North and the narrator Emma Woods for this exceptional ALC. My review is left voluntarily and all opinions are my own

Thank you NetGalley for this arc of The Teacher's Secret. This was an okay thriller to me. I have read better. I think there were too many uninteresting tid bits that I didn't need in my thriller. At the 50% mark I really was going to DNF it because I was just not getting the thrill it was supposed to give. This is a thriller for those that are just getting into the genre. Overall, just a mediocre thriller.

Suspenseful and thrilling end, with a slower, and sometimes confusing, start — I had to restart the audiobook several times to listen again and make sure I knew which POV was telling the story. There were several characters telling the story which added to the intrigue and overall fullness of the book, but was difficult in the beginning. Lauren adds at the end that this is a different style and genre of writing for her, but overall I think she did a great job bringing the pieces together.

I loved that the story unfolded as we learned more information and backstory, and I started predicting the end and had some correct suspicions (which sometimes is a bummer since I like being surprised/thrown off more). There were really great characters and stories intertwined, and I really enjoyed the main character Lexi.

I look forward to more novels by Lauren North!

Thanks to NetGalley for an audiobook in exchange for my review.

When well-liked teacher Cate Walker and her son, Archie, walk away from school one day and aren't seen or heard from again the entire town gets involved with the search. From Cate's husband to the brand-new substitute teacher, the police are speaking to everyone..... but in this small town, Cate & Archie's location isn't the only secret.

I wanted to like this one; the premise was interesting and the narration was pretty good, but there were at least three main female characters plus a bunch of secondary characters and some male main characters and I really, really struggled to keep them all straight. None of them were especially distinctive and being narrated by the same person (talented though she is) didn't help. I would try more from this author, but only if there were way fewer POVs.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for this audio.

What a great book!!! It had me hooked from page one!! I couldn’t stop listening to it. It had me guessing the entire time. This was a first for me by this author and it will not be my last!

wow this book was quite a ride! the title fits for damn near every character in the book. so. many. secrets. I enjoyed this book very much!

This audiobook was your average thriller! It wasn’t too exciting, but it wasn’t horrible. It was from the perspective of a few different people, which was a little frustrating as everyone seemed to have secrets, but it took what seemed like forever to get a glimpse of what those secrets were. Their first few perspectives were just “they can’t find out” type monologues.

I listened to this audiobook at 1.75x, and it was a good pace. The narrator was good and easy to understand.

All in all, it wasn’t the most thrilling book, and had some horrible characters. But it was entertaining enough to finish.

An ordinary afternoon Cate Walker and her son Archie walk out of the school where she is a respected teacher and he a pupil and aren’t seen again. Lexi, the primary narrator of the story, is a substitute teacher brought in to cover Cate’s classes. She is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery but with threatening messages and a potential stalker it’s clear someone is trying to stop her. Top of the suspect list is Oliver, the headmaster who also happens to be Cate’s husband. Well the husband always tops the suspect list in issues like this, especially a husband who’s been having an affair. But with the perspective of a sinister sounding unnamed second narrator is there more to this than meets the eye?
Ooh I enjoyed this! Unreliable narrator(s), school gate politics and lots of secrets send the reader in multiple directions. Red herrings, a relatable setting for many readers, and love to hate characters this makes an intriguing read, right up to the final twist.

Audiobook was not the way for me to read this. There’s too many povs and there’s no real way to differentiate them because the narrator uses the same tone/voice for a majority of them. The only time she changes it up a little bit is when she is speaking as Oliver and the unknown person’s POV. She actually does a better job differentiating more when she’s speaking as a side character, the school’s main governess.

I had a really hard time with this thriller as the multiple POVs just didn’t seem like they worked well for the story. There’s too much random info dropped on the reader and it doesn’t actually pick up until over halfway through. Reading this via audiobook was hard as I kept getting some POVs mixed up. More specifically Gemma’s and James’s sister who I can’t recall what the name was. I might actually have the names mixed up right now. To be honest I don’t understand the reason behind having these two POVs included considering they don’t really add anything besides too much information, useless details and trying to throw the reader off. I would rather of stuck out with having only Oliver and Lexi’s POV. The unknown character would have been fine as well so the author could have kept the multiple POVs like she wanted to try. Having 5 though was way too much for a story like this.

Now the story was kind of meh for me. I wanted to be excited and curious as to what happened to Cate and Archie but there was just so many jumbled perspectives we have to go through before things actually pick up. The plot itself seemed like it couldn’t decide on what it wanted to do. There’s so many extra stories that just feel unnecessary.They don’t really matter to the plot at all and taking them out wouldn’t have changed the story at all. I just wasn’t a fan of the plot as well unfortunately. It dragged too much and listening to it via audiobook only made it confusing on both what the point of some of the POVs were and who it was.

The final reveal felt too predictable and I was disappointed in both the ending and epilogue. Maybe I would have enjoyed this in a physical format but even though I felt like the audiobook brought it down a bit I’m not truly sure if a different format would even matter.

The Teacher's Secret by Lauren North
Narrated by Emma Woods

I received an advance review copy for free thanks to NetGalley and Bolinda Audio and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Blurb

On an ordinary Friday afternoon, popular teacher Mrs Walker and her eight-year-old son leave the school playground. But they never make it home…

Being called in as a substitute teacher to replace a missing teacher – and mother – is the hardest job I’ve ever done. Cate Walker should still be here, in the role she loves. Her son Archie should be sitting in class with his friends. But instead they've disappeared and nobody has heard from them since…

At drop-off and pick-up, the other parents are hunched together anxiously. I can see the confusion in their children’s faces. The whole village is full of whispered rumours: that Archie and Cate will never be found, that someone else will soon be next… and that Cate's charismatic husband, Oliver – our headteacher – is involved.

After the chilling way Oliver looked at me on my first morning, the thought makes my blood turn to ice. I'm determined to uncover what’s really happened to Cate and Archie, especially after I find photos in Cate’s classroom cupboard that change everything…

Then an anonymous note turns up threatening me. My home is broken into while I sleep. I know the longer I stay at this school, the more danger I’m in.

But whoever’s trying to scare me doesn’t know who I am – or why I’m really here.

Or just how far I’ll go to expose the truth…

My Opinion

My first Lauren North book, but definitely not my last. There are a lot of secrets in this book making it hard to work out what actually happened before the reveals come. This was such an interesting read, with each of the main characters having something that they are hiding. I started reading this book (and finished it) when I had other books that I should have been reading - it was just too addictive to put down.

Rating 4/5

I enjoyed this listen. I did start at 2x the speed and had to drop it to 1.75x the speed due to the British accent, but I was just fine from there on. This is told from several point of views, which lead me to great confusion until I got the hang of who was who at about 60% of the way through. There were so many Easter eggs dropped into this book that you really have no idea who is a bad guy. Everyone has secrets it seems. Those secrets are eventually revealed towards the end of the book wrapping it all neatly together. My biggest complaint about the book is the jarring music playing at the beginning of some of the chapters, not all, but many. It just doesn't fit with the book. I've only had music in maybe two audio books that I felt ok with it being in it, this is not one of them. Please drop the music. The narrator did do a good job, especially with having so many different POVs to contend with. Thank you for the opportunity to listen to this book, I enjoyed it. #TheTeachersSecret #NetGalley

Great for fans of more accessible thrillers like Freida McFadden and Tarryn Fisher! The narrator is exceptional and clear, and the narrative flies by. Some of the twists at the end are a bit outlandish, but at least that kept me from seeing it coming.

3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

I opted for this title because it was available as an audible ARC and I liked the sound of the thriller aspect.

The Teacher's Secret tells the story of a teacher who leaves school with her son to walk home and disappears. Her husband, the Head Teacher, waits a day to report her missing and quickly becomes the focus of the police investigation. A long-term substitute teacher is called in to fill her place and finds herself investigating the disappearance. The police, the husband and another fellow teacher all warn her off the case. She also starts receiving threatening notes inside her rented lodging.

The twists and turns in this one are good, as is the writing and character development.

I enjoyed it and I'd recommend it to fans of domestic thrillers.

*with thanks to NetGalley for the audio ARC in exchange for this honest review.

🎧Audio Book Review🎧

The Teacher's Secret
Lauren North

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

What a brilliantly complex and twisty psychological thriller.

Oliver's wife has gone missing with their son and the police start to investigate what happened to them - as the days pass, more and more suspicion flies around the village and Oliver realises that he needs to start telling the truth.....

This is as much as I can say without giving anything else away!
There were soany little threads woven together in this storyline and as much as we think that they're weaving together to give us a clear picture of events, we find that in fact they are just creating more and more frays!

I loved that we see the storylines unfold via the multiple different pov's and as we learn more from each different person, we realise that there is so much more going on and that there are just so many lies and secrets yet to uncover.

The characters were so well presented and then developed over the course of the story - so much so that I found myself being sent in many directions and trusting nobody!!
I also loved the twists that came fast and furious towards the end!

The writing style had me totally immersed throughout and I couldn't stop listening to this until I'd reached the end and heard what had happened and seen how all the different threads actually connected!

A brilliant read and an author to add to my must read list.....loved this!


💕Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for my ARC copy - this is my honest review 💕

The Teacher's Secret is a mystery with multiple POVs which allowed the story to unfold from multiple angles. For the most part, this was perfect, though Gemma and Lexi's voices and intonations were often too similar and, as a result, if you missed the name at the start of the chapters, it could be difficult to work out who was speaking at first.

This was an enjoyable murder mystery with quite a few layers which kept the reader hooked, if not totally blown away.

A personal issue was the pronunciation of the word 'says' and, though this was no fault of the narrators, it did take me out of the story a few times.

The Teacher’s Secret tells a story about the disappearance of a teacher (Cate) and her son (Archie) in a close knit town, told from multiple points of view, including: Lexi (the new substitute teacher), Oliver (the husband who is now the main suspect), Jeanie (the nosy neighbor who appears to have secrets of her own), and Gemma (the hating receptionist). I listened to the audiobook.

This book, though long, did well with timing and spacing out of information. Upon starting the book, the voice of the first character introduced had me hesitant to continue listening (because I couldn’t fathom listening to that voice for the duration of the book) but I quickly realized it would be told from multiple points of view. The narrator (Emma Woods) did a great job of instilling a sense of malevolence in certain characters’ voices, thought it was hard to keep up at times. I also wasn’t a fan of the true crime music interludes in between chapters and the ending was a bit underwhelming for me. Would I label this a super thriller that had me at the edge of my seat? Maybe not. BUT, the suspense, mystery, were there throughout, leading me in new directions with plenty of questions!

Thank you NetGalley, Bolinda Audio, & Lauren North for my ARC!

**Listened to the audio book**

I love a good thriller that is set within a school or education setting - this book was OK. Just OK.
I didn't find it particularly memorable, but I enjoyed my time listening. It wasn't that original - theres many books I have read that have felt very similar.

The audiobook narrator was really great, and helped bring the story to life - I don't think I would have finished this book if it hadn't been for the audio version. If i was just reading, I think I would have given up!

This book is OK. Not much more I can say.

First, I tip my hat to Emma Woods, the voice of this audiobook. Her tone and pitch are equal parts innocent and terrified, perfect for the narrator. I used the Netgalley app to listen to this and found that regular speed was way too slow, but 1.25 resulted in perfect tempo. As the story progressed, I bumped it to 2 then 1.75.

Like most stories of its genre, the reader is led down a path but later thrown into a different path. That said, I don't hate the path I ended up on. Did I see the resolution coming? No, actually.

Thanks to Negalley for this arc. The Teacher's Secret is about a teacher Cate and her son Archie going missing after a school day never to be seen again, The headteacher Oliver is suspect number one and gets criticized by many people but throughout we get multiple povs. Oliver's, The substitute teacher Lexi, and also Jeannie the neighborhood watch and a mysterious pov some chapters throughout as if that person is talking directly to Cate. I really got weird vibes from Gemma and Anika, lots of jealousy within the characters. Lexi gets involved in drama with Oliver over and over again, the author really tries to throw you off with this I think and there is twists dropped many times especially in the second half but it's a gripping fast paced novel with suspicious characters and even really annoying and unlikable ones. If you are someone who likes a missing persons with lots of drama and twists then I recommend such! Very entertaining throughout and had me wondering and even rooting for a certain character.

Thanks NetGalley for the ARC of this audiobook.

This type of book is something I would normally gravitate towards, I unfortunately lost interest in a few different ways. The narrator was too monotone for me and all the characters had the same voice.
The storyline was hard to follow and had me having to go back a few chapters to piece things together.
The book for me was okay and slightly entertaining.