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.

    Unavailable
    The Golden Child
    Unavailable
    The Golden Child
    Unavailable
    The Golden Child
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Golden Child

    Written by Wendy James

    Narrated by Caroline Lee

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    2017 Ned Kelly Award Best Crime Fiction shortlist

    'A chilling novel of our time, with a truly shocking twist' Australian Women's Weekly


    When teenage bullying spirals out of control who is to blame?

    Blogger Lizzy's life is shiny, happy, normal. Two gorgeous children, a handsome husband, destiny under control. For her real-life alter-ego Beth, things are unravelling. Tensions simmer with her husband, mother-in-law, her own mother. Her daughters, once the objects of her existence, have moved into teenage-hood, their lives -­ at school, home and online - increasingly mysterious to her.

    Then a fellow student is callously bullied and the finger of blame pointed at one of Beth's girls. As an innocent child lies suspended between life and death, two families are forced to question everything they believe about their children, and the answers are terrifying.

    As unsettling as it is compelling, The Golden Child asks: how well can you know anyone in the digital age?

    A potent story with shades of The Party and Mary Kubica.

    Two families grapple with the tragic fallout of cyberbullying.

    PRAISE

    'On par with the thought-provoking nature of Jodi Picoult's works, combined with the rapt

    storytelling style of Liane Moriarty, readers will finish the last page wanting more' Erin Holt, Booklist US

    'The novel is cleverly constructed, the characters are extremely well-drawn, the use of social media as a plot device is very sophisticated, and the resolution is a genuine surprise' Judges' report, Ned Kelly Crime Awards, 2017

    'This is domestic noir at its most intelligent and sharp' Sydney Morning Herald
    'It takes 48 hours to pulse through Wendy James' rollercoaster 21st century story about parenting'     Australian Women's Weekly

    'an engaging and intimate read that will appeal to fans of Liane Moriarty and Jodi Picoult, with nods to Lionel Shriver and Christos Tsiolkas' The Slap . . . 4 Stars' Books & Publishing

    'This book is utterly brilliant' Nicola Moriarty'

    'Brilliant. Such a clever plot, and such real characters, and so very, very well written' Danielle Hawkins

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateNov 20, 2017
    ISBN9781460797808
    Unavailable
    The Golden Child
    Author

    Wendy James

    Wendy James is the author of seven novels, including The Mistake, an Australian bestseller. Her debut novel, Out of the Silence, won the 2006 Ned Kelly Award for first crime novel, and was shortlisted for the Nita May Dobbie Award for women's writing. She has a PhD from the University of New England and works as an editor at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University. Wendy lives in New South Wales, Australia with her husband and two of their four children.

    More audiobooks from Wendy James

    Related to The Golden Child

    Related audiobooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Kailyn Lowry

      Mar 19, 2019

      Kailyn Lowry
      4 min read

    • Article

      My Best Friend

      Oct 1, 2020

      My Best Friend
      6 min read

    • Article

      Grief Is Another Word For Love

      Jun 21, 2021

      I am trapped in Australia. The borders are shut, which has worked well for keeping COVID-19 out, but it has also kept me in. Over the last fifteen months in sunny Perth, where I live, there have only been two cases of COVID-19 in the community. We ha

      8 min read

    • Article

      Better

      Aug 12, 2019

      Better
      18 min read

    • Article

      I Confronted My School Bullies

      Jul 3, 2019

      I Confronted My School Bullies
      6 min read

    • Article

      Amazing Grace: Reading Kelly J. Beard’s ‘An Imperfect Rapture’

      Sep 30, 2019

      For another memoirist, it would be easy to resort to a rhetoric of absolutes, but Beard’s elegant and direct prose teems with complexity and nuance. The post Amazing Grace: Reading Kelly J. Beard’s ‘An Imperfect Rapture’ appeared first on The Million

      5 min read

    • Article

      Fourteen FROM DARK TO LIGHT

      Apr 8, 2020

      Fourteen FROM DARK TO LIGHT
      5 min read

    • Article

      Foxes

      Jun 15, 2019

      What’s worth happening happens in deep woods. Or so my daughter tells me. Her plotlines: In the deep woods someone is chasing, someone else is getting hacked. Hatchets are lifted, brought downdowndown. Men stutter blood onto snow. A cast of animals—s

      17 min read

    • Article

      Psychics

      Jan 12, 2022

      Psychics
      10 min read

    • Article

      This Back Is a Familiar Back

      May 1, 2023

      This Back Is a Familiar Back
      8 min read

    • Article

      My 6-Year-Old Son Died. Then the Anti-vaxxers Found Out.

      Mar 28, 2023

      This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.       My 6-year-old boy died in January. We lost him after a household

      5 min read

    • Article

      Psychics

      Jan 12, 2022

      Psychics
      9 min read

    • Article

      Psychics

      Jan 12, 2022

      Psychics
      10 min read

    • Article

      Mind the Gap

      Feb 13, 2018

      Mind the Gap
      6 min read

    • Article

      My Story The Secrets We Keep

      Oct 7, 2020

      My Story The Secrets We Keep
      4 min read

    • Article

      My Story The Secrets We Keep

      Oct 7, 2020

      My Story The Secrets We Keep
      4 min read

    • Article

      Hecho en El Salvador

      Aug 7, 2023

      Hecho en El Salvador
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Redacted

      Mar 31, 2020

      The Redacted
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Story Maker

      Aug 11, 2022

      The Story Maker
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Golden Child

    3.5/5

    22 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      The Golden Child by Wendy James is a compelling novel with a socially relevant storyline.

      Beth Mahony is an Australian ex-pat living in New Jersey with her husband Dan and their two daughters, fourteen year old Lucy and twelve year old Charlotte "Charlie". Beth is a very involved stay-at-home mom who also blogs about her experiences with her family and living far from "home".  Beth is shocked when Dan informs her a job opportunity means they are moving back to Australia.  The timing turns out to be rather fortuitous since Charlie has landed in a bit of trouble at school after an "initiation" rite with her group of friends goes wrong. She is the ringleader of the group and all fingers point to Charlie as being the instigator of the prank that landed a classmate in the hospital. As the Mahony family uneasily settles in their new life, Charlotte is once again at the center of a serious incident in which musically gifted but socially awkward Sophie Pennington  attempts to take her own life after she is the victim of bullying at school and on line.

      Beth is surprised at the difficulty she is having settling in after their move. She remains out of sync as she tries to organize renovations on their house along with mothering duties. She is delighted by her burgeoning friendship with Sophie's mum, Andi, but Beth remains strangely dissatisfied with her new life. Until their move back to Australia, Beth has been content to not work outside the home, but that quickly changes after their move. At her mother's urging, she contacts a childhood friend's brother who is in the early stages of running for political office.  Happy with her part-time job, Beth is dismayed at the growing distance between herself and her daughters as they spend more time in their rooms than with the family.

      After struggling with infertility for ten years, Andi and her husband Steve are new parents for the second time. Unlike her experiences with Sophie, young Gus is an easy baby and she is enjoying bonding with the little guy. With the demands of new baby, Andi does not have as much time for her daughter but she does make a concerted effort to help Sophie become friends with Charlotte.  It is not until Sophie's desperate act that Andi becomes aware of the horrible bullying at the hands of Charlotte and her classmates.

      Charlotte and Lucy are as different as night and day. Lucy is content to fly under the radar and she has a small, but close-knit circle of friends. She is quiet, unassuming and  never gives Beth any reason to worry about her. Charlotte, on the other hand, is eager to be in the limelight and she wants to be friends with most popular girls in their new school. Quickly realizing that spending time with Sophie will socially destroy her, Charlotte ignores her at school yet still remains her friend in private.

      Despite being a bit slow-paced,  The Golden Child is an engrossing peek into the world of mean girls and bullying.  Shifting view points, blog posts, an anonymous website and social media offer an insightful view into the various characters' lives as the bullying attacks on Sophie intensify.  The storyline is topical and extends beyond the bullying as both Beth and Andi wrestle with parental guilt once the bullying is exposed. Wendy James brings this character-driven novel to an unexpected and twist-filled conclusion.
    • 2/5
      Another book focusing on bullying and manipulative children. Ended up scan-reading it... lots of slow bits where I got bored.
    • 3/5
      Beth’s husband’s job forces the family to move back to Australia. It is not an easy transition in many respects, but their adolescent daughters appear to be settling well into their new school. And then serious allegations of bullying cause Beth to question her assumptions about her children.I couldn’t really relate to Beth, but I felt strongly about one of the other POV characters, 12 year old Sophie. This is an easy story to become engrossed in. I finished it quickly, and then was left wishing I hadn't read it at all.It took a while to understand why I felt that way. Was it because it was too dark? But I’d read the prologue before I’d borrowed the book, and it’s apparent from the prologue something terrible happens.Also, given that something awful does happen, the consequences are not as severe as they could have been. For all that it claims to be “a novel that grapples with modern-day spectres of selfies, selfishness and cyberbullying”, The Golden Child doesn’t properly explore why the bullying occurs and how those caught up in it move forward. I wasn’t expecting easy answers. I wasn't expecting the characters to deal with the situation perfectly, or even particularly well. But I wanted the novel to engage with contemporary anxieties about young people and social media more thoughtfully. I wanted it to deal with the fall-out of what happens to Sophie more realistically.I didn’t want it to be a thriller.