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The Blue Hour
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Narrated by:
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Gemma Whelan
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Written by:
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Paula Hawkins
About this listen
The spellbinding new novel from the internationally bestselling author of The Girl on the Train.
Welcome to Eris: An island with only one house, one inhabitant, one way out. Unreachable from the Scottish mainland for twelve hours each day.
Once home to Vanessa: A famous artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared twenty years ago.
Now home to Grace: A solitary creature of the tides, content in her own isolation.
But when a shocking discovery is made in an art gallery far away in London, a visitor comes calling.
And the secrets of Eris threaten to emerge . . .
A masterful novel that is as binge-worthy as it is unsettling, The Blue Hour recalls the sophisticated suspense of Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith, and cements Hawkins’s place among the very best of our most nuanced and stylish storytellers.
©2024 Penguin Random House (P)2024 Doubleday CanadaYou may also enjoy...
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What the critics say
"Paula Hawkins has created another stunning, intensely moody tale of suspense and psychological insight. . . . It’s a masterful exploration of the nature of obsession and a fascinating portrayal of an artist’s creative process and legacy. I loved it."—Angie Kim, New York Times bestselling author of Happiness Falls and Miracle Creek
"The Blue Hour is an atmospheric, stylish puzzle box of a thriller with a deliciously inventive premise."—Liz Moore, New York Times bestselling author of Long Bright River
"An atmospheric and marvelously twisty novel—Paula Hawkins returns with an examination of legacy, and the mountains we’ll move to feel like we belong. The Blue Hour builds a labyrinth of surprises, which delivers through to the very last page."—Danya Kukafka, author of Notes on an Execution
What listeners say about The Blue Hour
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Fictionophile
- 2025-01-28
Brooding literary mystery and character study
A chilling crime thriller which was a slow burn. The title, "The Blue Hour" sets the tone for the book - that hour of the day that bridges the time between day and night. Mysterious and unsettling. Moody and contemplative.
In this novel the setting was a character unto itself. A small and desolate Scottish tidal island owned by a talented though capricious artist named Vanessa Chapman. Accessible for only half of each day, the island of Eris has only one house, and, at a distance, a small artist's studio.
James Becker is an expert on the late Vanessa’s work and is the curator for the Fairburn Foundation. A foundation that has inherited Vanessa's work in her will. Married and expecting his first child, he is on a quest to determine an important factor about one of Vanessa's pieces. An expert has determined that one of the works on display contains a human bone. This could be a devastating scandal. The piece must be destroyed to have the bone tested. Becker travels to Eris, to visit the only remaining inhabitant... Grace, executor of Vanessa Chapman's estate. Hoping to discover the answer about the bone and also hoping to discover more art works by Vanessa. Once on the island, Becker begins to reveal secrets that have been concealed for decades.
Vanessa's estranged husband went missing some twenty years previously. Becker fears that the bone might belong to him... By all accounts, the husband was always mooching for Vanessa's money and was a serial philanderer.
The reader only gets to know Vanessa through her diary entries and some flashbacks told through Grace’s unreliable point of view. She was self-centred, passionate, and selfish. She relied on Grace, but had no real esteem for this woman who she considered ugly and deemed insignificant.
Grace Haswell, a physician, was the loyal friend and confidant of the artist Vanessa, though theirs was a toxic relationship. A small and plain woman, she lived for many years on the island. Theirs was a strong, volatile, and mercurial relationship. They were not lovers, but their friendship was inviolable and very difficult to understand.
In the present day, Grace is still desperately hanging on to her secrets. She is incredibly lonely. Always overlooked and dismissed, her life was riddled with insults and disappointments. Grace was a fascinating woman infused with contradictions. The caring and hardworking doctor vs. the manipulative woman she has inadvertently become.
The book held tantalizing glimpses of secrets which the reader is spoon-fed, drip by drip.
Gemma Whelan's crisp and euphonic narration of this audiobook was very effective.
"The Blue Hour" is a novel of highly complex relationships which reveals the boundaries we erect to save ourselves. A novel of life legacy and artistic legacy. A literary novel that was both a mystery and a character study. The abrupt ending left behind so many questions left unanswered...
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