This sounded like my kind of book....creepy, controlling guy who reels in unsuspecting sweet girl and makes her life a nightmare.

This, unfortunately, is not that book. Richard doesn't reel Isla in slowly, he is not a charmer who devolves, he strikes like a ball peen hammer, exposing himself for exactly who he is immediately and Isla's willingness to go along and go along and appease and go along is so, so tiresome.

The ending was unsatisfactory and as much as it kills me I just can't say this book was for me at all.

Thank you to Lily Llewellyn, Troubador Publishing Limited and Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Here's the thing...I love a good love gone wrong book so when I saw this to download on NetGalley I thought "What the hell, how bad could it be?"

Apparently, pretty bad.

In most of these types of books you have an incredibly charming, often good looking, man/woman that slowly, over time, begin to show their inner darkness and only once they are sure that their spouse is firmly entangled in their web leaving them little options of escape. It's being drawn in to their wit and charm, as a reader, where I think to myself heck I could of fallen for this guy. Then you have the tension that comes from them trying to break free and watching those events unfold is what I love about these stories. It's so easy to see how some people fall victims to these narcissists without even realizing it because sometimes as a read I do too - I'm looking at YOU Joe Goldberg! (Be still my heart!)

Here, though, we have a woman that is so utterly stupid that it hurt my brain. I do not know the least bit about on-line dating having been with my husband since I was 20 but I do know that if on the 2nd message from a virtual stranger is "You better respect me" I would definitely swipe left......uh, not sure if I'm saying that right but you get the idea. Well, our little Isla is so weak and lonely that she overlooks this very telling piece of information and agrees to meet him. From here the rest of the book is just an obvious and predictable disaster.

Thank you to NetGalley & Troubador Publishing for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

An absolute page-turner, Lllewellyn's novel is gripping, sincere and terrifyingly veracious; not only the plot is engrossing, but also the characters are realistically depicted.

Amazing read! The author wrote a story that was interesting and moved at a pace that kept me engaged. The characters were easy to invest in.