Ryan continues her string of excellent standalone suspense novels. Arden Ward works in a PR firm, managing crises for clients, but her boss has just told her that rather than lose a super-rich client, who has accused Arden of seducing her husband, he's firing her with two weeks' notice. He gives Arden one last client, to help her try to burnish her resume. The client, Cordelia, is the wife of a man who was found innocent of manslaughter when he hit a skateboarder in a parking garage. Her friends and her kids' classmates think he got off because he was rich and have shunned her and the kids.

I found Arden to be a well drawn and appealing character. As the story progresses, she realizes that she does not know enough about the case, and she comes to wonder whom she can trust. She has to add Investigator to her list of skills. She learns something mid-book that I knew had to be the proverbial gun on the mantelpiece, but I was wrong about the person it would shoot.

The ending seemed to leave open, maybe even suggest, that we might see Arden again at some point. That would be fun. ( )

When we first meet Arden Ward, she is a crisis management expert who has been falsely accused of having an affair with a client and is subsequently fired. However, before she leaves her job, her boss gives her one last client – Ned and Cordelia Bannister.
Ned is a real estate executive in Boston and for the last year, has been on trail for the fatal hit-and-run accident in his building’s parking garage. After he is found not guilty by the jury, he and Cordelia think their lives will go back to normal quickly. However, that is not the case. Cordelia is getting threatening text messages and she’s not sure where they are coming from. She also questions whether Ned is really innocent of the crime. When there is a second accident, and it looks like Ned may be to blame for this one too, Arden begins to wonder if Cordelia may be right.
This was a twisty read with lots of red herrings thrown in to keep you guessing. ( )

Thank you to Bookreporter, the author and the publisher.

I'm not sure how I feel about this book besides the premise. I didn't like Arden who was a crisis management “expert,” who was in her last days in her job who Cordelia hired for her husband nor any characters involved in his case and felt they were not true to Ned and his case. Cordelia was a basket case and only wanted what was good for her and getting her reputation back with the mothers at her kids school and her friends after the judgment was not guilty. I knew there was going to be more drama after the case ended.

I didn't get this book at all. Not sure if it was too complicated for my mind but it was a dnf for me. Sorry!

Again, I'm in the minority. ( )

Ned has been acquitted of vehicular manslaughter. His wife has hired Arden, a crisis management agent, to help bring their reputation out of the mud. But, Arden is fighting her own battles at work. She has been accused of having an affair with a big client. So, Ned and Cordelia are her last clients at this firm. But, they may end up being her last clients forever.

Talk about twisted! This story just keeps twisting around itself with all the lies and rumors. I did figure it out, but then I questioned if I was right or not! I love when an author throws a wrench into the mix!

Arden is a character that I grew to respect. Can you respect a character?? Well, I did. She didn’t let what was happening at work affect her work…clear as mud??? She took on this client and her goal was to protect…and she definitely went out of her way to do that…then the story shifted again and again! Lies and rumors abound!

The narrator, Gail Shalan, is super! I really liked her voice for Cordelia. Cordelia is a bit emotional. And sometimes a narrator can “overwork” those vocals. Shalan is perfect as Cordelia.

Need a good psychological thriller…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today.

I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review. ( )

Of course fabulous author Hank Phillippi Ryan has done it again. She never fails to satisfy, and satisfy fully, totally, completely. One Wrong Word is thrilling, shocking, non-stop action and suspense from start to finish.

Spreading rumors and telling lies is high school stuff, and it should end when you go out into the real world. Unfortunately, it often intensifies – with higher stakes and bigger consequences. Arden Ward experiences this first-hand. The man Arden worked for and with for many years, the man she considered a mentor if not a friend, chose to believe a lie about her, chose to not even listen to her side, and firing her was a done deal. And as if that betrayal wasn’t disgusting enough, Arden learned that there was so much more to it, so much more at stake, making it reprehensible. And dangerous. Deathly dangerous.

Arden’s job has been to protect and restore the reputations of people who may not have always done very nice things. She thinks she’s savvy and knows the world, knows how to make the system work. She believes in her job, and believes she’s doing a good thing, saving people. But when she’s fired and forced into taking one last job to save her own reputation, she actually falls into the trap of being taken in by what she’s told, allowing her own prejudices to make decisions for her when she’s not entirely sure who or what to believe.

She embarks on what can only be called a mission to get to the bottom of things, to find the truth and succeed in this last job. She goes place to place, person to person at breakneck speed, trying to piece things together, to figure out why her world is suddenly so off-kilter. But Arden is a real person, not a mythical heroine, and that’s what make Ryan’s story such a compelling page-turner. Arden is kickass but careless, worried and wondering, unintimidated but unrealistic, always on the go, always rushing in without caution. Ryan once again crafts a smoothly plotted, expertly written story full of twists and turns and surprise after surprise. She takes a situation that most women have likely experienced – a negative remark is widely taken as fact and a reputation is ruined – and creates a roller coaster ride of a story where one woman fights back, won’t give up.

Thanks to author Hank Phillippi Ryan for providing an advance copy of One Wrong Word via NetGalley. I thoroughly enjoyed it and recommend it without hesitation. It takes its place alongside all the other satisfying Ryan novels on my bookshelves. I voluntarily leave this review; all opinions are my own. ( )