Amazing gripping story couldn't leave it.

Amazing haunting thriller full of twists that are genius! Someone knows their psychology! Also the voice is spot on for the age group it is about without being cringey!

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Brillllll

Really fun. Teenagers or not, we’ve all been there. Some people are only pretending to be people. Enjoy!

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Excellent drama with so many twists

I really enjoyed this audio book. It had me guessing until the end and there were quite a few surprises. It was performed well and I would definitely recommend.

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brilliant!

A story that grips from the beginning. fulfils your worst nightmare when mother to a daughter in this age of social media. good narration and satisfying ending. will be looking for another book by this author.

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2 people found this helpful

Loved it

Never having been a teenage girl I don’t know how accurate this is but I have my suspicions Enjoyed it enormously

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Teen Fiction

Very much teen fiction. As an adult, you can tire a bit of the petty-minded characters. But on the whole, it is an interesting story, and not really meant for an adult audience. So you are forewarned. Performance was very good. Story works.

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would recommend

I found the story line great and the performance was brilliant overall i would recommend

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Teen chicklit

I picked this in a 2for1 sale, so went in blind. Bitchy schoolgirls manipulate each other in story with slightly unsatisfying ending. I found this a little hard to listen to with two characters whose names start with the same syllable...but perhaps that is because I'm a middle aged teacher who has to untangle teenage melodrama on a daily basis.

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7 people found this helpful

Outstanding

I found this story to be very well constructed and brilliantly performed. I look forward to more from the author and of its reader. I couldn't recommend it highly enough.

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Mean Girls meets with a mystery thriller

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve listened to 13 Minutes, but some of my thoughts and feelings are still very clear to me. At one hand, I was very intrigued by the plot and I remember I kept finding excuses to be able to listen longer than I planned each day. But on the other, I had issues which kept me from loving the book and giving a higher rating than I did. I sure have mixed feelings about this one.

13 Minutes‘ intricated plot follows many treads. At one hand we have the lead character, Natasha, the most popular girl in school, the leader of the Barbies. Who, due to an accident ended up being dead for 13 minutes and loosing her memories of the last 24 hours or so. Naturally she wants answers as to what happened and why her best friends act strangely around her. On the other we have Becca, once best friend of Natasha, who is pushed to the curb of school society, because she is not pretty enough. And despite the hurt Natasha caused her in the past, she still longs to be in their midst. The accident brings them closer again, but that’s really what she wants?

Every party involved in the mystery has their own secrets and ugly truths and as we get deeper in the main plot, the more it becomes clear that no one can be classified as only good or only bad. The surface can be deceiving and you really never can know what’s really in someone’s mind. 13 Minutes at heart is a YA Psyhological Thriller Mystery with petty teenage quarrels – I might have rolled my eyes a lot – but it’s also about the consequences of one’s actions as well as toxic relationships. Be it friendship, romantic relationship or parent children relations. 13 Minutes leans heavily on the friendship aspect, but we get from the others as well. It also brings in topics such as drugs, sex and mental abuse on a level. Nothing too explicit, but it’s definitely aimed for a more mature audience.

Maybe because I was more like Hannah in highschool – a side character and the only one I actually liked – a boring, plain bookworm and because I prefer a quiet drama free life, but I found the “friendships” portrayed horrifying. It’s crazy to imagine such toxic relationships exist, but as it stands, they most likely do. And often you don’t realise how toxic they are until it’s too late.

For me the twists were quite predictable, though even I didn’t see everything coming. But my biggest issue with 13 Minutes was the fact that I pretty much despised every character. I have no idea if this is how I was supposed to feel toward them – in which case I tip my hat before Sarah Pinborough as she did a splendid job at bringing these characters into life – or if I should have felt sorry for them. I’m also not sure if this tells more about me or the book. I definitely had feelings, and what more do you ask from a book?

But if you ask me, the way these girls treated the people around them who they called friends is just… not how you treat a friend (or anyone, really). And if nothing else, 13 Minutes should be a great bad example of that.

13 Minutes is what would happen if someone remade the Mean Girls as a psyhological mystery thriller, so if that’s your niche, then I definitely recommend checking it out.

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