A Simple Favour Audiobook By Darcey Bell cover art

A Simple Favour

The Gripping Thriller Behind the Sizzling Summer 2025 Film Hit Starring Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively, Another Simple Favour

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A Simple Favour

By: Darcey Bell
Narrated by: Andi Arndt, Matthew Waterson, Xe Sands
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Now a major film starring Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively as a pair of mismatched best friends, each with something to hide . . .

'Packed with betrayal, secrets and plenty of twists and turns' - Telegraph

What happened to Emily?

When her best friend, Emily, asks Stephanie to pick up her son from school she agrees happily.

Their children are classmates and best friends. And five-year-olds love being together – just like she and Emily. As a widow and stay-at-home blogger mum living in suburban Connecticut, Stephanie was lonely until she met Emily, a glamorous and successful PR executive.

The trouble is that Emily doesn't come back. No matter what the police say, Stephanie knows that she would never leave her son. Terrified, she reaches out to her fellow mummy bloggers.

And she also reaches out to Emily's husband – just to offer her support.

What Stephanie hasn't shared are the secrets buried in a murky past.

For fans of Gone Girl and Big Little Lies, A Simple Favour by Darcey Bell ratchets up the tension in a taut, unsettling, and completely absorbing thriller that holds you in its grip until the final page.

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Critic reviews

Sly, satirical, subversive: a deliciously poisoned cupcake of a story
A psychological thriller that is as hip and relevant as it is gripping. . . . I couldn't stop reading about these two truly terrifying moms! (Plum Sykes, author of Bergdorf Blondes)
Riveting and brilliantly structured, A Simple Favor is an edge-of-your seat domestic thriller about a missing wife and mother that relies on a rotating cast of unreliable narrators to ingeniously examine the cost of competitive mom-friends, the toll of ordinary marital discontent and the fallacy of the picture-perfect, suburban family (Kimberly McCreight, author of international bestseller Reconstructing Amelia)
A compellingly creepy female protagonist who kept me guessing right up to the end
Darcey Bell tackles a nightmare scenario brilliantly in A Simple Favour
Fast-moving, readable and packed with betrayal, secrets and plenty of twists and turns
An intense, captivating, and astonishing thriller ending in an unforeseen and surprise ending; the premise: Be careful who you trust
Bell’s edgy first novel is chock-full of dirty little secrets, lies, and manipulations. Gone Girl devotees should reserve an advance copy and carve out uninterrupted time for this juicy read
Debut-novelist Bell ramps up suspense with authority in this domestic thriller, in which actions seem as inevitable as they are chilling. The audience that made Gone Girl a publishing sensation is likely to take to this one, too
All stars
Most relevant
I didn’t have an issue with the voice actors narrating this book – the bad review is really because this book sucks. I got it because the movie trailer based on it looked interesting. Big mistake. This book is not well-written. It’s overly descriptive for no reason. Something that I found very annoying was that on a number of occasions the author uses two unrelated catch-phrases that contradict each other in the same sentence. The characters are all annoying and flat. They all carry on, providing ridiculous, superfluous details that don’t make sense. I got halfway, and decided to return this book because my head was going to explode from rolling my eyes so much.

Seriously cringy

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Horrible story nothing of redeeming value. Bad characters poorly written. I cringed every time I heard “hi, moms”

Good narration

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