by Camilla Lackberg
The Gilded Cage is a story about Faye who moves to Stockholm in an attempt to put her troubled childhood behind her. As a student at business school she meets and falls in love with Jack, and together they build up a very successful company. Jack decides to take the lead with the business, while Faye steps back from the limelight to focus on being a mother and housewife. After the years of psychological abuse and countless affairs which followed, Faye is left devastated and alone and finally decides that Jack needs to be destroyed - Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
This is a very different style to the other books I have read by Camilla Lackberg. A psychological thriller in the vein of Gone Girl rather than the more standard Scandi Crime / detective thrillers. It is a difficult one for me to review because on one hand I found it quite addictive and I wanted to keep reading and find out what happened. On the other hand, the subject matter and some of the topics dealt with in the novel made it hard for me to really enjoy the storyline. Several times I found myself hoping that the story wouldn’t go the way I thought it was going and the descriptions of both physical and psychological abuse were at times hard to read.
Overall, I didn’t enjoy this story as much as the books I have read in the Fjällbacka series and I think other fans would agree. It was very well written, had a really contemporary feel and an interesting idea, but I think the target audience for this type of story is very different to fans of more classic crime and detective thrillers.
Thanks to NetGalley and Harper Collins UK for the opportunity to read and review it.
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