Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    What My Body Remembers
    What My Body Remembers
    What My Body Remembers
    Audiobook10 hours

    What My Body Remembers

    Written by Agnete Friis

    Narrated by Susan Boyce

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Ella Nygaard, 27, has been a ward of the state since she was seven years old, the night her father murdered her mother. She doesn't remember anything about that night or her childhood before it-but her body remembers. The PTSD-induced panic attacks she now suffers incapacitate her for hours-sometimes days-at a time and leave her physically and psychically drained. After one particularly bad episode lands Ella in a psych ward, she discovers her son, Alex, has been taken from her by the state and placed with a foster family. Driven by desperation, Ella kidnaps Alex and flees to the seaside town in northern Denmark where she was born. Her grandmother's abandoned house is in grave disrepair, but she can live there for free until she can figure out how to convince social services that despite everything, she is the best parent for her child. But being back in the small town forces Ella to confront the demons of her childhood-the monsters her memory has tried so hard to obscure. What really happened that night her mother died? Was her grandmother right-was Ella's father unjustly convicted? What other secrets were her parents hiding from each other? If Ella can start to remember, maybe her scars will begin to heal-or maybe the truth will put her in even greater danger.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    TranslatorLindy Falk van Rooyen
    Release dateMay 2, 2017
    ISBN9781501958861
    What My Body Remembers

    More audiobooks from Agnete Friis

    Related to What My Body Remembers

    Related audiobooks

    Crime Thriller For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Related categories

    Reviews for What My Body Remembers

    3/5

    15 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      This book was unpleasant to read and didn't reward the reader with interesting characters or an engaging plot. I understand that had difficult lives that toughened them up, or something, but it was difficult to connect with them when they were so one-dimensional, and that one dimension was aggressively rude.
    • 4/5
      Broken lives, broken people. Ella has been under state care since the age of seven when her father killed her mother. She was there, but remembers nothing of that time, and little from the time before. Her body though, does remember and she has severe PTSD, panic attacks that are crippling. She has a son now, a son she loves but is unable to handle a job, so, she receives money from the social services available. She drinks too much and is under the supervision of a social worker. When a severe attack hospitalizes her, the social services take her son, a son she recovers and then runs back to the town she is from. There she begins to gain control of her life, she also begins to remember, pieces here and there.There was something about the atmosphere in this novel that I found captivating. Melancholy and almost haunting, this story is well written and well plotted. Although it is easy to dislike Ella and the things she does, I found myself rooting for her and her son, Alex. Suspenseful without being horrible graphic, was quite caught up in the story and once again did not guess the outcome. ARC from Netgalley.
    • 2/5
      Having read and enjoyed the Nina Borg mysteries Agnete Friis co-wrote with Lene Kaaberbøl, I looked forward to What My Body Remembers with a great deal of anticipation. What I discovered was something else entirely. Normally unlikable main characters don't bother me, but I've been plagued with a rash of them in my reading recently, so by the time I was introduced to Ella Nygaard my patience had already been worn down to a nub.This one quote sums up Ella's character: "...when anybody tries to talk to you, you just turn your back. Literally. That boy of yours must have been miraculously conceived when you either were too drunk or too high to fend another person off." Ella depends upon social services for money in order to live, but she spends a great deal of time doing nothing but making everything harder for herself and for the agencies trying to help her. If you try to do her a kindness, be prepared to get punched in the nose. The pace of the book is glacial, and I deduced the villain and an important plot twist well in advance of their reveal. I hate to say it, but reading What My Body Remembers was a chore and the only reason why I finished it was because I wanted to see if my deductions were correct. If a slow pace doesn't bother you-- and if you haven't had a surfeit of unlikable characters in your recent reading, this may very well be your cup of tea. It just wasn't mine.