Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Simple Favor: A Novel
    A Simple Favor: A Novel
    A Simple Favor: A Novel
    Audiobook8 hours

    A Simple Favor: A Novel

    Written by Darcey Bell

    Narrated by Andi Arndt, Xe Sands and Matthew Waterson

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Soon to be a major motion picture from Lionsgate starring Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively and Henry Golding, and directed by Paul Feig

    She’s your best friend. She knows all your secrets. That’s why she’s so dangerous.

    A single mother's life is turned upside down when her best friend vanishes in this chilling debut thriller in the vein of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train.

    It starts with a simple favor—an ordinary kindness mothers do for one another. When her best friend, Emily, asks Stephanie to pick up her son Nicky after school, she happily says yes. Nicky and her son, Miles, are classmates and best friends, and the five-year-olds love being together—just like she and Emily. A widow and stay-at-home mommy blogger living in woodsy suburban Connecticut, Stephanie was lonely until she met Emily, a sophisticated PR executive whose job in Manhattan demands so much of her time.

    But Emily doesn’t come back. She doesn’t answer calls or return texts. Stephanie knows something is terribly wrong—Emily would never leave Nicky, no matter what the police say. Terrified, she reaches out to her blog readers for help. She also reaches out to Emily’s husband, the handsome, reticent Sean, offering emotional support. It’s the least she can do for her best friend. Then, she and Sean receive shocking news. Emily is dead. The nightmare of her disappearance is over.

    Or is it? Because soon, Stephanie will begin to see that nothing—not friendship, love, or even an ordinary favor—is as simple as it seems.

    A Simple Favor is a remarkable tale of psychological suspense—a clever and twisting free-fall of a ride filled with betrayals and reversals, twists and turns, secrets and revelations, love and loyalty, murder and revenge. Darcey Bell masterfully ratchets up the tension in a taut, unsettling, and completely absorbing story that holds you in its grip until the final page.

    Editor's Note

    Dark discontent…

    Three unreliable narrators reveal the dark discontent hiding underneath the happy sheen of suburban domesticity. This novel is poised to blow up with the release of the movie adaptation starring Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively in late 2018.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateMar 21, 2017
    ISBN9780062658234
    Author

    Darcey Bell

    Darcey Bell was born in 1981 and raised on a dairy farm in western Iowa. She is a preschool teacher in Chicago. A Simple Favor is her first novel.

    Related to A Simple Favor

    Related audiobooks

    Thrillers For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      I Never Called Her Momma

      Sep 13, 2023

      I Never Called Her Momma
      39 min read

    • Article

      Changing Our Narratives through ‘Days of Our Lives’

      Oct 17, 2018

      1. Just weeks before the presidential election, after the release of the recording in which Donald Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women as he headed to the set of Days of Our Lives, my mother called me. While most people talked about the wor

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Shape Of A Person

      Oct 20, 2022

      The Shape Of A Person
      25 min read

    • Article

      Letter

      Jan 22, 2021

      TO THE teachers of 2020, thank you for all the countless hours you spent preparing, marking and making a difference. It doesn’t go unnoticed. You stood in the face of adversity during Covid, putting your own lives at risk for the sake of children th

      3 min read

    • Article

      That Particular Sunday

      Jul 6, 2023

      That Particular Sunday
      26 min read

    • Article

      Survival Mode

      Jan 12, 2022

      Survival Mode
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Five People You Meet In A Pandemic

      May 14, 2021

      The Five People You Meet In A Pandemic
      5 min read

    • Article

      Bad-Time Dimitri

      Feb 3, 2022

      Bad-Time Dimitri
      16 min read

    • Article

      Without A Trace

      Jan 5, 2023

      Heading to my room and closing the door, I lay down on my bed and took a letter out of my pocket. Poring over the words on the page, I read it over and over again. It was from my mum, Tina, 32. Having had me at just 19, life had been difficult for he

      5 min read

    • Article

      Why Mothers Are the Unsung Heroes of Prison

      May 10, 2019

      “I’ve seen disasters averted, even a gang war set aside because of these simple words: 'What would your mother think?'”

      4 min read

    • Article

      My Best Friend

      Oct 1, 2020

      My Best Friend
      6 min read

    • Article

      Cat World

      Oct 2, 2020

      Cat World
      12 min read

    • Article

      Caught Out

      Oct 2, 2022

      Caught Out
      9 min read

    • Article

      Vanished

      Apr 20, 2023

      Vanished
      5 min read

    • Article

      Perfectly Blunt

      Mar 5, 2020

      Perfectly Blunt
      6 min read

    • Article

      Notes on Etiquette

      Mar 1, 2019

      Notes on Etiquette
      10 min read

    • Article

      Origin Stories: On the Value of Comics

      May 18, 2022

      The world is vast and I'm unsure of how it works, but this comic is mine, and that's enough. The post Origin Stories: On the Value of Comics appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • Article

      The Most Difficult Story I Ever Wrote

      Aug 29, 2019

      It took me more than a dozen years to write. In 2017, I “finished” it. That’s in quotations because it’s a lie—I knew it wasn’t really finished. The post The Most Difficult Story I Ever Wrote appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      “One In A Million”

      Jan 29, 2023

      When I was growing up, people always asked me what it was like having a mum like Lillian Frank. They only saw a flamboyant, larger-than-life socialite splashed across the papers in outlandish hats during the Melbourne Cup or in dazzling dresses at ch

      7 min read

    • Article

      Seeing RED

      Mar 31, 2021

      Seeing RED
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Simple Favor

    3.5/5

    650 ratings52 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Love the plot, but I felt as if there needed to be a better ending with maybe some justice, or maybe some more mystery to keep me hanging on. Still a great read

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      I took a Saturday “off” of life to read this book in basically one sitting. It might sound shallow to say, but I really liked the slight mommy blogger snark. The storyline was very suspenseful, and it was hard to try and figure out what was really going on and what might happen next. Very nice ending that I won’t spoil.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      The book definitely pulled me in instantly. The ending left me with wanting more. Gone Girl meets gossip girl.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      The book is basically Gone Girl with worse writing. Sometimes you could barely understand the narrator for Emily.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Emily was a crazy bTch. She was just doing things just to get kicks.
      Her poor husband didnt have a back bone and netheir did Stephanie.
      The both of them just fell for whatever Emily said never question if she was lying.
      Even believing they saw things when they actually didnt.
      These types of people are scary.
    • 2/5
      I kept thinking "surely this gets better" but it didn't.
    • 2/5
      Gone Girl meets Gossip Girl, and then add some Stephenie Meyer to the mix.

      The idea for the plot is fine, even better than fine, but its execution is plain boring and all the characters are two dimensional. If undecided whether you should read it, take my advice and skip it.
    • 1/5
      this was horrible. all of it. I liked the movie so much better. at least there was a ending...
    • 5/5
      Gripping, unexpected twists throughout. If you enjoyed Gone Girl you will love this book. Excited for the film!
    • 2/5
      I kept waiting for the story to come to a good ending. When the narcissistic serial killer of a woman met her justified ending. Didn’t happen. Waste of time reading
    • 5/5
      A good noir story. A dark lady, some not so accidental deaths, deep shadows in all the characters, and no happy ending, but "she" (don't want to spoil it) deserves every bit of it.
    • 2/5
      This is somewhere between 1 and 2 stars. I almost gave up on this book several times and at the end I realized I should have. The mommy blogger voice is annoying, the characters are awful and the only thing the plot has going for it are the twists. I think this could have had potential but it just wasn't done well.
    • 2/5
      meh. good try. i liked seeing the blog posts between stephanie and emily's thoughts.
    • 3/5
      Did not enjoy the ending much, nor the book. There was no string character build up.
    • 1/5
      This was a waste of time! There was not 1 character to connect with, except maybe poor, pathetic Sean.. Spoilers: There was nothing interesting about the plot - stupid, vain, entitled woman terrorizing friend/husband, killing sister - yikes! I kept thinking the end would wrap something, anything up but no.. I think it’s the worst nook I’ve read in years!! So unsatisfying, so bad!
    • 2/5
      Mediocre mystery and completely anti-climactic. Not a fan.
    • 5/5
      Amazing and fast moving. I loved it, all love
    • 3/5
      Indeed a book that keeps you wanting for more until you’re though with it, however the ending is odd. Maybe not what we are normally used to. The author wants to make it different and it surely portrays different society’s personalities. The movie is so different than the book, and I’d imagine is because the director realizes the plot is weird enough to make it more complicated unless planning a sequence.
    • 4/5
      The three narrators did a good job with their characters. They had nuanced tones to show the different emotions and styles of speaking that totally suited their characters. The audiobook was made more enjoyable with these different narrations. The novel wasn’t particularly fantastic but had its merits as a crime thriller. I would give it 3/5 stars.
    • 2/5
      I listened to this book because the movie trailer intrigued me. Now, I have no interest in seeing the movie because this book was not great.
      The dialogues and monologues were repetitive and the plot was predictable. It felt like there was a lot of filler narrative. None of the characters had redeeming qualities that made you root for them, aside from maybe the husband, Sean. Over half of the book is from one character's point of view/from the point of view of her blog (Stephanie), with POV from two other characters only coming in much later, one of which was much more interesting to listen to than that of Stephanie/Stephanie's Blog. If most of or the whole book was written in this other POV, it could have been a much more interesting read. There was also a side tangent narrative surrounding an off-putting secret that Stephanie had, which was unnecessary for both plot and character development. In a different story, with a different character, it could have worked/led to interesting places, but what it was used for in this book could have been replicated with another sort of secret to achieve the same effect. I debated not finishing the book multiple times, but wanted to know what happened in the end and hoped that it got better. It did not.
    • 4/5
      The book was very interesting. It kept you wondering what was going to happen next. Stephanie, l can't believe she could be so dumb.
    • 5/5
      So exciting! And the voices reading it are very good.
    • 2/5
      I read to chapter 15. Slept to 25. Then gave up around 36. The movie was better.
    • 5/5
      The ending is amazing, completely different from the movie. The twist and turns are unexpected and love how it is written in 3 different perspectives.
    • 5/5
      nice plot, very interesting characters, and so so so thrilling !!
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed the different commentators and the story line
    • 5/5
      I liked the suspense of the book but hated the ending. I liked the movie’s ending better
    • 5/5
      The plot makes it hard to put this book down. The way the events are presented, from 4 perspectives, makes it more interesting.
    • 3/5
      Uhm what? That was it? Wow, I think the movie was better. The story's definitely interesting but I feel like there could have been more? I feel like the movie took the story into new heights and that was what I was looking for in the book.
    • 4/5
      Somewhat predictable storyline of a controlling and manipulative lead character, gullible friend, and a helpless husband.