by Emma Bamford
SYNOPSIS
If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, how much can you trust what you see?
When Maddy Wight is hired to ghostwrite the memoir of world-renowned cosmetic surgeon Angela Reynolds, she jumps at the chance to get her career back on track. But the deeper she digs, the more elusive the doctor becomes.
Confined to Angela’s glass-walled house in the Scottish Highlands, Maddy can’t shake the unsettling feeling of being watched. As a result, she is drawn ever closer to Angela’s enigmatic business partner Scott, whose mercurial moods change as quickly as the darkening moors outside.
Returning to London once the book is finished, Maddy is excited for their future together. But news of Scott’s death shatters the celebrations at the book’s launch party. Which is why, months later and still grieving, she is blindsided to see Scott entering a tube station just in front of her. And before she knows it, she is following him.
In this reimagining of Hitchcock’s Vertigo, jeopardy can be lurking where you least expect it…
REVIEW
I am a huge fan of Hitchcock's Vertigo and also of the book which inspired the film, Vertigo by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. I honestly don't think that you can't beat this story if you're looking for a psychological thriller which plays on the idea of obsession and complex psychology. The darkness, the plot twists and the noir elements are just perfect.
So... when I heard that Eye of the Beholder was a reimagining of this very story, I knew straight away that I had to read it, and that I would probably love it knowing that it had a similar concept. I loved the way that it took Vertigo and flipped it on it's head, with the focus this time being on the female protagonist and her infatuation with a male character. This meant that despite the story being a reimagined version of Vertigo, it had a more contemporary flavour, this was also helped by the addition of social media into the story.
The best thing though, was that it really did have that same sense of suspense and intrigue. As soon as Maddie stepped into that house there was an ominous threat that nothing good would come out of the contract she had signed to write the memoir for Angela. I could feel it, even at this early stage in the story, before anything sinister had really started to happen.
As with Vertigo, there are difficult themes explored throughout the story - mental illness, trauma, loss and guilt, and these are worked into the story in such a sensitive and clever way. With this story, nothing is ever as it seems. The books I love the most are the ones where you end up doubting your own mind while reading them, constantly second-guessing and changing your opinion on the characters and their intentions, and Eye of the Beholder was brilliant for this!
Thanks to Anne Cater - @RandomTTours, Emma Bamford - @emmavbamford and Simon Schuster UK - @simonschusterUK for the opportunity to read and review.
Publisher: Simon Schuster UK Genre: Thriller / Psychological Thriller
ISBN: 978-1398526914
Pages: 448pp
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