Review by New York Times Review
The action in this icicle-sharp British chiller kicks in with an act of civic kindness : A stranger returns a dropped wallet to its owner. Unbeknown to the grateful recipient, an overwhelmed homemaker and toddler's mom named Emma, the wallet was not in fact mislaid. What's more, Emma shares a distant history with the well-heeled and effortlessly urbane good Samaritan, Nina, which apparently only Nina recalls. A mother herself (of a drifting teenager) as well as the neglected daughter of a successful composer, Nina acutely intuits Emma's vulnerability, attributing it to the anxieties and "flat-out invisible drudgery of family maintenance, the vanishing of personality as everyone else's accrues," and exploits those tensions with a breathtaking vengeance. The stray wallet is but the first in an alarming series of infelicities that will plague Emma as Nina insinuates herself further into her life, orchestrating domestic chaos under the camouflage of serving as an altruistic friend. The author proves as crafty as her diabolical Nina, seesawing between the two women's points of view in a tucked-in manner that sustains and ratchets up an atmosphere of things about to spill. If Lane tends to oversell the Sisyphean moil and toil of maternal responsibilities, that may be a decoy, calculated to allay our suspicion that the beleaguered Emma represents for her stalker something quite other than she initially seemed. This is psychological bait-and-switchery to put on the shelf alongside Patricia Highsmith and Georges Simenon.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 18, 2015]
Review by Booklist Review
What is it about Emma Nash that fascinates Nina Bremner? Nina, a successful landscape painter with a husband and daughter, seems to be what is called a pulled-together woman, but old feelings resurface when she recognizes Emma on a London street one day. Emma, for her part, does not recognize Nina. Now a mother with a toddler and a baby on the way, she is completely caught up in the mess and minutiae of daily life, and from her perspective, Nina's appearance on her doorstep (having recovered Emma's lost wallet) seems to mark the beginning of a useful friendship. Nina sees things very differently, however, and uses every opportunity to insinuate herself more deeply in Emma's life. Events are narrated alternately by the two women often the same events, with the same dialogue, but presented from two different points of view. Nina's calculations, side-by-side with Emma's heedlessness, create a growing sense of menace. Give this to readers who appreciate subtlety as well as suspense.--Quinn, Mary Ellen Copyright 2014 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Lane follows her debut, Alys, Always, with a gracefully written psychological thriller about friendship wielded as a weapon. Affluent artist Nina Bremner glimpses a lovely but disheveled pregnant woman shopping with a toddler one day and experiences a shock of recognition. She once knew Emma Nash-and her hatred for the other woman simmers, though it's not clear why. When Nina lifts Emma's wallet and pretends to have found it on the street, Emma does not recognize her. Alternating chapters in the women's viewpoints reveal the friendship Nina proffers like a fairy tale's gleaming, poisoned apple. Nina's acts of sabotage-rifling through Emma's possessions, surreptitiously beckoning her son away when he strays from Emma's side in the park, taking and discarding the toy bunny he clings to-go undetected until Nina offers Emma's family a vacation stay at Nina's father's opulent home. There she waits patiently to tear Emma's world apart. Woven through the details of the women's very different lives are suspenseful questions: how Emma has injured Nina, whether she will discover her frenemy's duplicity in time, and whether evil is created or inborn. Cannily, Lane leaves some of the answers ambiguous; like Nina herself, the novel is subtle, deliberate, chillingly effective, and hauntingly sad. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
On the surface, Nina Bremner's life seems enviable-she's a successful painter, effortlessly stylish, and owns a beautiful home. But her ease is set disrupted when she recognizes a woman she knew as a teenager on her street. Emma Nash, a once-confident adolescent, is now enduring complete disorder, with a three-year-old son and another baby on the way. She doesn't recognize Nina, and thus this slow-burning thriller is put into motion. Nina engineers a meeting and then a friendship; Emma is desperate for adult company and is swept away by Nina's generosity and compassion. But all is not empathetic with Nina. On the contrary, as the tale unfolds, it becomes clear that Nina is very angry with Emma. The question becomes, just what will Nina do and will the penny ever drop for Emma? On top of that, Lane (Alys, Always) writes searingly about the strain of minding young children and the fears and frustration involved in parenting. VERDICT Nina's motivation seems a tad lacking and Emma's obtuseness strains credulity, but the overall creepy factor is high-a tense read for fans of the intellectual psychological thriller.-Devon Thomas, Chelsea, MI (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The minutiae of everyday life turn sinister for two women in this taut, fraught tale. In her sophomore novel, Lane (Alys, Always, 2012) alternates between the perspectives of Nina and Emma, two 40-something women who've taken different routes through motherhood. Both Nina and her second husband have teenage daughters from their first marriages, but except for a bit of adolescent surliness, the throes of child-rearing are well behind them. Nina can afford to dress with chic simplicity, to keep an elegant home and to avoid her father's invitations to summer in the south of France. Ever since his wandering eye (and probable philandering) broke up his marriage to Nina's mother, Nina has resented Paul. His attentions never settle on her, so why bother with the charade of a happy luncheon, much less a family vacation? Emma, on the other hand, is saddled with a demanding toddler and expecting another baby. She knows she ought to be a doting mother, but desperate words underscore her thoughts: "All this buttoning and unbuttoning." She longs for respite from the endless laundry and meal production but knows they'll have to rely on Ben's paycheck until the kids are in school. After Nina finds and returns Emma's wallet, which she oddly lost at the greengrocer's shop, the women strike up an uneasy friendship. Emma sees in Nina the woman she wishes she could be: cultured and smartly dressed. What draws Nina to Emma is murkier. Nina, in fact, recognizes Emma, although Emma seems to have no memory of a past friendship. With chilling precision, Lane narrates the re-entwining of these two women's lives through domestic details. Afternoon teas, disastrous shopping trips, cluttered homes and even well-populated playgrounds begin to seep with danger. And the net inexorably tightens. A domestic thriller of the first order. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
