The Best of Adam Sharp cover art

The Best of Adam Sharp

Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The Best of Adam Sharp

By: Graeme Simsion
Narrated by: David Barker
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of The Best of Adam Sharp by Graeme Simsion, read by David Barker.


The heart warming new novel from Graeme Simsion, the international bestselling author of The Rosie Project and The Rosie Effect

Can you define your life by a single song?

Adam Sharp - former pianist in a hip Melbourne bar, now a respectable IT consultant in Norwich - can. And it's 'You're Going to Lose that Girl' . . .

On the cusp of fifty and a happy introvert, Adam is content. He's the music expert at his local pub-quiz and he and his partner Claire rumble along. Life may not be rock n' roll, but neither is it easy listening. Yet something has always felt off-key.

And that's his nostalgia for what might have been, his blazing affair - more than twenty years ago, on the other side of the world - with Angelina Brown, a smart and sexy, strong-willed actress who taught him for the first time, as he played piano and she sang, what it meant to find - and then lose - love. How different might his life be if he hadn't let her walk away?

Then, out of nowhere, Angelina gets in touch. Adam has sung about second chances, but does he have the courage to believe in them?

The Best of Adam Sharp is about growing old and feeling young, about happy times and sad memories, about staying together and drifting apart, but most of all, it's about how the music we make together creates the soundtrack that shapes our lives.

Contemporary Contemporary Romance Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Romance Romantic Comedy Celebrity Feel-Good Heartfelt Comedy Piano

Listeners also enjoyed...

The Vanishing of Margaret Small cover art
Stepping Up cover art
The Hope Family Calendar cover art
Undoctored cover art
Seeing Other People cover art
The Life and Soul of the Party cover art
Thrown cover art
Turning Forty cover art
The Importance of Being a Bachelor cover art
Blue Sky Adam cover art
If You Were Me cover art
Christmas With You cover art

Critic reviews

Sliding Doors meets High Fidelity. A meditation on love, lust, regrets and second chances, Simsion paints a detailed and entertaining portrait of a flawed and wistful man who wants a romance to be more than a silly love song
Simsion hits his marks by tapping into the daydream of a do-over. A gifted comic writer
A dark comedy of manners. Simsion is alert to many kinds of pain: the loss or absence of children through death, divorce, suicide, infertility. At the same time, we see how relationships can sometimes be sustained notwithstanding betrayals
The moral of The Best of Adam Sharp can be summed up as: do not let the one who got away get away. If you do, things could get messy
Simsion is back with a bang. The Best of Adam Sharp make us laugh at the unexpected and feel the depth of emotions associated with a risky journey in love
Simsion has done it again; authored a poignant, funny novel, that can stand proudly beside the Rosie novels, if not entirely outshine them (Simon McDonald)
A novel that asks important questions, and is as moving as it is entertaining
The kind of book that will make you reflect on marriage, life and love. Told in Simsion's unique writing style with eccentric characters you'll love, Simsion has us on the cusp of wishing for a happy ending while also wanting the right decision will be made
Will make you laugh, cry, feel uncomfortable and get you pondering your own past life choices (J.F. Gibson)
Like Woody Allen flick . . . The Best of Adam Sharp is a book about regret, about not taking the chances that life deals you and how those failures end up wearing away at you. It's a hugely romantic tale
All stars
Most relevant

Would you listen to The Best of Adam Sharp again? Why?

hey, it's a great listen, is it a two timer, probably not

What did you like best about this story?

it's not Rosie, but it keeps you indulged until the end

Have you listened to any of David Barker’s other performances? How does this one compare?

First David Barker performance, very good....

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

won't spoil the end, it's a good book

Any additional comments?

stick with it, you will enjoy

Roller Coaster

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

I wrong (and probably unfairly) presumed this book would be similar to the previous two in the 'Rosie' series. The synopsis on audible also indicated this. It's not a simile book and I wouldn't have guessed it was the same author. I didn't mind it but it dragged on a bit and took a long time to get anywhere.

A very different book to the Rosie Project

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

loved it. but i don't think I would have loved it a few years ago.
it's for an older audience.
lots of flawed humans. lots of perspective. lots of wisdom gleaned over the years. and well written.
the music is really good too... the playlist. I'll try to read it with the playlist one day.

nothing like the Rosie project

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Fascinating book full of twists and turns and emotional tugging. I felt for all of the characters in turn and found myself on the seesaw being portrayed!

Brilliantly written, very clever, totally recommend

Compelling Listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

But his Rosie Trilogy is one of the most enjoyable books I have ever read. He was so loveable. This character is deluded but does not have much charm.

interesting , but did not love the main character

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

See more reviews