Meggie, at twenty-three, is at a crossroads in her life. Dissatisfied and bored with where the world has brought her, she longs to be free of the drudgery of her job and the expected course of the relationship with her boyfriend. Then, into her life walks the mysterious and sultry Sabine. Sabine is everything Meggie wishes she could be, and their unpredictable relationship quickly turns into obsession on Meggie's side.

When Meggie's fixation encourages her to follow Sabine into the underworld of the nightshift worker, the very process of working such unusual hours means letting go of everything she is used to. She becomes enmeshed in the chaos of life on the fringe that she and her fellow band of night workers inhabit, which gives her a feeling of camaraderie that she has never experienced before, and it also brings the permission to follow Sabine down other, more dangerous, paths - pushing her boundaries, and exploring her sexuality, in her quest to become someone else.

But their relationship is not an easy one. Meggie never really knows where she stands with Sabine, and their repeating cycle of intimacy and distance is disorienting to say the least. When Meggie's journey into the chaotic hedonism that is Sabine's reality takes a shocking turn, she begins to think differently about their friendship and look for a way to escape from the self-destructive path she is on. Taking stock, she begins to see that she doesn't really know anything about the woman who has taken hold of her every waking thought - and that others do not see her the way she does. Who is Sabine really?

This dark, absorbing and unsettling novel is told in a retrospective narrative by Meggie, as she reflects on her relationship with Sabine some twenty years before. As Meggie lays out the history of their twisted friendship you are pulled into a parallel world where normal boundaries and connections do not exist. Caught under the spell of Sabine, Meggie loses sight of her own identity and purpose - in this surreal world, this underworld, this space outside the daylight hours, she can be whoever she wants, and she wants to be Sabine... or does she simply want to be with Sabine? Whatever this is, it is not the path to happiness, and eventually she needs to free herself of the influence of Sabine before it is too late... but can she ever truly be free again?

Telling the tale in this way allows Kiare Ladner to expose the dark course that obsession and desire can take, but also allow the truth about Sabine and how meeting her has affected the direction of Meggie's life to be revealed after the event, which was rather clever - and it adds an air of poignancy to the whole story.

I absolutely loved this novel about identity, infatuation, loneliness and yearning for connection, even though it left me feeling rather sad. It's impressive work for a debut author, and cannot wait to read more from Kiare Ladner.