Weekend getaways in this subgenre never end well, and Bonnie Traymore refuses to pretend otherwise: the title is a promise the audiobook spends seven hours and eight minutes breaking. Morgan and Kyle Murphy have a spicy marriage that has gone cold, a husband hiding something, and a resort booking that lands at precisely the wrong moment. Meghan Kelly reads it, and the running time is brisk for a subgenre that often stretches half again as long without adding anything.
Our Take on A Little Getaway
Suspicion arrives well before evidence does, and that ordering is the book's smartest structural choice. Morgan notices that Kyle has gone distant, decides it might be the development project and might be another woman, and starts tracking his movements. By the time anything solid surfaces, she has already committed to a plan, hired help she should not have hired, and made herself a person of interest in whatever happens next. Her own certainty is the plot problem.
Across the five responses displayed here the average sits at 4.6. The figure printed at the top of the listing is 4.0, drawn from 248 ratings. Both cannot describe the same reception, which means the 243 people whose text I cannot read are pulling the score down by more than half a star between them. The visible pool is the flattering slice of this book's audience, and that is worth knowing before you read a word of it.
Meghan Kelly reads it alone, and the casting has real work to do. The October 2024 four-star lays the setup out in careful detail, down to Carla Flores photographing a woman Kyle may be involved with and the life insurance policies rising just before the trip. That is a plot with many moving parts to hold in one voice, and none of the five responses here addresses how the recording manages it.
Pace is the strongest asset this book has. Chapters are short, reveals are frequent, and Traymore never lets a scene run past its usefulness. Domestic suspense built for momentum rather than atmosphere is a specific craft, and this sits squarely inside it: the listener stays one small revelation ahead of Morgan for most of the book, which produces exactly the discomfort the subgenre trades in.
Two of the five responses single out the writing rather than the plot. One December 2024 response says it liked the way the style shifted ever so slightly as the book switched between Morgan's and Tara's points of view, so that each distinct personality came through in the prose itself. That is a craft observation, and it lands on the one element commercial suspense usually treats as an afterthought.
Carla Flores is the other reason this works better than its premise suggests. A friend who helps you surveil your husband is a stock figure in the genre, but she gives Morgan someone to explain herself to, which keeps a plot about escalating bad decisions legible from the outside. The description calls her a gal pal. In practice she is the closest thing the book has to a witness, and the scenes carrying her are the warmest ones here.
What to Watch For in A Little Getaway
Genre is the first thing to flag. This listing is filed under romance, and everything that comes with that tag expects tropes and a heat level. Four of the five responses call it something else entirely: a suspenseful adventure, a psychological thriller, a kidnapping thriller, a suspense novel. The description agrees with them, opening on a marriage that turns deadly. Romance is a shelving decision here rather than a description of the contents.
Spice is the second. The description promises a spicy suspense thriller and a marriage filled with passion, which sets an expectation the listing then declines to calibrate: no heat rating, no content note, and nothing indicating how explicit the writing becomes. For a book sold partly on that promise, the silence is odd, and it leaves buyers guessing about the one detail the copy chose to lead with.
Typos in the pool deserve a mention only because they are instructive. The October 18, 2024 entry calls the book a wonderfully rich tail, has Morgan hacking a plan with our best friend, and still lands at the top of the scale. That is a useful reminder that star ratings measure enthusiasm rather than precision. Read the responses on this page for temperature, not for information.
Who Should Listen to A Little Getaway
Marriage-in-peril suspense listeners are the target, and the book hits them squarely. If you like the model where an ordinary domestic situation curdles by degrees and the protagonist's own choices accelerate it, this delivers in under eight hours. Another, dated October 17, 2024, calls the novel multifaceted and fast-paced and praises the ability to blend action with the emotional material, which is the balance the subgenre asks for.
Look elsewhere if you want a romance. The relationship is the crime scene rather than the reward, and nobody here earns an ending by being lovable. Look elsewhere too if plot logic matters more to you than momentum, because Morgan makes an early decision that works mainly because the story requires it. That is the kind of thing a fast book gets away with on the page and a patient listener notices in audio.
My honest read: this is a competent, quick domestic thriller with a better-than-average friendship at its center and an aggregate score that deserves more explanation than the page supplies. The commitment is small, the plot pays off its setup, and the only real risk is arriving expecting the romance the shelf label keeps promising.
Quick Take
- Narration: Meghan Kelly reads solo and has to hold two points of view apart with no chapter heading to help.
- Themes: Suspicion inside a marriage, surveillance, a disappearance at a resort.
- Mood: Fast, anxious, deliberately uncomfortable.
- Verdict: A brisk domestic thriller wearing a romance label, so go in expecting the thriller.
