Intriguing novel, not far off a 4* and I would rate my reading experience highly.

A great boon to enjoying this story is personal experience of the 'female obsession' at the heart of Meggie and Sabine's relationship, or psychosexual obsession as I believe it's called in the novel. As a woman I could sort of understand the protagonist's draw to Sabine's mystique femininity and the allure of the strong friendship they built, but at other times Meggie's fixation felt quite foreign. Perhaps, you may say, on purpose - but as I said, if you take the novel as an exploration of obsessive friendships in general, it's far more interesting than a simple retelling of these characters' lives.

One of the reviews on the front compares Nightshift to Highsmith's Mr Ripley novels, and it is a fair comparison (I should think readers of one would enjoy the other), but compared to Highsmith's interpretation of same-sex obsession, I felt Nightshift lacked a little depth.

That said the prose was good - readable and relaxed. The story is well-paced though as it's one of those plotless books, it did slump a bit in the middle. The ending was great though, painting Sabine as the tragic character she needed to be. I also enjoyed the meta final paragraph, which doesn't always work in books but it did here - leaving it to reader interpretation if the story is the author's fiction or not, but believing it to be a true retelling adds a lot to its depth/tragedy.