Don't drink and drive!
Bewertet mit 5 Sternen
19-year-old Lindsey Finnegan met Andrew Nash when he came to the hardware store where she had started to work while still in Highschool. With her mother ill and her father unemployed, this had become her permanent job – until Andrew came. He gave a job to her dad, had her help out with his consctruction business and finally married her. Baby Sophie made everything perfect. Isn’t it obvious that Andrew does not want other men to stare at his wife? Some ten years later, Lindsey is living on her own with her daughter. She recently learned that her ex-husband has been released from prison. And she knows: “He’s going to make me pay for every year he spent behind bars.“
That book really got at me and I only interrupted at like 4:00 a.m. because I just could not keep my eyes open any longer. A REAL thriller – without any slayer, sexual offender, sadistic serial criminal – “just“ the odd abusive husband. Just? Well, I had some stories with lots of hitting and kicking, this is more subtle mostly, more about controll, addiction, keeping “the little wife“ humble and under control, and so it certainly kept me crumbled together on my sofa, clutching the book, and kind of going through all of the emotions along with Lindsey. Author Chevy Stevens alternates Lindsey as first-person narrator with her daughter Sophie, and that shift to the teenager, whom the mother tried to protect from the danger, put in the fearless approach of the 18-year-old towards the looming danger: well done, both absolutely credible in their own voices, and adding up to my ever growing feeling of unease.
But wait for the climax and the sudden change of speed – just when I wondered about the sudden turn and rather made up some speculations of my own on what else might come, the author put me under her spell again with the next sudden change. Wow!
Small point of criticism: with the final ending, it somewhat did not make much sense that the window was opened in Mrs. Carlson’s house and the whole place was searched?! Poor Atticus…
5 stars still, for the topic of domestic violence, brought forward in a way to really make you understand the mechanism, and the fact that author Stevens still managed to really surprise me!
In deutscher Sprache ab 2018 als "Ich beobachte dich"