Kristin's Bookshelf

📖 The Intruder
✏️ By Freida McFadden
🎧 Narrated by Joe Hempel, Patricia Santomasso & Tina Wolstencroft
⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

The narration was an easy 5 stars, but the story itself didn’t grab me the way most of Freida McFadden’s books do.

For me, this was a very slow burn. A mom friend and I listened to it on our drive to and from Disney, and I don’t think I was fully invested until around Chapters 13 or 14. Interestingly, she said it held her attention, even though she’d never read Freida before, so this may have just been a case of it not clicking for me personally.

That said, this book had one of the biggest twists I’ve seen from Freida. I had plenty of theories along the way, but aside from Lee, I was wrong about almost everything. I also really enjoyed the dual timelines, and once the story picked up, I had to know how all the pieces fit together. Freida definitely delivered on that front.

My biggest complaint was the ending. Everything wrapped up just a little too boom-boom-boom, which took away some of the tension I’d been waiting for and it felt a little off.

The highlight of the audiobook was the section where the intruder was inside Casey’s house. Tina Wolstencroft absolutely nailed the voice of a deeply disturbed middle-schooler, while Patricia Santomasso perfectly captured Casey’s calm, levelheaded, almost savior-like personality. Their performances elevated the entire experience.