Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough

Don’t Trust This Book

Don’t Trust These People

Don’t Trust Yourself

And whatever you do, DON’T give away that ending

Louise is a divorced single mum who works in a psychiatrists practice. On one of her very few evenings out, she meets a man in a bar to whom she is instantly attracted and they kiss.

After her night out, Louise gets to work and realises that David, the man in the bar, is her new boss. Thus begins a triangular relationship that will soon spiral into a web of lies and deceit until it is unclear who is telling the truth and just who, if anyone, can be trusted.

Adele is the troubled wife of psychiatrist David. Friendless in a new town, she runs into Louise, seemingly by accident and the two begin to chat. They have soon struck up a friendship and when Louise realises that Adele is David’s wife, she begins to extricate herself from their relationship.

As she gets to know Adele, she realises that not everything in David and Adele’s marriage is straightforward, and she begins to see that David may be a different character from the man she imagined him to be.

On this level, the book works perfectly well as a domestic noir. Extremely well plotted; tightly written and with the alternating narratives of Louise and Adele, there is enough in the plot to keep the reader interested and intrigued.

But it is Adele’s backstory and the subsequent events that raise this book to another level. There is a degree of suspension of disbelief required, but it is so skilfully done, so woven into the domestic noir narrative, that you scarcely realise where you are headed.

This is a dark and twisted story of obsessive love and desperate remedies.

Behind Her Eyes will undoubtedly be one of the hits of 2017.

Behind Her Eyes is published by Harper Collins Uk on 26 January 2017.