Quick Take
- Narration: Nicol Zanzarella brings the psychological complexity of multiple female perspectives forward cleanly, though the overlapping character voices can contribute to the intentional confusion McFadden builds into the structure.
- Themes: Romantic obsession, identity and deception, the mythology of the perfect ex
- Mood: Slick and disorienting, like being lied to by someone charming
- Verdict: A tight psychological thriller that delivers its promised disorientation, though the ending will divide listeners who want clean resolutions from those who enjoy ambiguity.
I came to Freida McFadden late, the way you sometimes come to a writer whose reputation precedes them so much that you develop a minor resistance to it. A friend who reads two thrillers a week had been recommending her for months. I finally picked up The Ex on a weeknight when I wanted something that would hold my attention without demanding too much, and found myself still listening at one in the morning, which suggests McFadden knows exactly what she is doing.
The Ex is a short, punchy psychological thriller built around a deceptively simple premise. Cassie thinks she has found the perfect man in Joel, sweet and attentive and genuinely interested in her. There is just the matter of Francesca, the beautiful and beloved ex who Cassie believes is out of the picture. The synopsis tells you plainly: think again.
Our Take on The Ex
What McFadden does well is manufacture genuine uncertainty about who is telling the truth and what actually happened. The novel layers multiple perspectives and withholds information strategically, building the kind of low-grade anxiety that makes thriller listening compulsive rather than comfortable. One reviewer called it “one very confusing book” while still rating it five stars, which is an accurate description of the experience McFadden is engineering. The confusion is the product, not a defect.
The characters are deliberately archetypal in ways that serve the genre. Cassie runs a bookstore she inherited from her grandparents and barely keeps afloat financially, romantic and a little naive. Joel is the suspiciously perfect man. Francesca is beautiful, brilliant, and allegedly gone. McFadden is working with recognizable thriller furniture, and she does so skillfully, deploying familiar tropes while keeping the actual architecture of secrets obscured long enough to matter.
Why Listen to The Ex
Nicol Zanzarella’s narration is a good fit for this kind of thriller. She handles the psychological tension well, particularly in the scenes where Cassie’s certainty begins to crack. The multiple female perspectives can be hard to track at the beginning, partly by design, and some listeners have noted that they did not resolve the character identities until well into the book. That sounds like a criticism but is more accurately a description of the experience McFadden intends. Zanzarella keeps the performance grounded enough that the revelations land rather than feel arbitrary.
At eight and a half hours, the audiobook is a single sitting or two for most dedicated listeners. The length is appropriate for the scope. McFadden does not bloat her thrillers with subplots or atmospheric padding. She is focused on mechanism, and the audio version makes that propulsive quality even more apparent. Once the tension builds in the second half, there is a real cost to putting it down.
What to Watch For in The Ex
The ending has generated divided responses, and that division is worth flagging. Some readers found it satisfying and surprising. Others found it scattered and far-fetched, the logical conclusion of a structure that prioritizes revelation over coherence. Where you land on that divide will depend on what you want from the genre. If you read psychological thrillers for the pleasure of the machinery and can accept some wobble in the final turn, you will likely enjoy this. If you need your endings to seal neatly, the last act may frustrate you.
There is also a recurring question in the reviews about whether the red herrings are clever or merely misleading. A reviewer praised the book’s “red herrings and a couple of surprise endings” while another found the ending “confusing and scattered.” Both are responding to the same structural choice. McFadden stacks her narrative so densely that the unpacking is slightly chaotic, and that is a genuine creative decision rather than a failure of craft.
Who Should Listen to The Ex
Fans of McFadden’s other work will find this consistent with her voice and method. Listeners who enjoyed Liane Moriarty’s morally slippery domestic scenarios or Ruth Ware’s locked-room psychological setups will find The Ex sits comfortably in that company. This is not the right choice for listeners who find unreliable narration more exhausting than pleasurable, or who want their thrillers to arrive at clarity. For everyone else who has been burned by over-complicated endings in the genre before and still keeps coming back, McFadden earns her audience loyally.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is The Ex standalone or part of a series?
It is a standalone thriller. No prior familiarity with McFadden’s other books is required, though readers who enjoy her style here will find her other titles similarly structured.
How intentionally confusing is the character POV structure?
Very intentionally so. McFadden deliberately blurs the identities of her narrators in the early sections, which several readers noted caused them to misread character relationships until late in the book. This is part of the novel’s design rather than a clarity failure.
Does Nicol Zanzarella differentiate the various women’s perspectives audibly?
Reasonably well, though the intentional ambiguity in the text means some listeners may still find the perspectives harder to separate than in a book with clearly distinct narrators. Zanzarella’s grounded approach keeps the reader oriented even when the text is designed to disorient.
How does the ending compare to McFadden’s other thrillers?
Opinion is divided. Readers who prioritize surprise over resolution tend to find it satisfying. Those expecting a tightly sealed conclusion often find the final act scattered. It is probably less tidy than some of her other work.
