My Rating: 1⭐️ very disappointed it didn’t tick the boxes for me LET DOWN!!!

I am going to be upfront and let you know I am going to spoil the big ‘shocking’ reveal in my review… I just can’t do the review without it… so I have hidden the review on GR but please don’t read on if you don’t want to know!!!

This one was a huge let down for me… I wasn’t overly convinced I would enjoy it anyway because although labelled a psychological thriller I don’t really think that is the right marketing for it… It is a story of domestic abuse. Which is terrible and horrible but not a thriller … in my opinion. I also wish to point out these are just my opinions and my experience with the book… I have some strong opinions on Domestic Violence for personal reasons but I didn’t rate it down because of those reasons.

First of all you all know I am a sucker for the multiple POV so I was delighted to see that we were getting the story from both Charlie and Sal. This was a plus for me… however… like some (very few) readers I found that the sheer amount of repetitiveness was too much. The same themes, story and occurrences were gone over more than once or twice and while I appreciate that the author was trying to give us the Birds Eye view from both parties it really could have been done better. I think for a short book this felt really really really long and drawn out.

I AM LITERALLY ABOUT TO SPOIL THE TWIST SO IF YOU NEED TO BOW OUT DO IT NOW!!!!

I also don’t think the way the twist was set up was all that thrilling either… it was very obvious to me the way the author wrote this book that Sal (the abused party) was either not a woman or in fact Sal and Charlie were in a same sex relationship. The amount of times that Charlie referred to Sal while as opposed to he or her was a dead give away. As it turns out Sal is a man and Charlie is in fact a woman. Which is quite uncommon in a book about domestic abuse.

Having said that… I think this was a great opportunity to ignite a thought provoking look into the dynamics of those kinds of abusive relationships however the way this was written it literally was only going for the shock factor…. Oh jeez you’re kidding Charlie is abusing Sal…get out of town!!! Instead of there being a chance to look at the relationship… how did Charlie get to be how she was… why did Sal allow her to be abusive and the dynamics of that. Ultimately people in those kinds of relationships will always have their “reasons” for staying or ignoring the behaviour that they always later feel guilty or sad or regretful about… that is absolutely normal… however I am yet to read another novel about a F to M, DV scenario and I think this could have been done A LOT better to put a light onto the fact that this does happen (although the statistics are much lower) it is still a very sad and awful situation.

The author was dead set on that shock value though and it completely fell flat for me. I was actually convinced that the couple were in a same sex relationship and I thought that too would have been an interesting dynamic to explore in the context of a relationship gone wrong… but either way the ending would still have been a let down.

The writing was sub par… very repetitive and circular in how the story was told. It became tiresome because the same issues were dragged up over and over. Charlie was controlling yes… and that was clear but she was controlling in the exact same way every time. An abusive spouse generally has a big bag of despicable tricks up their sleeve that they roll out over time and while Charlie did do a number of things… it felt like she was just rotating through ‘every day’ motions to keep Sal on his toes. NOW … that does not diminish the abuse at all… but this was supposed to be a thriller right?? AND there was nothing thrilling about reading the same thing over and over and over.

When Charlie cheated on Sal it was as if we were just ticking off a checklist of things that were completely expected… I really could drone on and on but then you might as well just read the book for repetition.

I didn’t like this one…. Not because I couldn’t handle the content… that was awful without a doubt but it was also done in a way that was light touch… not that I think it should have been bash city or anything… but still again this was fiction and it was supposed to be a thriller and it was supposed to be shocking… none of this shocked me… it was sad absolutely but not the shock factor I think the author was going for.

Overall - I wouldn’t recommend this and if you have gotten to this point of my review I definitely wouldn’t recommend it cause I have now completely ruined the story for you…so you might as well read something I didn’t spoil