Three different women - Anna, Marie, and Lucy. Each one has a different story. One is in a prison, one is on an isolated island, and one is a college student trying to seduce her professor. What is common between these women? How do their stories tie up?

The premise was quite promising but by the end, I was tired of the main and side characters. Edgar, for instance. What was his deal??

But it was an entertaining read and for that it gets 3 stars.

Thanks to Netgalley and Headline Audio for the audio ARC.

It was a strange book to listen to. Maybe reading it would have been different, but listening at first it was difficult to understand who are those people from these chapters and why they have been put together in one book.
As you can already see from the introduction, the book contains the stories of three women - Anna has just been released from prison and immediately gets into trouble; Lucy is the character I remember least about; Marie, I didn't understand what was happening with her at first, but ...
But the further you go, the more information you get, and when the threads finally start to come together...well, I couldn't have foreseen such a cruel game. It’s good to remember that these three stories do not run side by side in time. These women are connected, ou boy are they connected.
It's interesting that when I read the introduction again four months later, I didn't remember any of the content at first, and then the moments, the cruel moments, start to come back. I must reread this book.

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and Headline Audio | Wildfires in exchange for an honest review.

The plot of A Lesson in Cruelty is a little hard to summarise without spoilers but I shall do my best. This is really a book of three separate plots which then come together. The first part is about Anna, a woman who is being let out of prison only to find her cellmate dead on the day of her supposed release. The second is about Marie, a woman imprisoned on a remote Scottish island (that's about it really). Finally we have Lucy, a law student who desperately wants to sleep with her professor and gets the chance to when they go away to a conference together.

If these plots sound a bit disjointed then good, I have accurately represented the listening experience. Never has a book had so much going on and yet so little of it which actually matters in the end. The swaps in character did not feel particularly natural and I actually found it intrusive to the flow of the story. The three characters are distinct but when the plot starts coming together and the different threads start to collide, you start to realise how much faff there was. It is at this point that some events are chalked up to 'random coincidence', something I'd be more forgiving of if this wasn't already a bit of a mess in terms of how its crafted.

I also just need to talk about Edgar for a minute because he is in some ways the most outlandish character. He is a law professor and honestly cartoonish in the way he neglects his family and how he conducts 'research'. I'd like to point out here that I am actually a lecturer and even allowing for the liberties fiction can take, what he gets away with is absurd. It pokes a huge hole in an already-punctured plot.

The 'twist' at the end is painfully obvious as several reviewers have pointed out, but it's made even more obvious by the way the audiobook is narrated. The narrator does an ASMR voice for some passages where we're not supposed to know who exactly is narrating them, but then the same voice (admittedly dialled back) is used for that character so it becomes clear who it's going to turn out to be. Additionally, some lines near the end are a different volume to the surrounding ones. This was very distracting and just made the production seem a bit cheap, like they'd been dubbed in afterwards.

Overall, I sadly wasn't very impressed by this thriller. The plot is oversaturated and requires suspension of disbelief to buy that certain aspects would be allowed to happen. The characters are decent but there are so many of them and too many coincidences play out in terms of their relationships. Perhaps if the audiobook had been better then I would have enjoyed this more, but it wasn't my cup of tea

Overall Rating: 3/5 stars

Thank you, NetGalley for an advanced ALC of this book

I first got this because it sounded interstellar and intriguing 🤔

Anna wants a fresh start after three long years behind bars.

Lucy craves the attention of the only man she can't have, her alluring Oxford professor.

Marie has spent too long as a recluse living by someone else's rules.

When three strangers stumble upon an elaborate web of lies and the dead body at the heart of it, they will discover the true price of getting the life they desire so badly.

But will it be too late?

As I was reading this book I tried my hardest to get invested in the 3 separate stories of 3 separate women, but the only one that helped my interest completely was the story about Anna who just got out of jail, Unfortunately, as I was listening to the other 2 women's stories I became disinterested and started to fade in and out of the story. I felt the stories were slightly rushed and would have appreciated more to maybe have cared more about each story we are wrapped up in with each character and also the ending I kind of saw coming.

To me, each character did show signs of a few things obsession. Abuse and a conflicted sense of self.

I am not the audience for this book but there may be others who liked it and cared about the connection more than I did, I will say this though Harriet Tyce does have a beautiful writing style and some of the ways she puts things were poetic and I highly appreciated that about the book

Wow, what a brilliantly constructed and suspenseful novel!

Slow to start but builds up to a powerful conclusion. I loved the three distinct POVs - Anna, Lucy and Marie. All three characters were well developed with complex, yet thrilling narratives. How do these three women with different storylines connect?

Set in Oxford and Scotland, the writing is beautifully atmospheric paired with a clever plot that will keep you turning the pages to find out how it all ties together.

A Lesson in Cruelty was my first by Harriet Tyce and I look forward to reading more from her.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Headline Audio for the ALC. The narration by Candida Gubbins was fantastic.

A Lesson in Cruelty is a psychological thriller with several different characters who are all linked. After a traumatic final night in prison, Anna has just been released and seeks to rebuild relationships with her family. Lucy is a university student who is infatuated with her tutor and Marie is currently serving a prison sentence.
I was unable to work out the link between the three women until it was revealed three quarters of the way through the book. Despite finding most of the novel engaging I found the last part to be too far fetched and out of sync with the majority of the storyline.

I was gifted the audiobook version by Netgalley and overall really enjoyed the book. In terms of the audiobook I was confused with the various intertwining stories which then started to make sense halfway through. It was a riveting read, great narrator and kept me guessing until the end.

I really wanted to love this book
However for me personally I found it a little slow, and confusing with the points of view.
I didn’t think it flowed well and I wasn’t left wanting more from it.

Having read and enjoyed a few books by Harriet Tyce there's a few things we can expect:

A female lawyer with a messy personal life and dependence on alcohol ✔️

Self absorbed men who don't care how their actions could affect others ✔️

A South of England setting with connections to somewhere in Scotland ✔️

We have 3 separate stories initially. Anna, who has just been released from prison, Lucy who is studying Law and has developed a bit of an obsession with a lecturer, and Marie who is living some kind of off grid life on some secluded island in Scotland.

We hear their stories separately initially then as the story unfolds we see how they are all connected. There is a twist at the end which was fairly obvious if not far fetched.

Unfortunately the narration of this book was not good, especially the sections following Marie in Scotland. The narrator also appears to develop a cold half way through, I'm not sure if this was an unedited version for early reviews but it was very distracting .

The three plotlines in this book took the reader down quite a twisty road before coming back together. This was a nice introduction to an author that I had not yet had the pleasure of reading. The narrator, unfortunately, was not a good fit for me.

A Lesson in Cruelty is a psychological thriller which aims to explore the efficacy of the UK prison system through the stories of three women which converge at the end. This book follows Anna who has recently been released from prison, Lucy who is studying a masters in criminology and Marie.

I thought the premise of this book sounded really intriguing so was very excited to get to this one. This book is largely based in Oxford and as a current Oxford university student it was fun being able to recognise the different streets and locations that the characters visit. I thought the pacing was done well and the stories moved along at a good rate.

However on the whole I found this book extremely disappointing. I found all of the characters unlikeable so found it very difficult to feel invested in the story. Edgar, a 50+ year old university professor, in particular was insufferable and unfortunately a large portion of the book is dedicated to his extremely inappropriate affairs with multiple of his students. The book fails to acknowledge the power dynamic at play here and instead veers towards victim blaming and shaming the young, female students for getting into a relationship with a married man. This whole aspect left me feeling very uncomfortable and tainted the entire book for me. In addition to this, I thought the way the three stories combined wasn't at all seamless and felt very forced. The ending felt very rushed and left a lot of loose ends.

The narrator further lessened my enjoyment of this book particularly as she appears to have caught a cold halfway through and becomes increasingly nasally as the book goes on. There is also a lot of whispering and gasping throughout which meant I was constantly having to adjust my phone's volume or I would just miss whatever was being said. I listen to audiobooks whilst walking so this was extremely annoying and inconvenient. The narrator attempted different voices for each of the characters however I found the women's voices to be too similar to the point that I was struggling to differentiate between them in the parts where they were all together.

Overall I was intrigued by the premise of this book but didn't connect to the characters and found the student/teacher relationships too off-putting to get any real enjoyment out of this book. This wasn't a pleasant listening experience however I don't think I would have enjoyed the story anymore had I read the book.

There are lots of strands to this tale which means that I would recommend reading the book rather than listening to it, as personally, I got lost at times and think i missed out on some of the key points of the story and in particular relationships between characters. The narrator was not the best with some changes in tone during the recording which made it harder to follow who was who. Perhaps, it needs a re-record?

This was such a exciting book to read, I was engrossed and had so many ideas of what was going on, my main thought was completely wrong 🤦🏼‍♀️ (I trusted noone not even Becky 😂) but I loved all the developments and seeing what would happen next.

I loved Becky and her determination to prove herself right, this novel shows how corrupt some people (not just the police!) and use their power to abuse others or to help cover up abuse of power.

If you are looking for a clever psychological thriller to get your heart racing, add this to your TBR.

I listened to the audiobook and the narrator was clearly sick through the second half, very distracting and shouldn’t have been recorded until she was well. The story had a lot going on- lots of moving parts that came together well. I enjoyed this one.

I loved this book. The truth was gradually revealed through the multi perspective narrative and kept me guessing for ages. A complex, intelligent and well written book.

I really enjoyed this book it was really easy to listen to and I enjoyed all the twists or turns.

My only negative feedback is that the narrator clearly got a cold halfway through the book which got really annoying to listen to! Not sure why they didn’t wait for her to recover before continuing the book.

I requested this because I really enjoyed Blood Orange by the same author. However, I didn’t get on with this one. I found it slow and quite boring in places. At the beginning, I got confused with the POVs and whether the timelines were the same. This may be because my interest was waning. Some of the plot was a bit far-fetched for me. I enjoyed the narrator a lot. Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers.

This was so well written (and the narration really worked) there were so many different strands which came together. From the 'blurb' I wasn't sure what to expect but it worked well for me and definitely kept me engaged throughout.

Another very delightful and intriguing story from Harriet Tyce, and as expected, there is another lawyer who plays a role in this narrative as well!

Three women, each with their own sorrowful tale.
Anna is on the verge of being released from prison after a tragic accident that resulted in her nephew's hospitalization. Lucy is deeply infatuated with her university professor while also enduring a difficult life, and then there is Maria, who lives in isolation while caring for a convicted child murderer.
These three women share a common thread: prison.

Initially, we are presented with three distinct stories, and I found myself wondering how they would converge and who the common link would be.

I opted to listen to the audiobook and encountered no issues with the narrator's performance. However, this is a type of story that is best experienced through reading rather than listening. At times, I felt the desire to revisit certain details, but this is challenging to accomplish with an audiobook.

Despite this minor inconvenience, I thoroughly enjoyed the story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Headline audio for the opportunity to listen to the audiobook in exchange for my honest opinion.

A Lesson in Cruelty is my first Harriet Tyce book. I read the blurb and really wanted to listen to the book as it sounded intriguing.

I have to say that I started listening to the audiobook and got quite lost and parked the book to one side. I think I might have stuck with the book if I’d had an actual copy of the book to keep track of the multiple points of view from Anna, Laura and Marie. There are lots of strands to the book.

After a couple of weeks, I revisited the audiobook starting the audiobook from the beginning - and I’m so glad that I did. The tree strands of the story come together and it becomes a pacy thriller.

The book is narrated by Candida Gubbins who does a great job with different accents for the characters making them quite distinct and bringing the story to life.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, Headline Audio, for making this e-Audiobook available to me in exchange for a fair and honest review.