Resort

by Oli Isaac, Phia Saban (Narrator), Daryl McCormack (Narrator)

For fans of moody and escapist psychological thrillers such as Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley or the new Audible Original The Chateau, this is your next suspenseful listen.

Step into the hauntingly beautiful world of Resort by Oli Isaac–a fractured and surreal drama that blurs the lines between reality and illusion.

Clara, a mystery shopper scraping by in London, is a compulsive chameleon, more comfortable playing a role than she is in her own skin. A once-in-a-career opportunity to review a luxury resort pairs her with a faux fiancé—Avery—and introduces her to a rarefied world of wealth and reinvention. Amid seductive opulence and the shadows of past lies, Clara faces a chilling Can you ever truly escape yourself?

Starring Phia Saban (House of the Dragon), Daryl McCormack (Peaky Blinders, Bad Sisters), and Charlotte Ritchie (You), Resort is a slow-burn, mesmerizing audio experience across twelve chapters. Directed by Julia Head with sound design by Mikhail Fiksel, the team behind Massive.

Playwright Oli Isaac was awarded a commission through the Audible Emerging Playwrights Fund, an initiative dedicated to developing innovative original plays driven by language and voice. As an Audible-commissioned playwright, they received funding and creative support to develop Resort.

Genres: Audiobook, Thriller, Fiction, Drama, Adult, Contemporary

Audible Audio

Published October 23, 2025

Reviews

[Nina (ninjasbooks) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very strange

[Jo Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

If this hadn’t been only a couple of hours long I’d have dnf’d. A massive production but a bit of a trippy story.

[D · Rating 5 out of 5]

The actor who played Clara (and dare I say others) should receive an award for this performance [Phia Saban]. Like the moment Kate Hudson wipes the tear from her eye in Almost Famous or when Forrest Gump tells how his life has been like a box of chocolates…She is endlessly convincing in letting the cracks shine beautifully through.

I teetered between a 3 and 5 star rating, and this is why I didn’t settle on a 4:

The story is sad, like watching an accident happen in slow motion and not being able to intervene because the drugs they took were powerful enough to intoxicate the room you are in.

Parts of this made my skin crawl. The characters are mostly unlikeable but you might feel for them anyway because they are running as fast as they can to escape, the inescapable, themselves.

I think taking away stars because you don’t like the ending, or more accurately because you don’t get your happy ending, is akin to being a sore loser so I’m not going to do it!

Two other things that I didn’t like is spending a little too much time thinking i don’t have a clue in what’s going on here. The other thing, that was too distracting and perhaps slightly over done, was the sound effects. Very effective in making you feel like you’re being wormed way too far into some of the characters brains and straining to hear their thoughts over the chaos in their head! But again, I think this discomfort was by design and therefore hits the mark like a sucker punch to the gut.

[Jessup · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was an absolutely eye-roll-inducing listen. Truly terrible, self-indulgent drivel. This should have stayed in the author's private journal, only for him to look back on in twenty years, embarrassed at the cringey teenage angst of it all. This is a Gen Z anthem: there is absolutely nothing wrong with the main character. She had no childhood trauma, no bad relationship, she isn't oppressed by men or society in general. Yet she has a malaise that can't be explained. She's just so unhappy with her life...for some reason...and she wants to be someone else...for some reason? She just feels bad, and she makes others around her feel bad. Top it off with a very BREATHY performance from Phia Saban, and it's just the icing on the cake. Half of the book is Saban breathing heavily, or her breath catching in a throaty sigh. It's just so *brooding*, and not in a good way. I'm angry that I listened to it for as long as I did. It is horribly mislabeled as a "mystery/thriller" on Audible. There was no mystery - unless you count the mystery of why the main character hates her life. And there were certainly ZERO THRILLS. I have a better category for it: Bad YA literature that never should've been published!

[Aaron Esthelm · Rating 4 out of 5]

couldn't tell you why people didn't like this I thought it was really great. an interesting character exploration of a woman who wants to disassociate from who she is by building whatever false lives she can. trippy as you would expect from a main character having a mental breakdown

[Casey · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

[Jordyn McBride · Rating 1 out of 5]

Whoever wrote this must have been high on acid when they did it.

[Nikki · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pointlessly over complicated.

[Brenda Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well this moved quickly, and I had to pay close attention to keep up because the MC rambled a bit and jumped between characters. No spoilers, but it was completely appropriate for her state of mind.

Well done.

[Elizabeth Prevost · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was very interesting and had great narration. I’m not sure why it was so poorly rated? Unreliable narrator made it intriguing. Wish it could’ve expanded slightly about the whole “shopping” thing.

[Tiffany]

Story would have been better without all the heavy breathing in the narration. Is she running or tired or sad or angry or having an orgasm or anxiety? Like an insane amount of non-descript heavy breathing. I liked the voice actors. I would go 2.5. Maybe 3 if it weren’t for the damned breathing distracting from the story.

[Cora · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn’t stop listening. It was a wild, tangled ride, and trying to navigate the story through an unreliable narrator was half the fun. And, I appreciated how it didn’t shy away from the dark and raw.

[Addi Colvin · Rating 2 out of 5]

weird but good

[Shawna · Rating 2 out of 5]

This audible original was so taxing.

I committed to the listen so I completed it.

But it was sooo boring with no point to the story at all. I understand the nuance, but it just fails the task at hand.

I love casted audio books. This one, however, just held me hostage. The main character Clara is not likeable, relatable or even interesting. I got so tired of her inner monologue. I literally feel like there was no benefit to this 'book'. It left me frustrated and annoyed. If that was the point - then success. However I will think twice about any other stories written by this writer- I do give second chances. I'll read or listen to a second book by an author that underwhelmed me. But I will need to amp myself up for it.

I believe it was acted as it should be. The performance was good. The background noise - so to speak - was distracting and sometimes added to my irritation with the 'book'.

I gave the Overall 2 Diamonds, the performance 4 diamonds and the story itself 1 diamond. I don't know what audible will round out the final rating to, but I do not recommend it. I'm sorry if I sound harsh. Its just how the book left me feeling..

[Charles Owen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do think the reviews have been a bit harsh for this Audible production. I did find it enjoyable and read to the end and I thought the ending was good. It is absolutely true that the main character is very dislikable, self indulgent, and clearly mentally ill. But I don't have to like the character to like the story and in a bit of a warped since the story did work. There was some "art" here and there that I think was a bit heavy-handed The production quality was first rate other than sometimes the voices were a little low or drowned out by the music and sound effects. The title and description is very misleading, making you think this is going to be something strange about the resort, but really this is a psychological drama in the resort is simply a setting. It's not a large investment in time to listen to this, so I have no problem recommending that others do so, though it is clearly not one of the better things I have read recently.

[Lauren Igram · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wtf was this whole thing???? Listening to it was awful, I appreciate that Au was trying to make it a listening experience. But I couldn’t understand half of the shit that was going on. Because of all the extra sound effects. Was this basically just her killing herself? And her spiral in the madness? Like I am so confused.

[Ann · Rating 1 out of 5]

The sound effects were so loud that it was difficult to hear the dialogue at times. The heavy breathing, gasps, and sighs were annoying AF! The bird incident almost made me gag. The Clara/ Beth character hates her life but we have no idea why. I listened to the entire story but I’m still not sure what this was supposed to be about. This was a production that was an absolute fail for me.

[Michele · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an Audible Original and is currently in the Plus catalog. This was just too weird for me. When they started in on eating songbirds and how beautiful the song was along with collecting elephant tusks, I must admit I skipped ahead two chapters to get to the ending. Very disturbing. Sad. Mental illness is the theme here or at least that is my takeaway.

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can't believe I actually finished this. I wanted to see how it would end and it was pretty much what I expected. If it wasn't such a short story I would not have continued it. I would not waste your time.

[Samantha · Rating 1 out of 5]

The sound and production was great, I was really captivated. But the story felt really pointless. It's been a long time since I read a book that left me so unsatisfied. Maybe it would be better as a physical copy.

[Michele Mayer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bizarre story told in a somewhat compelling way, but there were multiple times when I could barely hear the conversation for the background noise (music, background conversations, etc). The ending honestly felt like a letdown, or like it was an intriguing story cut off before it really ended.

[Emily Burns · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ehhh. It was ok. Not my usual books

[Loup · Rating 2 out of 5]

Audible a mis ça dans la section horreur je sais pas trop pourquoi.

[Kay · Rating 2 out of 5]

So much heavy breathing to the point I wanted to offer her some oxygen.

[Allyssa Fischer · Rating 2 out of 5]

The sound editing on the audio book version was incredible, but the story itself was disappointing.

[Betsy Miller · Rating 2 out of 5]

Couldn’t finish

[Brittany Edwards · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was okay. I could feel the emotion from the narrator of the FMC. I think it was supposed to feel unfinished, in which it did a great job of that.

[Elyce Rickerl · Rating 1 out of 5]

A few hours of labored breathing? This did NOT land.

[Scott Bishop · Rating 1 out of 5]

A fever dream with frustrating intensity and no exposition or insight or resolution.

[Rémy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is interesting. Clara isn’t happy with herself, so she reinvents herself to be another version. But the reality is it feel like undiagnosed mental health disorder.