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She has given us a tour de force début novel that is both creepily disturbing and yet beautifully rendered. There are many things she does and says and that her attacker, Lee, does, which are not at all credible or believable. I’d always thought of domestic abuse as something that happened to ‘other people’, but it affects many couples and families from every part of society and is often very well hidden.
She’s a freaking trooper, and four years later she’s lucky to be walking the Earth, all trust issues, anxiety, and OCD aside.
But what begins as flattering attention and spontaneous, passionate sex transforms into raging jealousy, and Catherine soon discovers that Lee's dazzling blue eyes and blond good looks hide a dark, violent nature. Clearly, in this book, her friends are jealous and want to be with Lee themselves but they’re still believing all the crap he’s saying about her and turning them against her with no resistance. I had real pleasure reading something so dark; not often do you find a book so disturbing and yet so enjoyable to read.
I recommend to anyone who loves a good psychological thriller but with caution as there is some violence. One of my only grips is the length, the first 50% could have been condensed, but all and all I enjoyed this one. Catherine has got to be the most ignorant and helpless victim I've had the displeasure of reading about in the last twenty years or so. It had to be an exceptional book to break my book-blog-block and this is it: a nervy, heart-racing, page-turner — the debut thriller by Elizabeth Haynes.Then there's Stuart, the new love interest, and (another convenient setup) a psychologist, who also doesn't seem to believe Cathy's fears, excusing them as a part of her OCD behavior. I didn't enjoy reading those scenes, obviously, but I appreciate that she showed just how ugly, horrible and dangerous domestic violence is. Catherine Bailey may have been a twenty-four year old carefree, fun-loving individual, but Cathy Bailey is one tough, yet emotionally damaged woman, and she’s not going down without a fight. This was a decent psychological thriller but if I'm being honest this is a story I've read many times before and while this was well written where was the editor? Alternating chapters take us back to the past, four years ago and we slowly witness the events that brought Cathy to this point in her life.