What Happened to Anabel Taylor

• Author: Jennifer Shay Carta
• Genre: Literary Fiction
• Publication Date: April 17, 2025
• Publisher: Victory Editing NetGalley Co-op

Thank you to NetGalley and Victory Editing NetGalley Co-op for providing me with an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

A cheating scandal. A mental breakdown. A Hollywood betrayal that no one saw coming — least of all, Anabel Taylor.

Anabel, once America’s sweetheart, is caught on video in a compromising moment with Cody Quinn — her husband’s 21-year-old rising co-star. Now the footage has leaked, and the press is feasting on the fall of a 48-year-old actress who should have known better.

But Anabel doesn’t remember it. Not clearly. And someone wanted that moment to go public.

What Happened to Anabel Taylor is a sharp, emotional, and twist-filled psychological story about fame, fractured identity, and the terrifying blur between healing and unraveling. As Anabel tries to piece together what really happened during her mental break, one truth becomes clear:

Someone she trusted is out to destroy her. Anabel never saw it coming – neither will you.

Perfect for fans of Daisy Jones & The Six, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, and Gone Girl — this story grabs you and doesn’t let go.

This seemed like the perfect book for me. I loved the books it is compared to, and it sounded like a really intriguing read. Although Jennifer Shay Carta is a new author to me, I was already prepared to love the story. However, I had a difficult time with the story, maybe because of the audiobook format. The ebook format might have been a better choice for me.

The audiobook is narrated by Grace Noble, who does a wonderful job with the story. I was able to feel the emotion coming through her voice while listening, and it was an absolute pleasure to have her read the story to me. 

Told through the eyes of multiple characters and over different timelines made this one difficult for me to follow. There are many different characters involved in the story—from both timelines, and I struggled to place each of the events chronologically. It doesn’t help that for Anabel’s part, her memory has more holes than Swiss cheese. Anabel being unable to remember huge portions of her past contributed to the feeling that I had no idea what was going on.

Ultimately, I got halfway through the book twice before having to restart completely and begin at the beginning again. By the third tiime I read the early parts, I felt like I had a better handle on the events in the story. It was also confusing to have so many narrators, although it did provide a wider perspective of the events that occurred and how they impacted each of the characters. 

As a former mental health professional, I found myself focusing more on what was going on with Anabel, since at times it seemed almost as if the author was setting her up for dissociative identty disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder). The holes in her memory, the way she acted and then was unable to recall what she did, and the hints of trauma in her past really felt like that is where the author was heading, but the story took a different turn. 

Anabel is an actress nearing her 50s, married to a well-known director. She has an affair with a significantly younger costar, and a video of them in a compromising position is leaked. Although she is concerned about who leaked the video, the crux of the story focuses more on Anabel’s own path to facing her traumatic childhood and her healing journey. However, the leaked video changes how the public sees her, her husband, and her former costar, Cody. 

Along the way, chapters are told through the perspective of Anabel, Cody, Ryan (her husband), Marcus (Ryan’s assistant), Katie (Cody’s sister and manager), and Bethany (Cody’s ex-girlfriend). It provides a more comprehensive view of the characters and their actions, although I did have to make notes about who each POV character was. I didn’t find many of the characters to be very likable—Anabel’s behaviors put her firmly into a morally gray category for me; Ryan is far too distant and uninvolved; Cody is a 21 year old that acts his age; and Katie is so overprotective of Cody that she acts in ways that I struggled to understand. Another things that I found very strange was the lack of presence of Mirabel, the daughter of Anabel and Ryan. She’s mentioned a few times throughout the book, but doesn’t appear in on-page until the epilogue. 

Overall, this wasn’t my favorite book to read in audiobook format. It might have been easier for me to keep track of the events chronologically if I read this in print or e-book format, since each of the chapters is headed with a timeline and the narrator. I did like how therapy was portrayed positively in the story, and each of the characters did have a unique voice. It was easy to figure out the perspective of each chapter based on the character’s thoughts and actions, so I never found myself wondering *who* was narrating. Instead, I struggled with knowing *when* these events were taking place and putting them into a coherent order. It also seemed strange to me that Ryan and Anabel hardly ever thought of or mentioned their young daughter, and with parents in the spotlight, I would have thought that this would affect their daughter, or that they’d at least be worried about how it affected her. Unfortunately, Mirabel just seemed to be in the story as a placeholder. Finally, the ending was a little too open ended for me, and didn’t have the closure I was hoping for. Ultimately, this one probably should have been a DNF, but I pushed through in hopes that the ending would clear things up. 

Bottom line: Difficult to follow in audiobook format, but an intriguing look at memory, healing, and life in the public eye.

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