Parts One and Two of this book are well crafted and compulsive reading. Zoe is in a damaging and controlling relationship and the control that her husband, Daniel, exerts over her is complete. From laying her clothes out for the day ahead to selecting exactly what she will eat that day and dictating what time it should be eaten he runs every aspect of her life. Isolated from her best friend, Lizzie, by both miles and the last vestiges of an argument she has nobody to turn to.
You immediately feel angry on Zoe's behalf and wonder why she just can't get herself out of this relationship. Then it unfolds, in flashback, that she has tried but thanks to Daniel's wealth and paranoia he easily tracked her down and sucked her back in to his control. When events spiral out of control Zoe has to take things in to her own hands and she begins to make plans to get away, for good this time.
I liked that we got to see things from Daniel's point of view in the second part. This made him less of a faceless ogre but he is still a deeply unpleasant man. The characterisation to this point is generally good with the main protagonists of Zoe, Daniel and Lizzie being well formed and multi-dimensional.
Sadly this is where it all falls apart. The third part of the tale takes up half of the book (I read on an e-reader so it tells me that it is precisely 50%) and it is a rehashing of her predicament only this time she has painted herself in to this corner more or less knowingly. With the body count rising exponentially it is hard to believe that this is the same book you were enjoying an hour or two ago. I also became very bored with Zoe's meek acceptance of her situation and started wondering why I was continuing to read this book when it angered me so much.
This felt like two different books to me and I did wonder if Part Three wasn't written first and then the author ran out of ideas (or the willpower) to take it further. They then started writing something new based on the earlier writing and ran out of steam there too. So, why not push the two together and make one whole book out of two half-finished ones.
It gets three stars because I loved the first 50% of the tale so much and was completely sucked in to that world.
I RECEIVED A FREE COPY OF THIS BOOK FROM READERS FIRST IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW.
**Review originally published February 2nd, 2018**
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