Fragile cover art

Fragile

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.

Fragile

By: Sarah Hilary
Narrated by: Imogen Church
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 £11.99

Buy Now for £11.99

About this listen

Stunning’ – Marian Keyes, author of Grown Ups

Chilling’ – Val McDermid, author of The Wire in the Blood

Fragile is a modern Gothic psychological thriller with a contemporary twist on the classic novel Rebecca, from award-winning and critically acclaimed writer Sarah Hilary.

Everything she touches breaks . . .

Nell Ballard is a runaway.

A former foster child with a dark secret she is desperate to keep, all Nell wants is to find a place she can belong.

So when a position comes up at Starling Villas, home to the enigmatic Robin Wilder, she seizes the opportunity with both hands.

But her new lodgings may not be the safe haven she was hoping for. Her employer has secrets of his own and lives by a rigid set of rules she must abide by.

But is Nell’s arrival at the Villas really the coincidence it seems? After all, she knows more than most how fragile people can be – and how easy they are to break . . .

Further praise for Fragile:

‘Perfectly plotted, beautifully written modern Gothic. I absolutely loved it’ – Erin Kelly, author of He Said/She Said

‘Beautifully crafted, smart and unsettling’ – Mick Herron, author of Slow Horses

‘A dark, mesmeric fever-dream of a book’ – Ruth Ware, author of The Woman in Cabin 10

‘Ingenious, original and brilliant’ – Will Dean, author of Red Snow

Extraordinary’ – Andrew Taylor, author of The American Boy and The Ashes of London

A modern-day Highsmith’ – Steve Cavanagh, author of Thirteen

‘A truly outstanding work of modern Gothic’ – Eva Dolan, author of Between Two Evils

‘Highly original, beautifully written’ – Sharon Bolton, author of The Split

‘A beautifully written modern Gothic masterpiece’ – Liz Nugent, author of Skin Deep

So elegant, so restrained’ – Lucy Atkins, author of Magpie Lane

‘A gorgeously written, tense and atmospheric novel’ – Gytha Lodge, author of She Lies in Wait

Crime Thrillers Psychological Suspense Thriller & Suspense Fiction

Listeners also enjoyed...

Incomparable World cover art
Willow Weeps cover art
Perfect Love cover art
Composite Creatures cover art
Something Quite Beautiful cover art
The Separation cover art
The Toll House cover art
Toffee cover art
The Haven cover art
When I First Held You cover art
The Lies We Hide: An Absolutely Gripping and Darkly Compelling Novel cover art
The First Wife cover art

Critic reviews

Sarah Hilary has always known how to chill her readers – Fragile dials the chill factor up to eleven (Val McDermid)
Fragile is absolutely STUNNING, the dreamy atmosphere couples with Nell’s carnal love for Joe put me in mind of Barbara Vine . . . [Sarah Hilary is] an astonishingly gifted writer, with an almost scalpel-like ability to dissect human motivation and convey it deliciously devoid of sentimentality. I was GRIPPED by Fragile, it took me into a whole other world and I was sorry to leave it (Marian Keyes)
Perfectly plotted, beautifully written modern Gothic. Timeless, tense and tender, Fragile will worm its way deep into your heart, just as the characters insinuate themselves into each other’s lives. I absolutely loved it (Erin Kelly)
Extraordinary . . . an immersive psychological thriller that plunges us into an underworld of emotional and physical exploitation. There are shades of Highsmith . . . Brilliant stuff (Andrew Taylor)
Beautifully written modern Gothic. I took my time with this, savouring it – the tone of Sarah Hilary’s writing is unique to her: exploring society and human nature in a sensitive, engrossing way. Ingenious, original and brilliant (Will Dean, author of The Last Thing To Burn)
Fragile is a fever dream. A nightmarish slant on the world delivered expertly and with heart. Tension like cold steel. Characters you won’t forget. Sarah Hilary is a modern-day Highsmith (Steve Cavanagh)
A beguiling thriller of considerable ambition and ingenuity, Fragile marks Sarah Hilary as a twenty-first century du Maurier, a writer who plunges the depths of human nature, finding the darkest, most deviant corners, but also the fleeting hopes and brittle aspirations. This is a truly outstanding work of modern Gothic (Eva Dolan)
So Gothically creepy and addictive, brilliant characters and set-up, but most of all just beautifully written (Sabine Durrant)
A swirling, corrosive tale of death and deceit, as unsettling as it is beguiling (Luke Jennings, author of the Killing Eve series)
Highly original, beautifully written (Sharon Bolton)
Sarah Hilary’s Fragile is a beautifully written deep dive into the kind of seductive but dangerous darkness that hides away behind closed doors and respectable facades (Rowan Coleman)
Fragile is a dark kind of modern fairytale, Cinderella re-imagined by a writer who knows how to turn a phrase until it's sharp enough to cut. With echoes of du Maurier and Highsmith, Fragile is compelling, poetic and, at times, terrifying. Sarah Hilary is brilliant at framing love with hate, compassion with cruelty, and her skill in creating monstrous characters is unsurpassed (Jane Casey)
Sarah Hilary has created a beautifully written modern Gothic masterpiece, so full of intrigue and mysteries layered upon mysteries that the unravelling may well shred your nerves, in the best way possible (Liz Nugent)
All stars
Most relevant
I have over 400 books in my library and this is the most awful book in it. Storyline is pathetic and so unbelievably. Just terrible. Do not buy it

Awful book

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

I’m sure I’ve just read something profound - just in a fog about what it was.
Would not waste another credit on this.
Sarah what happened ???

Imogen Church brilliant as usual

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