Q&A with Laura Cox, the Narrator behind Liar, Liar

Meet the incredible voice that brings my latest domestic thriller, Liar, Liar, to life.

I interviewed narrator Laura Cox about her life as an audiobook narrator, what attracted her to Liar, Liar, and her approach to bringing suspenseful stories and complex characters to life.

Laura also shares how her career as a Speech and Language Therapist and her experience in film, BBC, and radio led to the creation of Bear Hill Studios. So, grab a cup of tea and enjoy this behind-the-scenes glimpse into the world of audiobook narration.

1. Tell us about yourself, and what first inspired you to become an audiobook narrator?

I'm a voice artist, audiobook narrator and Speech and Language Therapist based in Bath. My acting career began at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and has taken me across theatre, television, and radio, including credits on Chicken Run and various BBC productions. Alongside that, I've built a more recent career as a Speech and Language Therapist, working as a voice therapist before more recently moving into paediatric Speech and Language Therapy with children.

I returned to voice over and audiobook narration after having my two children and spending the last decade as as a stay at home mum but returning to audiobook narration felt like the most natural convergence of everything I do. I co-founded Bear Hill Studios with my husband Dave, a professional home studio where we produce audio content, and narrating books brought my two worlds together completely. As an actress I understand character, performance, and emotional truth. As a voice therapist I understand the instrument itself, how it works, how it carries meaning, and how listeners receive it. That combination feels like exactly the right toolkit for this work.

"Listeners may know me from my acting career; I was part of the original cast of Chicken Run and have worked extensively with the BBC across television and radio over the years."

2. You've narrated a range of books across different genres. Are there any projects or authors that listeners may already recognise your voice from?

Listeners may know me from my acting career; I was part of the original cast of Chicken Run and have worked extensively with the BBC across television and radio over the years. In terms of my narration work, Bear Hill Studios has been steadily building a portfolio of audio projects and my voice has been finding its audience. What perhaps makes my background a little unusual is that I've also spent a significant part of my career as a speech and language therapist, working clinically with people who experienced Aphasia after having had a stroke, before recently transitioning into working with children as a paediatric Speech and Language Therapist. Liar, Liar has been a real treat to narrate as a project that demands genuine emotional craft and real vocal intelligence.

3. What makes a thriller work particularly well as an audiobook experience instead of print alone?

In print, the reader controls the pace entirely. In audio, the narrator does, and in a thriller that's an extraordinary tool. I can slow a sentence down until it becomes almost unbearable. I can let silence do the work. The listener can't skim ahead; they have to sit in the discomfort with me. As both an actress and a voice therapist, I understand that dynamic from two very different angles. The actress in me thinks about performance and intention. The voice therapist in me thinks about how prosody, breath, and resonance land in a listener's body before they've even processed the words consciously. In a thriller, that split second matters enormously.

"There's a creeping quality to the atmosphere that runs through the whole story; you're never fully settled, never fully safe, and somehow that makes you want to keep listening all the more."

4. Domestic thrillers rely so heavily on tension and emotion. How do you approach building suspense through narration alone?

It's all about restraint and control. The temptation is to push, to signal to the listener that something terrible is coming. But real tension lives in what's withheld. My years as a voice therapist gave me a very precise, clinical understanding of prosody, the musicality of speech, and how features like pitch, rate, pause, and stress are processed almost below the level of conscious awareness. I combine that with my actress's instinct for subtext and intention. The result, I hope, is tension that listeners feel in their bodies before they understand it in their minds.

5. What kind of mood does the Liar, Liar audiobook create while listening?

I love the twists and turns in this story. As a listener you think you are going down one route with the main characters and then suddenly you are going in a totally different direction, and even though you might want to judge that character harshly for it, you can't help but root for them to make it. Because real people and real characters make mistakes and have tricky feelings that reside in the part of ourselves that's not quite good and not quite bad. There's a creeping quality to the atmosphere that runs through the whole story; you're never fully settled, never fully safe, and somehow that makes you want to keep listening all the more.

"Settle in, put your headphones on, and don't trust anyone."

6. As a narrator, what stood out to you most about the tone and atmosphere of Liar, Liar?

What struck me immediately was how domestic and recognisable the world felt, and yet how deeply wrong everything beneath the surface was. That contrast is what makes it so unsettling. The writing doesn't signal danger with dramatic flourishes; it hides it in ordinary moments and ordinary conversations. My job was to honour that completely, to sound entirely normal while everything quietly unravels. That kind of controlled, sustained performance is something my background in both acting and voice therapy has prepared me well for.

7. Some characters in thrillers can be unreliable, manipulative, or emotionally layered. How do you reflect those subtle differences in your performance?

This is where my two careers genuinely intersect in the most interesting way. As an actress, I'm trained to find the psychology behind a character and make it live in the body and voice. As a voice therapist, I've spent time listening analytically to how people's voices betray their emotional state, their history, their tension. An unreliable character has a particular vocal quality; a smoothness, a careful control that occasionally slips. I know what that sounds like and I know how to perform it convincingly. The listener should feel something is wrong long before the story confirms it.

Tension isn't loud. It's close. I want the listener to feel that the character inner voices are being whispered into their ear.

8. What’s the hardest part of narrating an audiobook that listeners probably never think about?

Consistency over time. Recording a full-length novel means returning to the same character's voice weeks into the process, and a subtle shift in how someone sounds can pull a careful listener right out of the story. I keep detailed notes on accent features, speech rhythms, and emotional register for every character.

Interestingly, that kind of systematic, analytical attention to the individual features of a voice is something I've been doing professionally as a voice therapist as well. It's painstaking work that should be completely invisible to the listener, and when it is, you know you've done it right.

9. Thriller readers often talk about "hearing" tension in an audiobook. What techniques do you use to create that uneasy feeling for listeners?

Breath is a huge one. People underestimate how much a slightly shallower breath pattern shifts the emotional atmosphere of a scene. As a voice therapist I understand breath support and control at a very technical level, and I use that knowledge deliberately and precisely in the recording booth. I also work very carefully with pace and pause; the moments before a revelation are often where I'll slow almost imperceptibly. And I think about the physical quality of the voice itself, pulling back, going quieter in high-stakes moments, which paradoxically draws the listener in rather than pushing them away. Tension isn't loud. It's close. I want the listener to feel that the character inner voices are being whispered into their ear.

"[Liar, Liar] doesn't let you rest. Just when you think you've found solid ground, it shifts."

10. What do you think makes a psychological or domestic thriller especially effective in audio format?

The domestic thriller is about the horror of the familiar, the idea that danger lives inside the relationships and spaces we trust most. Audio strips away all visual distance. There's no cover art, no chapter heading to prepare you. There's just a voice, very close, in your ear. As someone who has spent a career thinking about what voices do to people, both as a professional actor and as a voice therapist, I find that genuinely fascinating and, in the context of a thriller, genuinely powerful. The format amplifies everything the genre is already trying to do.

11. For listeners who love dark, twisty, emotionally charged stories, what do you think they'll enjoy most about Liar, Liar?

The fact that it doesn't let you rest. Just when you think you've found solid ground, it shifts. And in audio you feel that physically; your body responds before your brain catches up. That physical, pre-conscious response to vocal performance is something I understand deeply and something I work with very intentionally as a narrator. If you love that particular cocktail of dread and compulsion, of not being able to stop even when you probably should, this one is for you.

"Close. Unsettling. Inescapable."

12. What's your favourite part of the narration process? Character work, emotional scenes, tension building, something else?

The moments when I find the emotional truth of a scene and the character suddenly becomes completely real to me. It's that feeling I've always loved in acting, when you stop performing and start being. As a listener. you know when someone is faking it or if you’re hearing something that might not be human and those little things that I used to to try and perfect many years ago, like a breath, or a crack in my voice when things get emotional, these are the things that make a performance real. These are the things that you hear back and know that you have been part of the human stray telling process. I also love it when I’m able to switch from one character to the next and its seamless.

13. If you could describe the atmosphere of Liar, Liar in just three words, what would they be?

Close. Unsettling. Inescapable.

14. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Just that Liar, Liar is exactly the kind of project that reminds me why I do this. It demands something real from its narrator; no shortcuts, no surface-level performance. I think the combination of an acting career and a clinical background in voice is a fairly unusual one, and I hope listeners can feel the benefit of both in the finished book. Settle in, put your headphones on, and don't trust anyone.

Where to find Laura Cox

 

Find out more about work by Laura Cox via the Bear Hill Studios website. You can also follow Laura and her husband, Dave, on Instagram to find out what they’re up to next. Whether you're interested in the performance side, the voice science, or the storytelling, there's plenty more to come.

The Liar, Liar audiobook is available now on Audible, Amazon, Apple Books, and Amazon's new All You Can Listen (AYCL) catalogue.

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