The Boy cover art

The Boy

A Novel

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The Boy

By: Lara Santoro
Narrated by: Angèle Masters
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About this listen

Anna has always been a risk-taker and a free spirit, but now she is raising a young daughter on her own and she has to play it safe. Her twenty-something neighbor with the slow, easy smile is in no way part of Anna's plans. She resists temptation in every way she can, yet Anna is soon drawn into a reckless and obsessive affair.

Provocative, headlong, and utterly compelling, The Boy is the story of a woman on the edge, torn between love and compulsion, desire and duty. Lara Santoro writes in "hypnotic and swiftly paced" prose (Daniel Woodrell) about the hazards of passion and motherhood and about one woman's unthinkable rebellion.

"Gorgeous, fiercely intelligent, deeply honest, and incredibly entertaining." -- Anne Lamott
Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Women's Fiction

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Critic reviews

PRAISE FOR MERCY:

"Lara Santoro is an amazing new voice. Mercy is a fabulous novel."—Alice Sebold, author of The Almost Moon
"Anguished...monstrously beautiful....A gorgeously written novel."—Cathleen Medwick, O Magazine
"Hilarious, harrowing....A passionate book with intense characters."—Nick DiMartino, Shelf Awareness
"Stunningly ambitious debut novel....Admirably understated, Santoro keeps the story at a quick clip....The writing is exacting and effective."—Washington City Paper
"Sublime....Santoro evokes the continent's everyday horrors and uncommon moments of grace in decidedly unsentimental prose, and her depiction of international journalists' lifestyles is similarly powerful....The characters and their complicated relationships remain stirring until the end."—Publishers Weekly
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