A Review By Ruth Hunter, BookTime Editor, Bertrams

A short and shocking story, this follows an anonymous young narrator as she becomes dangerously obsessed with an abusive and sadistic lover. She loses her friends, her job, and the support of her family, but the man who she adores cares nothing for her and simply uses her. I was ambivalent about this novel. On the one hand, it drew me in straight away and I found it hard to put down. On the other, I had no sympathy for the main character. She was very selfish, and her attraction to the man was never really explained, other than the oft-repeated fact that he had ‘curly blond hair’. If the book was supposed to offer an insight into abusive relationships, it failed, as by the end I didn’t really care what happened to her.