Intriguing and brilliantly read.

slow burner but the characters were so well written that the suspense gripped me throughout the book. I loved the narration which transported me into the minds of the characters.

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5 people found this helpful

Awful book

Listened to three chapters and returned..... one if the slowest, strangest books I’ve come across in terms of storyline and entertainment value. I was bored stuff listening to the three chapters.... wish audible had better access to better books as lately everything I choose seems to be dire

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1 person found this helpful

Appalling and offensive portrayal of mental illness

The author would really have benefited from doing some research into mental illness. As someone with several serious mental conditions I was quite frankly appalled by the way in which mental illness was constantly referred to as “madness” and as a creeping “evil” that could “lie dormant” inside someone before popping its head up to completely take over their mind and cause them to commit unspeakable horrors. The constant assertion that Christine’s children would be taken into care if she was proven to be “mad”, the description of the psychiatric assessment as some kind of test of competence to function as a non-murderous human being, and the complete lack of contextualisation of any of her experiences make for painful reading. This kind of story perpetuates harmful and offensive stereotypes that make life for those of us who do have mental health conditions so much harder. It makes no sense that her GP and counsellor would urge her to find out if there was a history of mental illness in her family as some way to explain (and predict) what would happen to her - this simply wouldn’t work! Mental health conditions do have some genetic basis but the environmental contribution is much larger, especially when it comes to understanding precisely how the condition will manifest. Also, I find it pretty unlikely that her counsellor would not have immediately reassured her that her dreams of raping and murdering children were far more likely to represent her fears than her desires and that, disturbing as they are, nightmares rarely reflect things we are likely to do. And in fact her shock and horror in response to those images means she is even less likely to commit these acts - this would be a very basic and simple technique her counsellor could have used to alleviate a lot of her fear and it’s stupidly unrealistic to assume that this would not have been addressed as soon as mentioned. There is so much more I could say about what is wrong with this book, but hopefully this review will go some way towards helping other readers who don’t have experience of mental illness or mental health care to see that this is not a realistic portrayal of any of this. People with mental health problems are not dangerous criminals who commit unspeakable acts unless they are locked up in “institutions” to protect everyone. One in four people have a diagnosable mental health problem. Less than one percent of these will commit violent crimes and inpatient mental healthcare is generally a short-term crisis intervention strategy, with the aim being to get the person back home and living with their family as soon as possible. I can understand that the main character in the book might have experienced these stereotypical fears (“madness” popping up out of nowhere and consuming her, being institutionalised, losing her children) because she was ignorant about mental illness, but there is no way that the numerous professionals she consults would not have reassured her that these things simply do not happen in the way she fears. In her case, her well cared for, well adjusted, non-abused or traumatised children would not in a million years be taken into care when they have a loving and supportive father in the home, strong support from the maternal grandparents and a close family friend who seems willing to have the children stay with her for extended periods of time at the drop of a hat. Forcibly taking children away from their families is always a last resort when all other options are exhausted. And if no-one else told her this, the adoption agency worker (who also inexplicably seems willing to release confidential information at the drop of a hat simply because of Christine’s dreaded psychiatric assessment) would have known how unlikely this was. I was trying to plow through this book just to find out what happened, but I reached a point where I couldn’t stand hearing one more reference to the apparent ticking time bomb of her “madness” or her birth mother’s failure to “protect” her daughters from the impending doom of the “madness” she apparently should have known she would “pass on” to them. I didn’t finish this book, so maybe it has some amazing redeeming ending, but for me, it wasn’t worth the pain and tedium of finding out.

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1 person found this helpful

Inheritance - artful couldn’t listen to anymore after 7 hrs

Inheritance - artful couldn’t listen to anymore after 7 hrs
I don’t know about character going mad ad but this was certain if driving me made with boredom
Didn’t think narrator did the I’d the book any favours either

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