by Louise Mey (translated by Louise Rogers Lalaurie)
SYNOPSIS
Missing persons don't always stay that way
Sandrine is unhappy in her body, her house and her life. But none of that matters when she meets her man. He makes room for her, a place in his home, with his son. He cares about where she is, who she is speaking to. He loves her, intensely. Everything would be perfect, if only the first woman, the one from before, would just stay away...
REVIEW
What happens when you meet somebody and you think that fate has brought you together, but you are in fact the second woman in his life? What happens when the first woman makes a sudden reappearance after going missing for two years, threatening to ruin the life you have built together? And...what happens when that man you have been living with begins to unravel - what exactly was his involvement in the first woman's disappearance, and should you be concerned for your own safety as well as hers? Sandrine is a woman who was emotionally abused by her father, and as a result isn't familiar with any other type of healthy relationship with men. She feels that the way she is treated by her controlling partner is normal - his behaviour is to be blamed on other people and other circumstances causing him to act nastily. She would never consider the fact that he is unstable (possibly dangerous), and is having an increasingly negative impact on not only her, but also on his young son. The Second Woman started as I'd imagined it would, but I quickly realised that it was going in a very different and much darker direction than I was expecting. It was bleak and emotional, hard-hitting and, at times, uncomfortable to read. Some of the actions described were brutal, and there was a particularly heartbreaking moment when despite ticking box after box of descriptions of controlling behaviours, Sandrine desperately tries to cling onto the few things he does not do to her, rather than accepting that there is something wrong. Altogether, The Second Woman was an incredibly sobering account of domestic violence that will stay with me for a long time. The perfect choice for fans of Keeper by Jessica Moor and Kate Reed Petty's True Story.
Louise May said; I wanted to write about what I had learned on the subject of coercion, but I didn’t want to have an intellectual and theoretical approach to the subject. It’s easy to judge and discard people who end up being controlled by someone as weak, or maybe even a little ‘stupid’. What I learnt while doing research for my previous novels was that it does, in fact, happen to people of all backgrounds and social classes...
You can read an interview with Louise May about The Second Woman on the Pushkin website - link below.
https://pushkinpress.com/pushkin-vertigo-spotlight-the-second-woman-by-louise-mey/?mc_cid=5f555b8b8f&mc_eid=5e2308d765
Thanks to @pushkinpress and @meylouise for the opportunity to read and review.
Fiction: Thriller / Psychological Thriller / Domestic Thriller
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1782277156
Pages: 224 pp
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