Clara’s Verdict
Sarah A. Denzil is known for domestic noir with a psychological edge, and Secret Sister has all the hallmarks of her best work: an unreliable central consciousness, a mystery rooted in family and identity, and a Yorkshire moorland setting that feels as threatening as any Gothic castle. As an Audible Original narrated by Jessica Gunning and Joanne Froggatt – two performers at the very top of their game in 2025 – it has casting that would raise expectations even without Denzil’s reputation attached.
The results are mixed, and I want to be honest about that. The premise is strong, the narration is exceptional, and the first two-thirds are genuinely gripping. There are structural issues in the final third, and the controversial sound design will significantly shape your experience. Worth knowing all of this before you begin.
What I can say unequivocally is that Jessica Gunning’s performance is worth hearing regardless of your feelings about the production choices. She is an actor at the peak of her powers, and Secret Sister arrived in the same period as her acclaimed turn in Baby Reindeer – both performances demonstrate the same ability to render psychological complexity as deeply human rather than clinical. Joanne Froggatt, familiar from Downton Abbey and Sherwood, brings her own particular quality of contained watchfulness. On the strength of the casting alone, this is an audiobook worth the attention of serious listeners.
About the Audiobook
Faye Mathis is a celebrated author living on the Yorkshire moors, coming to terms with an early-onset dementia diagnosis. She has begun writing her memoir – an act of documentation against the approaching dissolution of memory – when a photograph of a woman stumbling alone on the moors goes viral online. The woman looks exactly like Faye. But Faye has no memory of being there. Is it her? And if it is, what does that mean for everything she believes she knows about herself, her past, and her family?
The story is told from multiple perspectives – Faye’s present-day investigation, her memoir reaching back into a family history full of gaps and severed bloodlines, and the viewpoint of whoever is observing events from a more dangerous angle. Denzil is working with the relationship between memory, identity, and family history at a moment when the protagonist’s most fundamental faculty – her ability to trust her own recollections – is under threat. The Yorkshire moors setting, bleak and beautiful and historically freighted with Gothic association, functions as an external correlative for that interior landscape.
Some listeners have found the multiple perspectives slightly disorienting, which is a fair observation; Denzil is asking a lot of her audience in terms of navigating between timelines and viewpoints, and the payoff in the final act doesn’t entirely justify that complexity for every listener.
The Narration
Jessica Gunning as Faye is the audiobook’s greatest strength. Her performance captures both the character’s intellectual sharpness and the quiet, creeping terror of a mind she can no longer fully trust – it is nuanced and genuinely affecting work. Joanne Froggatt brings an entirely different energy: contained, watchful, and with an undertow of threat that serves the story’s tension well. The interplay between the two voices is one of the production’s real pleasures.
The point of genuine contention is the sound design: atmospheric music and sound effects play throughout, and while some listeners found these deeply immersive, others found them intrusive, jarring, and mismatched with the mood of the prose. One reviewer specifically noted that the chapter-opening music “didn’t fit the mood of the book.” Another described the effects as “terrible and off-putting.” A third, however, found the music and effects actively enhancing the experience. This is worth knowing clearly in advance: your response to audio drama production conventions will substantially affect your enjoyment of this audiobook, and there is no neutral ground here.
What Readers Say
The audiobook holds a rating of 3.9 out of 5 from UK listeners, which is slightly lower than Denzil’s typical reception. The positive reviews are very positive – one listener described it as “well written, beautiful narration” and another said the performances kept her listening past her usual stopping point. The critical reviews centre almost uniformly on the sound effects rather than the writing or narration, and this is worth noting: the underlying story has genuine defenders, and the production choices are the primary variable in how much you enjoy it.
Who Should Listen?
Readers of Denzil’s previous work will want to hear this regardless, and they should approach it knowing that it is a more audio-drama flavoured experience than a straightforward single narrator reading. For newcomers, this is a reasonable entry point to her domestic noir but not the most representative one: Silent Child or We Play Games might serve better as first encounters. If you enjoy BBC Radio 4 full-cast drama and atmospheric sound design, the production here will enhance rather than irritate. The performances of Gunning and Froggatt alone justify the listen.
Find Secret Sister on Audible UK here: Listen on Audible UK
