Soon to be a major motion picture from Lionsgate starring Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively and Henry Golding, and directed by Paul Feig“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 … the toll of ordinary marital discontent and the fallacy of the picture-perfect, suburban family.”—Kimberly McCreight, New York Times bestselling author
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.
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Too dark and grim for me.
Unlikeable characters, almost cartoonish. Convoluted plot. The movie turned the ridiculous book, that was supposed to be a psychological thriller, into a fun comedy which was much better than the book, which is a rarity. Skip the book. See the movie.
OMG! I think I am in the minority with a 5 star rating, but this book is so deliciously twisted and demented you simply have to love it!
This psychological thriller starts with just a simple favor, a request from Stephanie’s best friend , Emily to pick her son, Nicky, up after school.
When Emily never shows up to pick Nicky up , Stephanie knows something is dreadfully wrong!
Stephanie is a blogger and she begins to turn to the blogging moms community to ask questions and soon she turns to Emily’s husband Sean for help and support in this mystery . What ensues Yes is a sick and twisted trail of deceit and turns you won’t see coming! I highly recommend it!!
This book is damn good, not just well written but concisely written with a good grasp of understanding how personality disorders normalize and right wrongdoings in their own favor. If you want to get a grip, on who is going to get played all you have to do is follow your psychopath.
Bell knows how to hold the discerning reader’s attention and how we perceive the three main characters (Stephanie, Emily and Sean) is based on the kind of person we are, which is what the author is banking on. She smartly divides each character, their back story against the other and you don’t really come to realize that until you meet each character in their chapter and all that stuff you’ve been thinking about said character comes floating up.
If you are an individual who doesn’t mind taboos especially when they are confronted with someone who is in fact far worse, than you’re in for a treat.
This is a great story New author her frist book now the movie out I would loved to see the movie . I THINK there should be part two this book because there alot of unanswered questions they need to be answer plus Sean and Stephanie should be together they were good to each other he was not abusive this was emily doing Sean needs to bring emily down before she kills more people ESP her close loved ones. Stephanie got wake up see her friend is not a friend but her scape goat The two sons lives most important they don’t need to be in the mix I know Sean loves his son and Stephanie loves both those boys unconditionally emily her Nicky for her purpose There needs more to this story other wise this is a great book
Audio Review.
A first-timer with this author and I decided to listen complimentary of my public library. I was a bit disappointed and it was very lengthy. Not sure if it was due to the multiple narration as they were in 1st POV that put me off a bit.
Were the characters believable..I couldn’t tell and there was way way too much going on that I got a bit confused and had a hard time finishing but I managed. Maybe this one was just not for me. Going to check out the movie to compare to see if the story syncs up. Not sure it will.
2-Stars and that’s being kind.
Did you know this movie was based on a book? Finished it in one day.
Very interesting story line. Keeps you turning pages.
Interesting, if not wonderful, characters. If you didn’t find “Gone Girl” enjoyable, you should skip this effort.
Trash! A “Gone Girl” basement bargain knockoff!
My apologies if this seems too harsh but it’s exactly what came to mind shortly after reading “A Simple Favor”.
And to think that I was so excited to read this book. A movie based on the book is coming out soon. It is well-known fact that the book is usually better than the movie. If this is the case, the movie is going to be complete trash as well.
By the way, how was this book even able to make the cut for a movie?
Simply put, the plot lines, backgrounds of the main characters and “twists” are just absurd.
To be fair, “A Simple Favor” is comprised of the “ingredients” that make for a juicy book, such as destructive secrets, contrived marriages, fake deaths, suicides, murder-suicides, tantalizing trysts, psychological issues, incest, drug addictions, the “who done it” effects, etcetera, etcetera.
The author, Darcey Bell, seems to have put all of those “ingredients” in this one book; making it “junky”, convoluted, predictable and unbelievable.
It would be fair to have just dealt with the guilt of judging the book too soon and “tapping out” early, but was too intrigued to do so. Unfortunately, it would not be the writing that would piqued interest but curiosity. What else could Darcey Bell possibly add to this story?? How did she envision ending this collage of themes and genres?? Like the saying “curiosity killed the cat”, hope was a casualty of the ending.
I started to feel badly for Darcey due to the amount of negative reviews she received; including my own. Then I remembered that she was able to convert this book into a movie! Not just some low-budget Saturday afternoon special, but one backed by a major studio and includes A-List actors!! So, to hell with feeling remorseful for Ms. Bell! She and “A Simple Favor” got over big time!
Watching the movie trailer, it seems like the movie will be a complete rewrite; giving the project a chance at redemption. Let’s hope for Darcey’s sake (and those backing this in Hollywood) that it is indeed true.
You might want to do yourself a favor and find something else to read. You’re Welcome
Not a fan at all. Maybe the movie will for once be better than the book.
“Not with a bang but a whimper” could have been written to describe this book. Like I’m sure many others I was drawn in by the upcoming movie staring Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively, and had high hopes for what I expected to be a psychological thriller. Instead, the story relied on the most cliche “twists” (really – a twin?) and every time we were rounding the corner to what I expected to be a surprise, it fell flat. Predictable, not worth the time. Just go see the movie.
3.5/5
I first heard about A Simple Favor through the new movie trailers which looked great, although the book did not fully live up to my expectations, it was still a good and fast paced read. My only real complaints is that the twist was too predictable, an at one point the book mentions domestic abuse and it’s just glossed over, no court?, Really? Kind of unrealistic.
There’s a lot going on in the world the author creates but the reader is able to follow along as chapters are told from internal perspectives, and blog entries of the main character. The overall writing is strong but the plot twists are fairly unsurprising. Good beach reading.
My rating is more like a 3.5, but on the higher end, hence the 4. The only reason it’s not higher is that this, as a genre, is starting to feel exceedingly overdone to me. Without too many spoilers of my own (as though comparing something to Gone Girl doesn’t, in and of itself, offer a type of spoiler – yet publishers do it all the time), this is another in the “OMG, who saw it coming?!” thriller category of books, in which regular-seeming people wind up being anything but… The writing style is engaging and easy-going; the characters are well-developed (I can’t say likeable, given the whole premise); the plot is well-paced (if not becoming somewhat predictable by this, the 400th book I’ve seen compared to GG). I rolled my eyes at the mommy blogger main character, but I do that to a lot of real-life mommy bloggers too – she read exactly the way many of them do, which is to say she read true to life, if not entirely to my liking (again, as is the case with many in real-life). The twists weren’t hard to spot, particularly if you’ve read even one of the many GG comparators by now (and if you haven’t, you must either be living under a rock OR be avoiding the category intentionally, because they’re everywhere). There was nothing wrong with it, it just didn’t feel all that original or fresh. Still, if you’re looking for another scary reminder that people are not always what they seem, that there are more dark corners in the hearts of men (and women) than we’d like to think, and that secrets can, literally, kill, then check this one out!