About the Book

She stole her husband. Now she wants to take her life.

After the horrors of the past, Louisa Williams is desperate to make a clean start. Her husband Sam is dead. Her children, too, are gone, victims of the car accident in which he died.

Sam said that she would never get away from him. That he would hound her to death if she tried to leave. Louisa never thought that he would want to harm their children though.

But then she never thought that he would betray her with a woman like Sophie. And now Sophie is determined to take all that Louisa has left. She wants to destroy her reputation and to take what she thinks is owed her – the life she would have had if Sam had lived.

Her husband’s lover wants to take her life. The only question is will Louisa let her?

My Thoughts

This book is brilliant, it had my gripped from the first page right through to the end! I’ve read all of Julia Crouch’s previous novels and enjoyed them but can definitely say that this is her best yet! It’s a tough book to review though as I don’t want to give anything away so I’ll keep this quite short.

Crouch does such a great job of toying with her readers. Initially, we feel such sympathy for Louisa as she recovers in hospital from injuries sustained in the crash that killed her two children. She had been trying to get away from an abusive husband Sam and he died in the crash. Then there is Sophie, Sam’s lover, who is adamant that Louisa caused Sam’s death. She’s very bitter at what she feels has been taken from her – her future with Sam, the home he bought for her but which his wife has now inherited. As the novel goes on more details come to light but as readers we are gauging one version of the truth against another, we don’t know what the actual facts are and I very much enjoyed this. In fiction as in real life, we only know what people tell us and we trust the people we know best.

We know that one of these women is lying as they can’t both be telling the truth but as a reader you switch from feeling for one of them to feeling for the other. It’s such a joy to read a novel where you really don’t know who can be trusted or what the truth is going to turn out to be. I was on the edge of my seat at times whilst reading this and wondering how it was all going to end up!

I received a copy of this book from Headline via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.