Review: A suspenseful page-turner
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 30, 2014
I received an ARC free from the author in exchange for my honest review.Psychophilia, by Michelle Muckley is structured around a woman recovering from memory loss and psychosis. She is pregnant, and very excited to be so, but her husband has recently seemed to lose interest in her. She is afraid that he is having an affair with their, altogether too perfect, Japanese maid, Ishiko. She wants her husband's affection back, and secretly imagines murdering her beautiful young maid.Michelle's writing style is clear and evocative, she creates an aura of intrigue and tension with her words, which makes for exciting reading. The book is very hard to put down, and extremely suspenseful.The characters are realistically drawn, but none too likable, especially the prime protagonists, Charlotte and Gregory, the husband and wife team around whom the story unfolds. However, this in no way detracts from the tale, in fact it kinda creates a morbid curiosity for the reader to relish. Suspense pulses throughout the piece and makes the book a rollicking page-turner of a novel.I especially liked the dark, foreboding air that swirls through the story, it engulfs the protagonists and promotes the concept of confusion so inherent in the work. Life after all, seldom produces satisfying reaction to reason, and even more so where mental illness is present. This is a disturbing tale about a woman whose distraught emotions are more a product of her own mind than the reality in which she finds herself. Her existence is fraught with imaginings, and makes for more than one jaw-dropping twist in the story.