I love accidental Booksale finds (and books are always ‘calling out’ to me) and this was a good psycho-thriller slash romance where the main character is a librarian and her husband is a sociopath. Yeah, formula for a favorite book. If you liked The Girl on the Train and thrillers set in problematic marriages, this book is for you.
The book opens with the widow Lizzie Carter visiting the site of her husband’s death a year after his fatal car accident. Before she lays her flowers for Zach Hopkins, there is another mysterious bouquet from someone else, signed XENIA. Was there another person from Zach’s past that Lizzie isn’t aware of? Or is there *a lot more* she doesn’t know of Zach? And is he… really… dead, or not? Why does Lizzie feel like she is still being watched by someone? Why does it feel as if someone familiar is breaking into her home, stealing Zach’s things, leaving sinister messages?
The book is written from both of their perspectives, chapters alternating between what happening with Lizzie and Zach’s diary entries (which Lizzie discovers in the end in his laptop). Lizzie, convinced that Zach is still alive and watching her, sets up events to get him out in the open.
The book details her grief at the death of her husband and also memories of the past. She tells of meeting in an internet dating site, to their eventual marriage and up to Zach’s death. The book is about abusive relationships and how the victims stay in them despite the actions of the abuser. In the book, Zach does LOVE Lizzie, but it the possessive, jealous kind where he wants Lizzie’s world to revolve around him and him alone and he will do anything to get rid of anyone that has a share in Lizzie’s love. In the end Zach’s possessiveness destroyed him.
There is a weird and unexpected twist at the end that only proves Zach’s sick mind. A weird look on romance from the mind of the sociopath, of love gone wrong.
Quotes:
“That’s the thing I find hard to admit. I liked his obsession. I thrilled to his need for possession. I willed on it. His jealousy - it made me feel lived and needed.”
“People ask if I’d wish I’d never met him, but it would be like wishing away the blood in my veins, or stripping my body down to its white bones. He loved me back. I know that now.”
“Sometimes the job of the bereaved is to shore up the self-worth of the comforter.”
*Pub. details: NY, Emily Bester Books, 2015.
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