The Crooked House cover art

The Crooked House

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

The Crooked House

By: Christobel Kent
Narrated by: Rachel Atkins
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

One fateful night. One unthinkable family tragedy. One survivor. This is Alison's story.

Perfect for fans of The Girl on the Train and Apple Tree Yard, this stunning psychological thriller follows one woman's search for the truth about her family history. Alison is as close to anonymous as she can get: With no ties and a backroom job, hers is a life lived under the radar. But once Alison was someone else: Once she was Esme, a teenager whose bedroom sat at the top of a remote house on a bleak estuary. A girl whose family, if not happy exactly, was no unhappier than anyone else's - or so she thought.

Then one night violence was unleashed in the crooked house, in a nightmare that only Alison survived and from which she's been running ever since. Only when she falls for the charismatic Paul does Alison realise that to have any chance of happiness, she must return to her old life and face a closed community full of dark secrets.

As she seeks to uncover the truth of what happened that terrible night, Alison begins to question everything she thought she knew. Is there anyone she can trust?

©2015 Christobel Kent (P)2015 Hachette Audio Crime Thrillers Genre Fiction Psychological Suspense Thriller Thriller & Suspense Fiction Happiness

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Late Season cover art
The Summer House cover art
A Party in San Niccolo cover art
A Florentine Revenge cover art
The House in the Woods cover art
Summer of Secrets cover art
The Lost Letters cover art

Editor reviews

One of the most suspenseful audiobooks on the market, The Crooked House is written by Christobel Kent and grippingly narrated by Rachel Atkins. This complete and unabridged psychological thriller will have you listening compulsively. Alison, the young lone survivor in her family’s massacre, has moved into a new life. It’s not until adulthood when she realises she will never be happy until she finds closure with her past. Is Alison’s return to the scene of her family's murder putting her in the path of this monstrous killer again? A brilliant listen for thriller enthusiasts and newcomers alike. Available now from Audible.

Critic reviews

"An utterly compulsive psychological thriller. I loved it." (SJ Watson, author of Before I Go to Sleep, on The Crooked House)
"Brilliant...A spooky, gripping and affecting story." (Louise Doughty, author of Apple Tree Yard, in the Guardian)
"Compulsive, unsettling and scary as hell." ( Sunday Mirror)
"Echoes of Christie and du Maurier in this fine thriller." ( Sunday Times)
"Demands to be devoured in one sitting." ( Good Housekeeping)
All stars
Most relevant  
Fabulous story. Great characters, kept me guessing the whole way through - so credible. Loved every bit of this book! I'm now going to my next Christobel Kent book!

Best book Iv listened to this year

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

If you could sum up The Crooked House in three words, what would they be?

Dark, edgy, and graphic.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Crooked House?

The picture in my head when the author, Christobel describes the tragedy in the book. Very cleverly written.

What does Rachel Atkins bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

Rachel portrays the characters so well and with so many characters in the book, her ability to interpret the cultural backgrounds allows you to enjoy the story without having to keep referencing each character.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The helplessness of the main character when she reflects on her family.

Any additional comments?

Christobels ability to set the scene was so good that I thought I recognised it from my own childhood in Mersea, Essex. I needed to find out if there was a connection and sure enough Christobel grew up in Maldon Essex which is the neighbouring village. This just proves her ability to draw you in.. Great book.

An edgy mystery, had me hooked. My home area too!!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I did enjoy this book in parts and stuck it out to the very end but to be honest it was a long and arduous journey and many times I didn't think I'd make it.

There are lots of characters in this book who play various parts in our heroines life. However, they are not well drawn and tend to meld into one another. The ending was not really a surprise and actually I'd lost interest by that point. Sorry!

Overlong and confusing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Saw good reviews so thought I would have a listen So glad I did! Lots of twists & turns and never saw the end coming. Will look out for something else by the same author

Brilliant

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The heroine's family members were brutally killed when she was 13. After the tragedy Esme changed her name and went to live with her aunt in Cornwall. After her studies she works in London where she meets Paul. He receives a wedding invitation which will take her back to her native Norfolk. She will then confront her past. The plot is more or less obvious from the very start; the supporting cast of characters are fairly uninteresting and devoid of true mystery. The writing is repetitive with extremely heavy 'cliffhangers'. The narrator did a good job except for the working class people of Norfolk who for some reason had vaguely Cockney or London accents. By the time the truth was revealed I was not in the least surprised and I didn't much care by then.

Insipid thriller

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Struggled to stay with it at first, there's so many characters, had think about who was who. However,it soon became un-put-downable, its a good read with a surprising end.

Worth reading.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Brilliant. The best psychological thriller I've read in a good while. Very well written and never stooping to that all-too-common lazy method of making characters do really stupid things just to make the plot 'work'.

After the disturbing initial description of the historical incident at the start I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to listen but I'm glad I did. I was gripped from start to finish.

(My only niggle with the audiobook was the jarring confusion of pronouns - often she said "he" instead of "she" which always required at least one rewind to get my head round! Fairly minor issue overall though)

Highly recommended!

Grippingly and well-written. Must read!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The best parts of the story are the descriptions of the bleak estuary environment. This is a place easily accessible from Liverpool Street Station but at the same time remote and inescapable by the local people who scratch out a meagre living. Outsiders are not always welcomed by a suspicious and closed in community, and it is therefore of little surprise that this was the scene of a horrific family massacre. This is the story is of Alison, the sole survivor who is trying to find out the truth about what happened when she was a child. This is further embellished by her peculiar relationship with her much older boyfriend and his sinister ex-girlfriend. This part is very like the Daphne Du Maurier book Rebecca, and is very enjoyable. Unfortunately the unravelling of the murder mystery does become confused and muddled, and I had to wind the book back several times to maintain my grip.

The slightly over the top ending does draw matters to a satisfying conclusion and so I am therefore more than happy to give this a four star rating. The author is clearly talented and I am interested in reading more from her.

A place and people forgotten by the world

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Good idea but felt a little dragged out.
Diverting on long journey though.
Not a patch on girl on train

Great idea

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Narrated by an actress who clearly knows how to give an audio book just the right amount of tension and character, this is a good, twisty read. I did have the real villain pegged from the first few chapters, but then I wrote thrillers too, and the author threw enough smoke and mirrors into the narrative along the way to make me question my number one suspect and certainly wonder how they were going to be worked into the narrative. My only niggle was a few times when the writing seemed to deliberately holding back on revelations in order to confuse the issue, but other than that a gripping read and a vivid evocation of place. By the end you can certainly taste the salt in the air.

Plenty of Red Herrings

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews