The Other Woman
Published on October 13 th 2020, ‘The Other Woman’ is a crackling story about love, marriage, lies and fate, showing how our destinies turn on the smallest connections and decisions.
On a normal day, in a normal house, on a normal street, wife and mother Fran has had enough. She packs a case, leaves a note for her menacing bully of a husband, Pete, and one for her beloved twenty-year-old son, Harry, and heads to the airport in a last-ditch bid for freedom.
In another house, on another street, Helena is despairingly baiting her husband Jack into a fight. He has grown so distant lately, it feels like the only way to get him to take notice of her. Passionate, volatile, increasingly fragile, she is fast running out of hope.
Equally trapped, equally desperate, Helena and Fran do not know that their lives are about to collide. As their worlds tangle the fall-out is terrible, taking loyalties to breaking point and shifting boundaries of allegiance in ways no one could have foreseen.
I particularly like the structure of this thriller, with different sections which give you the perspective of different women. You realise that they are partly giving you different sides of the same tale and that each woman makes assumptions which may not be right...
I really love it when a book draws me in from the very first page...
Utterly brilliant! This book grabs you from the first page, and never lets you go. I absolutely loved it. At times I found myself holding my breath, it was so tense and so well written. Fran and Helena are both 'other women'…. you get totally invested in both sides of the story. So cleverly done. I felt so involved in this story and found myself thinking about it a lot during the day. A fantastic read. Gripping, moving, characters you care about. Highly recommend.
Emotionally, the whole book is absolutely spot on – when the characters hurt, you hurt too – and it very much puts you through the wringer at times. But there are moments of joy, and ultimately, it’s hopeful and uplifting – but my goodness, it’s quite a journey getting to that point. I’m a big fan of relationship-based drama, and this is one of the best I’ve read in a while. A definite recommendation from me.
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