Pages: 456
Published: 24th June 2025
Genre: Thriller
Content warnings: Sexual assault
Restauranteur Paddy Swann was the life of the party until the day a man pushed him in the path of an oncoming train, leaving his twenty-something daughter Ash and wife Nina devastated. Shortly after Paddy’s funeral, the two women receive a surprise in the mail: a note and package from Nick Ratcliffe, an old friend of Paddy’s, and a nondescript lighter that once belonged to him decades ago. This unexpected gift draws Nick and Nina closer together – much to Ash’s dismay.
Martha is a small-town florist with dreams of expansion. She lives with her second husband Al, her baby, and two sons from her prior marriage. But they never seem to have any money, and with his constant traveling for work, she feels like a single parent – especially when an emergency makes her realize something needs to change.
But Nick and Al may not be who they say they are, leading these three women on a shocking collision course, wishing they had heeded a warning: Don’t let him in.
There are some truly awful men out there. Now, of course it should be said that all gender identities can count bad people within their number, but this book acts as a very pointed and rather realistic portrayal of someone who appears charming and attractive on the surface only to have a sense of entitlement so deep-rooted that he sees women as items to collect and exploit, with no regard for the hurt it causes. The result is an excellent, thoroughly addictive read that you will not want to put down in a hurry.
This is the story of a polygamist who somehow holds together a life built on lies, sustaining multiple relationships with a set of unsuspecting women from different walks of life until the walls all start to come tumbling down. One would like to think that this kind of man cannot exist and is instead just a far-fetched fictional creation, yet reality tells us otherwise and it was interesting to see the list of documentaries on the real-life cases (many of which I have watched myself) Lisa Jewell mentions in her author’s note at the end.
The beauty of the plot is that it is not really a mystery. There are no genuine twists. We know who we should be rooting for and it makes no effort to disguise who the bad guy is. What in particular keeps us reading is the delightful anticipation of finding out how he is going to receive his comeuppance, but there are secondary questions that leave us desperate for answers too. Such as how many women’s lives has this man affected. And who even is he?
For the antagonist of this book goes by a lot of different names – indeed so many that we are left unsure of his actual identity. He switches seamlessly from Nick to Alastair most of the time while a past life as Jonathan occasionally creeps up in the shape of flashbacks and becomes a crucial part of the narrative. A chameleon who can sweet talk himself out of tight situations and difficult questions concerning his whereabouts, he has a undeniable charm but a demon lurking within, hiding in plain sight.
Inside his head is a murky place, full of sordid thoughts and problems to solve, but Jewell makes him a perfectly believable character who carries a lot of nuance. He lives life on the edge of being discovered by one of his many romantic partners and his mind is forever calculating his next move, although he also possesses the arrogance to think he will keep on getting away with it, revealing a deep-seated misogyny. His first-person perspective is written in a different typeface to the other narratives; another very clever creative choice.
This man is ever-present in the book one way or another, but the real protagonists of this book are the women whose lives he inserts himself into. There is Martha, an otherwise sharp-minded and high functioning mother-of-one with an apparently loving husband, and a ghost of the past called Tara. But we spend most of the time with Nina, a widow who is contacted by an attractive man who claims to have been friends with her late husband and quickly develops a liking for him.
However, her daughter Ash is very suspicious and she makes it a personal mission to prove that the Nick is not the perfect man he appears to be. It is so intriguing as the reader to follow Ash as she goes about it, and she is given a curious bit of backstory that just plants the tiniest seed of doubt in our minds that she is not the most reliable character herself, but we know from the start her intentions are genuine – it is just a case of whether Nina can be convinced.
Anyone who loves a slowly unravelling plot with dual timelines and narratives will surely be fully absorbed by this one. It is very well put together and the detail, the psychology of how Jewell gives these characters such an authentic presence is so impressive. That even extends into the settings and social circles that our undesirable man operates in, as it takes us from the coast to the city, the deprived to the affluent.
Overall, this book is more than 400 pages long but you will not waste much time at all in speeding through it, such is the absolute addictiveness of it. The chapters are short and the story keeps you engaged and enthralled and feeling many kinds of emotions on the way to witnessing it unfold in search of that wonderful poetic justice. And when the moment arrives, you will not be short-changed.
A book that I found so hard to put down. Lisa Jewell’s books are often like this, but she had me absolutely transfixed to page this time in what is a very well executed story.
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
