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Fragile: A Novel
Unavailable
Fragile: A Novel
Unavailable
Fragile: A Novel
Audiobook11 hours

Fragile: A Novel

Written by Lisa Unger

Narrated by Nancy Linari

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

A thrilling novel from New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger about the hunt for a missing girl and one community's intricate yet fragile bonds. 

Everybody knows everybody in The Hollows, a quaint, charming town outside of New York City. It's a place where neighbors keep an eye on one another's kids, where people say hello in the grocery store, and where high school cliques and antics are never quite forgotten. As a child, Maggie found living under the microscope of small-town life stifling. But as a wife and mother, she has happily returned to The Hollows's insular embrace. As a psychologist, her knowledge of family histories provides powerful insights into her patients' lives. So when the girlfriend of her teenage son, Rick, disappears, Maggie's intuitive gift proves useful to the case-and also dangerous.

Eerie parallels soon emerge between Charlene's disappearance and the abduction of another local girl that shook the community years ago when Maggie was a teenager. The investigation has her husband, Jones, the lead detective on the case, acting strangely. Rick, already a brooding teenager, becomes even more withdrawn. In a town where the past is always present, nobody is above suspicion, not even a son in the eyes of his father.

As she tries to reassure him that Rick embodies his father in all of the important ways, Maggie realizes this might be exactly what Jones fears most. Determined to uncover the truth, Maggie pursues her own leads into Charlene's disappearance and exposes a long-buried town secret-one that could destroy everything she holds dear.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 3, 2010
ISBN9780307715401
Unavailable
Fragile: A Novel
Author

Lisa Unger

LISA UNGER, guest editor, is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of twenty novels, including her latest, Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six. She has been nominated for or won numerous awards, including the Strand Critics, Audie, Macavity, ITW Thriller, and Goodreads Choice Awards as well as the Hammett Prize. In 2019, she received two Edgar Award nominations, an honor held by only a few authors, including Agatha Christie. Lisa is currently copresident of the International Thriller Writers organization.

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Reviews for Fragile

Rating: 3.5955630709897606 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

293 ratings37 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A good crime story but too long and wordy - there were parts (and characters) that were unnecessary. I also thought the plot lacked suspense and excitement.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Fragile by Lisa Unger is a highly readable thriller set in a small town in the U.S. Everyone knows one another and thinks that there isn’t anything new to learn about their neighbours. Of course, they are wrong and over the course of the book a number of past misdeeds come to light.When a young girl disappears after having a fight with her mother everyone assumes that she simply ran away, but the police investigate thoroughly as everyone remembers when another young girl’s body was discovered in the woods after she disappeared over two decades ago. The main characters are the lead detective, Jones Cooper and his wife, a psychiatrist. The missing girl was their son’s girlfriend and it’s pretty obvious that Jones had something to do with the first girl’s death and can’t help himself from having suspicions about his own son. Of course there are plenty of suspects and the tension mounts as the hunt gets closer and closer to the truth.It seems as if everyone in this town has a dark secret or two that they are trying to conceal, but the author ties the narrative together nicely and the plot flows fairly evenly. I would have preferred the book to be a little shorter, a little tighter, but this was an engaging story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A great read that shows how secrets can spiral out of control, even when you think noone will be affected. It has a lot of twists and turns and the characters are intricate and complex.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    You have a small town, Maggie, a psychologist and wife to the police detective. Their classmates in high school all with their untold secret related to a missing teen. Now as adults, another missing teen and another generation. I can't say the story held my interest. I can say the prologue was intriguing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I originally had wanted to give this book a 5 star however, I have a tendency to hold off on my reviews for awhile after reading them to see how much I remember. Sadly, I had to bring it down to a 4 as I remember some but it didn't leave the impression apparently that it did right after I read it. The parts I do remember were fast page turning edge of seat what's gonna happen stuff. !st book that I have read by this author and put the next in this series on hold at my library so we will see how that one goes.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I eagerly waited for the arrival of this goodreads giveaway on my doorstep. This is the first book I read by Lisa Unger and I'm happy to report it was an enjoyable read. In it, a missing persons case dredges up the dark secrets of the small town inhabitants of The Hollows, New York. The ending requires a serious suspension of disbelief and the author certainly hasn't reinvented the wheel here. None of that detracted from my overall enjoyment of the book though.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    These are a bit of "fluff" reading for me. Crime, Old Crime, Small town interactions, Generational complexities, Secrets, Discoveries. All the elements of a suspense crime mystery. This one was well done. I'd read more by this author . . . if I had time to read more "fluff".
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Good mystery based in a small town 100 miles from New York City.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    enjoyed
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    What is it with me reading Lisa Unger books in pairs? Here we go again. Two books (Fragile and Darkness, My Old Friend) with separate main plots, but connected by character, location and circumstances of the past. I felt the second novel was more disconnected and less compelling than the first. It features much the same type of mystery and long-held secrets, but it was looser and I didn’t turn the pages quite as fast. I think its because the danger is in the present in the first book; a girl goes missing and it’s not the first time that’s happened. In Darkness, the woman who goes missing has been long absent and the danger to Willow is peripheral, really. As a result, it wasn’t quite as thrilling as the first book, but definitely interesting and worth the time it takes to read it.A lot of that has to do with the characters and their interwoven lives. The Hollows (a model on Sleepy Hollow, also found in upstate New York?) has a vibe all its own. Sinister, but open. Everyone knows everyone and there’s history, backstory and baggage galore. It’s a wonder there aren’t more murders. The problem is that sometimes the detail surrounding the characters gets to be a bit much. Like in Darkness, Maggie comes off like a controlling jerk, constantly pouting, sighing and frowning in her disapproval of the way Jones is dealing with his trauma and loss of his job. Oy it got old. Sure, there’s underlying love and devotion and I don’t want to see all sunshine and rainbows, but she got really annoying in this book. She was only mildly annoying in the first (she’s pretty judgmental, yet self-centered and always questioning her own motives and actions).Also the central mystery of what happened to Marla Holt wasn’t too hard to figure out. I had it pegged early and had to watch the rag-tag investigators play catch-up. There are some decent tangential plots and most of the threads come together in the end. At first you don’t see quite how, but as the books progress they do and it’s fun to watch. In the second one the young people in the book seemed to be illustrating a minor theme about lying, which I could totally relate to. I was a bit of a compulsive liar when I was a kid and into my teens. Low self-esteem seems to be at the root of it. I didn’t really dare to do much and so had to lie about myself to make other people think I was worthwhile. Willow and Cole fall into the same trap. It was believable and I felt Willow’s struggle to stop. The writing is basically strong and there are some nice devices to throw suspicion and illustrate emotional concepts. I especially liked the worm metaphor to illustrate Eloise’s anger, frustration and hatred. I suppose in future installments we might see some progress between her and her estranged daughter, Amanda. Ditto with Jones and how he handles his reluctant new career. He’s kind of a bozo though, so I expect he’ll still have a lower emotional IQ than his kid’s.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Hollows, New York is a small town filled mostly with families who have lived there for generations. Restless, sullen teenagers can’t wait to finish school and leave, something some of their parents did before they found themselves drawn back to the “safety” of the quiet little town. Still, many simply stay on, stepping in to assume jobs as the older folks retire and step aside.When a young girl disappears, there is some speculation that she may be a runaway, but many of the adults draw an immediate parallel to the disappearance and death of a schoolgirl many years ago.With much time spent on the consciences, guilty and otherwise, of the adults, the nuances of the interrelatedness of actions and consequences is a strong focus of this narrative. As with most “small town” tales, almost everyone has kept something hidden for many years, leaving them torn between the disaster of discovery and their concern that the children are destined to repeat the mistakes of their parents. Often, the teenagers are more likable than the adults in this tale, but with a great deal of emotional upheaval and betrayal and plot twists, readers will find much to unravel as the story spins out its veiled secrets.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I was so, so pleasantly surprised by this book. I wasn't expecting much - an engaging story to pass a few days in the bleak month of January would be more than enough. I definitely got that - Ms. Unger's array of characters is complex enough to keep your neurons firing, but not so much as to seem like a chore. It was shaping up to be just the book I'd hoped for, in fact.Simply put, the story follows generations of residents within a small town outside NYC, and covers the disappearance of two girls over the span of many years. If this genre appeals to you, I wholeheartedly suggest you give Fragile a go.At some point not too far into the book, I became aware of the 'emotional muscle' in Ms. Unger's writing. Some of her passages are positively luminous. I sincerely contemplated reading it again immediately just to mark those sentences or turns of phrase that moved me.Don't get me wrong - this book is not les beaux arts. It's not a tome to be studied and debated in coming generations. But thank God for books that are written to be enjoyed and that even rise to speak directly to the reader's heart, on occasion. What Fragile sets out to do, it does exceedingly well, I feel. Interesting, multi-layered characters. Brisk plot. Mysteries on several levels.There you go. If you give it a try, I sincerely hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A will written mystery that brings the past crashing into the present. The characters were well researched. I found it a little difficult in the beginning to keep switching from the present to the past but when you got the hang of it the switching really added to the story. Well done.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Small town…filled with old and big secrets…a place where history keeps repeating itself. From the beginning of the book the reader is fairly certain where it’s going to lead and how it’s going to turn out. In spite of this I found it an intriguing read. The back and forth between the past and present in novels is sometimes difficult to follow but in this case it was very easy. The characters are well developed and you can appreciate who they are and how they got there. I especially liked the lead detective that actually wasn’t intended to be the outstanding character but turned out to be just that. As in all small towns, the people are connected in some way both good and bad. The Hallows sounds like a quaint little town but one that you might want to think twice about living in.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Fragile is the first novel by Lisa Unger that I've read. I thought that the story was reallt addictive and I managed to read it in a couple of days. However, I began to grow disappointed by the end. There was one part in particular that I found illogical; either I misread it or it was overlooked. I will read other novels by this author and hope that I don't encounter the same problems.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was an intriguing read, with a current and a past mystery revealed bit by bit alongside each other. Since they occur in a small town and only one generation apart, many of the same characters are involved in both mysteries. I enjoyed the slow unveiling of the different character's motivations. The book is well-paced, picking up steam toward the end.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I was interested in this (audio)book in the beginning but began to tire as it dragged on. It is a story of a smallish town and the intertwined lives of several of its residents and now their children. Everyone has secrets and when a teenage girl goes missing, it dregs up the memories of a similar disappearance and murder of a teenager many years earlier. We very slowly learn about the secrets of that murder and how they relate to the present day. This author seemed to need to tie up every last detail, dot every I and cross every T. It became boring. Stop reading this book after you know what happened years ago; the rest is just unnecessary.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The death of a girl a few decades back clashes with the disappearance of a high school girl in the local community. The same people have memories of current and past events. I found it a bit hard to follow, but I am more visual than audio.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    In the cozy New York suburb of The Hollows, all is not well. A teenage girl, Charlene Murray, is missing. Jones Cooper is a detective who is leading the search. He recalls the case of another missing girl. He was a teenager in The Hollows when Sarah Meyers went missing and was later found dead. Charlene's mother remembers it well, as she and Jones were somehow involved in that case.Fragile is another book that travels between the past and the present, but not always so smoothly. Lisa Unger is popular writer, but this is the first book of hers that I have read. For me Fragile was confusing. It was not always so clear which time period we were in, as many of the characters were the same. And the names were confusing, I had trouble remembering who was who.This book was insubstantial. The premise has been done much more effectively in other books. Overall, I would not bother with Fragile.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Oh my! I stayed up until 3 am to finish this book in one sitting. That's several hours I'll never get back. It started strong, but turned completely lame as it got nearer to the "climax". Never read any of Unger's work before and am unlikely to do so now...thank goodness at least I got it at the library.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I really enjoyed the book. It had themes of regrets, forgiveness and healing. The characters were all believable with good development. Nice story line, although there were too many characters to keep track of and the story would change from present to the past without any type of headings or warning that it was a flashback. It made the book a bit confusing at times. But overall, worth the read. A quick and readable book.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I was disappointed with this book! I thought all of the characters were "cliched," and I felt more emphasis was placed on character development rather than the actual story. The constant description of characters through the whole story was a distraction. And, I felt that this didn't really leave the reader much for the imagination.This is the first book I've read by Mrs. Unger. I was not impressed.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book could not have had a better title. The fragility of the human bonds that tie us are at the very core of this novel, and Lisa Unger revealed the essence of those bonds superbly. A small town about 100 miles north of New York is rocked by the runaway of Charlene after a fight with her mother, Melody. Charlene happens to be dating the only child, Ricky, of the local chief of police, Jones, and town psychologist, Maggie (and daughter of the recently retired school principal). The night Charlene runs away, she stands Ricky up at the local pizza joint. Instead, she plans to run away to New York City to sing her songs and play in a band - or that's what she posts on her Facebook page. The eerie part and what sets the town on edge is that 30 years prior to Charlene running away another girl supposedly ran away after a fight with her mother, at least that's how the police investigated it....until Sarah's body turned up with unspeakable things having been done to her. And all is not as it seems in the small town, The Hollows, where everyone-knows-your-name, nor is it in the Chief of Police's home. As soon as Jones began investigating Charlene's disappearance, he began to act....well, weird.From the outset of the case, Jones treated Ricky as more of a suspect than as a son, even telling Maggie while he searched Ricky's room "Anyone is capable of anything, given the right circumstances, the right motivations." (187) Maggie is in the unenviable and tenuous spot of having to support her husband's job and protect her child. Maggie resonated with me. Perhaps because I have caretaking tendencies as she does, or maybe it was the son who plays in a band and likes to listen to his music LOUD! I can see sitting down with my book club and discussing the quote below. Most of us in my bookclub do have personalities in which we want to save the world...it's remembering when to pull back in self-preservation that is so difficult: She didn't know how to, didn't always want to, stop at the edge when others were going over. She'd keep just enough weight on solid ground to pull herself back before it was too late. One day, she might misjudge and tumble over...(250)The character development is so precise, thorough. We get a clear picture of all of the characters as Ms. Unger goes back and forth between Sarah and Charlene. So we even get to see Maggie, Jones and Melody from when they were in high school. Maggie was the wannabe goth with the mom for the principal; Jones the gorgeous, star-Lacrosse-player/jock; Melody the school tramp; and Sarah, the good girl who played violin and went to Julliard for special lessons. With Charlene, she was considered a drama queen by everyone except Ricky and Ricky had the piercing, bad-boy image, but his grades were stellar enough to get him accepted to Georgetown and NYU. Ahh, high school - do we ever move past it?I have to share with you - I use these tiny yellow stickies to notate important passages or quotes I want to include in my review. Well, with this book I must have used over 50 stickies! I wish I had a camera to take a picture of this because it is almost comical! There's that many fantastic quotes about human nature, fragile bonds, high school hierarchy and the roles we play, family ties and/or the lack thereof, redemption & forgiveness that I just cannot choose the right quote. Instead you simply must read the book!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Wow! Great book! The suspense and mystery keep you turning pages well past bedtime! The twists and turns are fabulous! Maggie's character resonated with me. She's the uncertain mother in all of us yet strong and loves with all she has. The chemistry between the characters creates an intriguing story. I can't wait to read more Lisa Unger books! I recommend this to anyone who loves a good "who dunit"!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Slow start and long tedious ending. I believe I have become an impatient reader! Would welcome any suggestions that start, stay and finish strong.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Maggie and Jones are the parents of Ricky, a teen who is suspected in the disappearance of his girlfriend Charlene. Charlene's disappearance is similar to a situation in the same small town, when Jones was a teen.This was an intriguing read, with the current and past mysteries revealed bit by bit alongside each other. Since it occurs in a small town and only one generation apart, many of the same characters are involved in both mysteries. I enjoyed the slow unveiling of the different character's motivations. The book is well-paced, picking up steam toward the end.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Maggie and Jones live in the town they grew up in with their teenage son Ricky. When Ricky's girlfriend Charlene disappears, Maggie knows he is not involved but Jones is not so sure. When the polics start asking guestions about Char and her troubled life, the town is forced to relive and reassess the facts of the disappearance 20 years ago of another high school girl, a disappearance that ended with the discovery of a body. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the ripples from Sarah's death 20 years ago continue to impact the entire town today.This story explores the ties that bind people to each other and to a place, and reveals how strong yet fragile those ties can be when people are living with secrets. Excellent read!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Listened to audio version and it was good road trip material--enough to keep you from falling asleep, but not a must-read by any means.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I listened to the audio book, narrated by Nancy Linari. The narration was great, but the book was just okay. I didn't care too much about any of the characters. They all seemed shallow, like they weren't willing to do anything that might risk their stereotypical upper middle class lives, even if it was the right thing to do. They were too scared to take action and worried too much about appearances. I can't think of one proactive character in the story; all were reactive. And considering the number of people in the book, that makes for a pretty passive town!I just didn't connect with the characters. Even the domestic violence scenes seemed sanitized somehow. However, the writing itself was good, so maybe it was just this book. I will give Lisa Unger another try.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This story is at first confusing because of the intertwined lives of the people who live in a small town outside of New York City. However the author, Lisa Unger develops an intricate description of each character, covering not only their past secret lives as well as their present lives. It is surprising as to how the past secrets of Jones Cooper, the town detective, have a direct effect on his method of investigation in the recent disappearance of a local girl, Charlene. The fact that Lisa Unger manages to weave not one story, but two stories in one novel at times is a little confusing, but I found myself unable to put the novel down. I felt that the actions and reactions of the Jones Cooper family accentuate the psychological issues that can exist uncovered in a normal family. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves mysteries. I couldn’t put it down.Reviewed by Pat for BookSake.blogspot.com