I loved the dark undertones of the human psyche, which was delivered in this relatively short and fast paced novel from Bea Setton.

Whilst the author says herself this is not a campus novel, or a covid novel, both of these do make a great backdrop for the exploration of the dangers of obsession, jealously, and isolation and validation.

The controversially bleak Cambridge setting (as opposed to the idyllic university town) is very atmospheric in tone to the eerie landscape of the narrators mind.

‘Two different things wanteth the true man: danger and play. Therefore he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.’

The twists and turns of the plot and the narrators mental state has me on edge and I’m a big fan of absolutely WILD ending!

I was compelled to read this is one and a half sittings. This was a big anticipated release for me this year and now I can’t wait to get my hands on a physical copy when it’s published.

Thanks to Doubleday and NetGalley for an early copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC to review

3 stars!?
It was a little bit of a maybr 2.25 but I'll bump it up for the ending.

Not gonna lie, I didn't end up getting invested into this as I had hoped. But I carried on, yeah the characters are insufferable and the descriptions can be much for people. But I like reading about a flawed person. It's well written but felt like it was dragged out at some points that weren't really needed and thst took my interest and reading flow in a different direction at times.

<i>"No one ever mentions the unsightly things. So we learn to avert our gaze, to look intently at what we wanted to see, and then not at all. This selective myopia, which I rapidly and readily adopted, was to cause me much grief; it meant I was focused too narrowly on certain things, unable to see the whole picture."</i>

I thought this was SO GOOD. Incredibly entertaining but also substantial. I could NOT put it down which is exactly what I want from a book!! Fantastic similes - love the professor "dressed like a stapler would if it were granted sentience", or the friend who says the boyfriend is "like Dustin Hoffman after some war trauma" - and descriptions of Cambridge. The plot, about a slow but sure obsession, raises interesting questions about communication dynamics in relationships, femininity, and the impact of gaslighting. Loved the depiction of lockdown - god, the drinking!! Too real. The sequence where she starts wearing the ex-girlfriend's clothes and cooking more in order to be more 'feminine' - a lot to unpack there! I also really, really liked the ex-girlfriend character - powerful figure of menace and threat. As the narrator herself observes, very unusual to have the woman be the figure of violence! Overall just really well written. Honestly think Bea Setton is a Patricia Highsmith for our times!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

<i>"If this was a woman, what was I? What did they make of me, with my big nose, my lack of grace?"

"I spent my spare time googling 'how to give better blow jobs' and 'aphrodisiac dinners for two on a budget'."

"I wasn't sure how I felt about being classified as the female equivalent of a succulent... what was Caden's ex? A beautiful hot house orchid? Something complicated and delicate. But I supposed it was better than seeming needy and demanding."</i>

[After watching her boyfriend's football match and sitting in the pub with all the other girlfriends] <i>"I couldn't imagine these men watching women perform some amateur sport for hours on end. Unless it was amateur pornography."

"Going through a person's devices is probably the closest you'll ever come to being inside their mind."</i>

Not sure whether to be impressed or disappointed. I was really drawn in by the synopsis of Plaything: Soon after Anna starts her PhD in Cambridge, she enters a relationship with a man who hasn't gotten over his ex. But not in a casual "I still have feelings for her"-way, more like: he constantly compares Anna to her, does the same things that he did with her (Olivia Rodrigo is calling), his entire house is full of her belongings still. Oh, and she's allegedly "crazy". Soon, Anna feels as though there's a third person in her relationship, and she starts obsessing over the mysterious girl in her boyfriend's past.
What seems to be a straightforward story is actually anything but. Plaything moves beyond the expected play of power dynamics and embarks on twists and turns that kept me going: Huh? That's both the novel's strength and weakness, seeing as for long stretches I was left wondering if there was any purpose to the plot. Initially, the academic setting really drew me in, but once Anna encounters Caden, I found it hard to stay engaged because I couldn't figure out why she was attracted to him in the first place. Despite being the main character, I found Anna's characterization to be lackluster psychology 101 at best – not even mentioning all the other characters who were entirely two-dimensional. At times, Plaything read more like a first draft than a fully fleshed-out novel. And yet it poses really interesting questions about sexism, gendered bias, reliability, mental health, and most importantly: Can we ever truly know someone?

(2,5 stars)

This novel was largely enjoyable. The characters were very distinct, particularly Anna, Ji-woo, and Giselle. All characters served the narrative well. Despite not being a campus novel, Plaything boasted some of the most beautiful imagery of Cambridge which I particularly appreciated. I liked that the pace was somewhat slow in the beginning, allowing readers to truly escape into Anna's world. Caden and Anna's relationship felt raw and visceral, and I'm sure many readers can relate to it.

My gripe is with the pacing towards the end. The ending felt especially rushed, and I am left with frustrating questions. There were no allusions to Jack and Caden being siblings. Perhaps a few hints at how similar they looked/acted would have made more sense for the reveal. Giselle's motivations to kill Anna are also unconvincing -- if she had killed Caden suspecting him of the revenge porn, how would it lead back to Anna? Compared to the rest of the novel, that felt so well-executed and sophisticated, the ending negatively affected my overall impression. I can appreciate ambiguous endings but this erred on the side of messy. Other loose threads included Caden barely acknowledging Pringle's absence, where the engagement ring ended up, why there were baby teeth? I guess these questions are a mark of investment into the novel, but it is something to consider.

Thank you again for the ARC and I hope my feedback is of use.

I just couldn’t connect with the characters, the storyline wasn’t going well for me, I struggle to finish it. Just definitely wasn’t the book for me. Is not a bad book, is well written and I am sure some readers would love it

It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters that contain reflections on the death of an animal, infidelity, suicide, substance use, sexual image-based abuse (i.e. nonconsensual pornography), theft, & others.

The tingle of a promise, ominous, loathsome, looming, renders the threat ticklish, gruesome, & exciting. When a promise is not kept, when something is hinted at, only to be forgotten, one is sunken in quicksand by the angelic hands of a friend. Literature that engages the tonal shift of enticement, one that lingers just outside of the deliberate letter, twinges inside the iris of the reader; the next page will hold something more; the scene that follows shall make clear what the smog has cloistered. Yet, the writer whose tone escapes them, like a mime who screams out in terror, leaves readers with disappointed spittle soaking their bib, where the saucy delight of broken ribs should have been.

The author & I have met through her work in the past. When I first read Setton’s work “Berlin” (2022) I hoped to find the delight of oddity. The promise that lingers in the synopsis of Setton’s works breathes air into rotting lungs. Readers, like myself, who enjoy a challenge will be deflated upon completing the windmill-style turn through her plots but, readers who are unlike me will revel & gloat at the feet of the feast she presents them.

Both of Setton’s books appeal to a reader who is looking for a challenge. These readers are not seeking out Plato’s “The Republic” (375 BC) or Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” (1967), nor are they coyly ruminating on Yiyun Li’s “The Book of Goose” (2022). Rather, these readers enjoy the bizarre colours of a palette left unused; enough to make them tongue-tied when reality seeps its curious fingers into the spine & paralyzes the story where it stands.

These readers are fond of the odd as long as it remains caged; they long for the horror that can be seen through the screen of a protective visor; they are habituated with the heart’s murmur after a branch snaps in the woods. However, they do not seek to go outside the confines of their comfort. I do not begrudge them for this, in fact, I applaud their self-awareness. Setton writes for them & I am sure their hunger will be appeased by her second novel.

In essence, this story follows Anna as she pursues her PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2020. The Coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread its wings & altered her inflated egotistical approach to life; she meets a handsome man & they have sex; her friends are smart & vapid all at once. The story follows her throughout the banal realizations that she comes to. She meets herself head-on, watching her actions in reflective services & in the whites of the eyes of the men she covets & yet, in the end, another woman is the magnificent beast that towers over the castle & castrates the love she seeks to possess.

Of course, this is an oversimplification. Anna sees a car crash, she has her diamond earrings stolen, & she is responsible for the death of a cat & multiple members of the rodent family. Anna is also a person who is allowed to make mistakes. She invests all her time with a beautiful man because he is beautiful & she is not. This makes her feel of value when all along she claimed to be better than women who were granted the blessing via their genetic code. The purpose of the narrative seems to encourage readers to empathize with Anna while also degrading her for the harm she causes those around her.

The semi-automatic format of this story left me disappointed & winded. I had succumbed to the enthusiasm granted to me in the opening scenes; a dual car crash, a chase in the roadway, pounding fists of violence, a runner, & first responders who never arrived. Yet as the novel roared onward, these scenes—my promise of horrors set to be unearthed like the ravenously broken jaws of a corpse—never gave the reader, or the story, more than what they had at their introduction.

The cars were driven by Caden & Jack, brothers who sought out Giselle, the woman turned monster as a consequence of having everything. The absence of first responders was nothing but a fluke & if you live in a city not unlike my own; this ominous fiction is also an unfortunate reality.

For reasons I cannot quite explain, I read this entire book hoping that Setton would return to her work. The pause of the tone of malevolence that she incorporated early on was all but abandoned, as though the woebegone banality of a woman self-declaring herself smarter than others was worth all the pages she dedicated to her. I suppose that at some point I decided that the crudely boring nature of the seesaw was something I could masticate; it was no loss to me to spend a few hours waiting in the wings for Anna to become the villain I knew she could be.

I have been clear-cut with my disdain for the lack of direction in tone & trajectory in this story. However, I did read the entire book. As I have said, there are reasons for this, some of which I might not be able to discern but, should I take a moment to reflect, it is no secret to me that the primary reason I was able to do so was because Setton’s writing is easy to digest.

There is no depth to the vernacular that is employed, even when the characters are expressing the depths of their theologies. This is not something I find fault in, rather it is helpful to approach this style of story with monotonous language that engages every reader; one need not be a theologian or astrophysicist to comprehend the underbelly of the women’s studies at Cambridge.

On the other hand, the links that formed between subjects explored, both among the characters & the flow of the story could have been allowed to seep further into the plot. That being said, I am not certain that Setton wanted to write a devoutly amoral & overall heinous story.

My conclusion is that she wrote the story she had in mind; I appreciate her efforts & her success in doing so. This leads me to ruminate on feelings of vexation; I know she could have done more.

This book is a prime example of what it means to attract a person who is unlike the self. I know I am not the target reader & I would be hopeful in stating that Setton might agree. There is a part of me that longs to encourage her to go deeper, to drive home the homilies of terror that linger just outside of her spider’s web but, this is not what she has wanted to do.

This review should not act as a call to action; the author has written out page after page about a character who can be forgiven by the right audience. Setton’s story is about a woman who is still very young. The main character is twenty-three & as someone who was once this age, a moon or two ago, I understand how very juvenile a person of this age is, in reality, now that I am no longer shooed in this very space by birthdays & sentient holidays.

Her mistakes are quite horrible & her decision to remain engaged in a rumpus dull relationship with Caden is boring but, Anna is still growing. The world has yet to open itself to her. When she speaks about her childhood & the nature of her family dynamic, the reader will note no horrific trauma; there exists only the sullen nature of a rainy day & parents too egotistical to care.

Do not mistake me, I firstly do not wish for anyone to be traumatized, it is a rather despairingly drunken state to live in. Secondly, the minutia of Anna’s experiences are not ones I seek to diminish. Rather, I highlight her family life, her upbringing, & her character as markers of a person who has not necessarily had the opportunity to be faced with the terrible things that do exist, in plain sight.

Anna’s father is a beast, like many men—many women, if we are being honest—he wants his wife to be thin, he has opinions that are always correct & he cannot accept the nature of nuance that exists in the human species. Anna’s mother is frail & angry, she does not seek to escape her cage as it defines her as a woman of the house; a kept flower in the forest burnt to a crisp.

Neither parent is particularly spectacular. Feeding your children wet dog food ranks rather uncomfortably as a nasty thing to do. However, Anna has an inflated ego as a result of the comfort of her home & therefore is poorly prepared to deal with the ferociously complicated nature of real life.

During the earlier parts of the story, I found myself displeased with Anna & entirely uninterested in what she had to say. She covets the nature of her superiority as though readers have not walked the streets of life, once, if not twice. I found her character entirely dull & yet, she was the narrator. From some point in the future, she felt within her a challenge & desire to tell us a story. This same story ends when Giselle, Caden’s ex-girlfriend, follows her down the path to what one might assume is her death. This leads me to the nature of the secondary & tertiary characters.

Setton fleshed out her characters well. By nature, this story is not profound & does not explore the depth of the situation at play. It will not come as a surprise to readers such as myself that the story ends on a distinctly ambiguous note.

As I read, I wanted to have the story told to me by someone who would be honest. I did not trust Anna to be able to be clear with her thoughts or her experiences. She transformed everyone around her into villains. Perhaps, Caden did commit suicide & perhaps, Giselle is riddled with regret for the pain she caused. The reader will never actually understand the parameters of what is truth as Anna does not look to speak it.

Truthfully, I did not hate this story. I will seek out Setton’s work again. However, I did not like this story either. I did not want to accept that there was nothing more to this story than a peculiar triangle meshed with sodden lake water & drowned in disregard.

There is a scary story that can be found awaiting the curtain behind the nature of reality that is often cocooned within bulbously tepid stories. Anna toyed rather romantically with death on more than one occasion & she felt it her due to live on. Her pleas to die were to the void, something she knew would never answer her. Would it be cruel to say she is a coward for calling into the Dark Matter to have a desire fulfilled while she is aware that it cannot deliver?

Ultimately, the body of this text is dull because it altered the course I wished to run; I wanted servant’s bodies & biblical slices of clay & skin to render my hands into anguished clusters. Instead, I was met with a monotone girl who is blonde & thin; she is educated & well-off; her goals are achievable & people will forgive her cruel naivety because one time she cried alone.

How utterly unforgivable it is to forget that Anna is also a person who engaged in sexual image-based abuse. Therefore, forget, the reader shall not. In life, forgiving & forgetting seems to be done in tandem & maybe Anna will be able to bloom into a person, unlike the one we met in this book. However, one must not forget that consequence is often the lingering encourager behind change.

I peruse the muddy river & those early rising who breathe a mist that flows from the mouths of the silent people in Cambridge like a ghost, haunting the very streets that hide bombs underneath. A narrator’s cool temperament does not excuse a boring tale. No lore can reinvigorate the tonsils extradited from the cavity of the mouth, so one must therefore choose whether to speak or remain silent.

Were the diamond earrings worth hiding in plain sight? Was the secret worth keeping that killed the cat who sought out the warmth of a cave of wonders, Anna could not invade? What is certain is that the freedom to leave off here is mine to hold & yours to accept & so, with these words we part ways, possibly never to meet with this sordid tale of fictional sadness, ever again.

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House UK, & Bea Setton for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

‘Hinc lucem et pocula sacra’ From here [we derive] light and sacred draughts. Cambridge University motto.

Anna is very clever, way smarter than you or me,most probably. She’s currently on her way from Dorset to Newnham College, Cambridge, having been awarded a scholarship for a PhD in Science. Her life is full of the richness of promise, though the drive to the university is dramatic, in a close shave kind of way, perhaps a harbinger of doom. She’s mysteriously fearful, maybe that’s to do with the research she’s about to undertake or perhaps to do it to do with the handsome physiotherapist Caden who she will fall for. Whatever it is, there’s menace lurking beneath those Gothic arches and gargoyles as she treads the aspirational cobbles. This is a novel of the balance of power, of obsession and tangled lives against the backdrop of academia. Will Anna’s Cambridge dream become a nightmare, not least as Wuhan is coming, and though this is not a Covid novel, it does play its part.

There is a discordant chime at the very beginning of the novel, but meeting fellow students Ji-Woo and Vicky sets the storytelling off in a positive way, that is until enter Caden. This is a character driven novel and the characterisation is excellent, especially of Anna‘s portrayal, though it’s very hard at times to get a handle on her. I can’t say she’s especially likeable, she’s definitely smarter than the average bear, and she’s certainly ambitious, which is clearly not a bad thing. She can be arrogant yet at the same time she can be humble, she puts on a show (the Anna show) to cover moments of discomfort, and then I warm to her, especially her clumsy attempts. However, you can also feel sorry for her too, her uncomfortable family dynamics have given us so many hangups, it’s a wonder she can get up in the mornings as she can be so insecure. Caden is a conundrum too, and there are clear warning signs and off notes, especially with regard to his ex Giselle, and so your concern for Anna grows. The most likeable character is Ji-Woo , who it would be very hard to dislike.

Cambridge is a terrific backdrop to this messy story, there are some very atmospheric settings and scenes that are so well described, they’re easy to visualise. You definitely get a flavour of what life must be like in one of the best universities in the world. Although there are some funny moments as a consequence of awkwardness or clumsiness, this is an uneasy, painful and messy story, it’s dark in tone, at times it’s disturbing, the atmosphere can be very tense, because the ingredients include jealousy, manipulation, loss, cruelty, in addition to obsession. As the novel reaches its brutal, revengeful climax, there is a very good unexpected twist. There’s a circularity to it, and a chilling ultimate end.

However, it does have its moments where it’s a slow moving as the River Cam and it feels a bit like you’re waiting in SloMo for the car to crash. It’s drawn out and it might even be more effective as a short story.

Overall though, it’s a fascinating character study, especially of flawed Anna, and a turbulent love story which is rich atmosphere. The cover is brilliant.

Trigger warnings - Anna’s university research involves animal euthanasia, also suicide warnings.

With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Random House UK, Transworld for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.

CW: pet death

Not for cat lovers, but apart from that, I thoroughly enjoyed this new novel. I had no expectations of it, not having come across the author before, and I felt this was strongly written in terms of how women see themselves; the heroine's hang-ups about her appearance were very convincing.

The novel also captures the hallucinogenic nature of the early days of lockdown, where some of the most important parts of the plot take place, and how the pandemic (plus some instances of romantic and sexual jealousy and a random theft of laboratory guinea pigs) set the scene for a traumatic climax.

I thought the writing was excellent and well-sustained, so I'm surprised to see that some readers aren't feeling it, but having lived in Oxford (rather than Cambridge - I'm imagining the river scenes taking place near the Isis pub rather than the Green Dragon) and gone through lockdown along with the rest of the UK, I had no trouble imagining how this plot would unfold and actually quite enjoyed revisiting this weird world - though I was also relieved when it all ended!

“Knowledge isn’t inherently dangerous. It’s like a hammer. You can use it to build a house or to crack someone’s skull. As long as people don’t do anything bad with it, I don’t think there’s stuff we shouldn’t try to know.”

Bea Sutton’s new novel is a dark and twisted story about Anna. She is a top student in her field at Cambridge, she soon meets her attractive boyfriend Caden. Their lives become entwined really fast and she begins to pick apart his behaviour around her. He constantly mentions an ex which becomes Anna’s obsession. How far is she wiling to go to learn everything about her boyfriend and his ex’s relationship at the risk of ruining her own?

This was one of those books that will make you cringe as you read it but also the answer is there right in front. From the start when she meets Caden there are hints to his unusual behaviour and comments. It’s obvious there’s more than what he is letting on.

This is a fast paced novel where the reader can’t help but become just as consumed as Anna is with finding out the truth. As something awful is inevitable, it’s not what the reader would expect.

This will definitely appeal to you if you’re looking for a quick bizarre read.

Absolutely brilliant, loved it. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me an advance copy, I will definitely be recommending.

Description:
Anna's a PHD student at Cambridge when she meets Caden, an unbelievably handsome physiotherapist she can't believe has fallen for her. Anna feels constantly compared to his brilliant ex-girlfriend, Giselle, and becomes increasingly obsessed as covid forces her to move in with Caden... and all the ex-girlfriend's unclaimed things.

Liked:
This book did a great job of putting me in the shoes of someone I could not have imagined sympathising with. Anna is very much not my type of girl, and our values are very different (although I can absolutely sympathise with the crippling self-doubt!). As the paranoia ratchets up, however, whilst I can't exactly say I was egging her on, I was powerfully curious about what the hell was going on with Caden. There are very few likeable characters in this book, but everyone is fairly recognisable. This felt like a less extreme, much more effective Boy Parts.

Disliked:
This is one of those novels which leaves you with a grubby feeling. There were times when I really regretted reading this before bed. I think that's exactly what Setton was going for, though! I felt like the first part of the story could have been a fair bit shorter, and would have expected more around the claustrophobia of lockdown, but I have to disagree with some reviews which feel the book is slow: it's a short little thing, and I felt it kept up a decent clip throughout.

Would recommend, particularly for fans of uncomfortable unhinged girl lit.

I was attracted to the blurb (and to the cover) because the theme of obsession, with a backdrop of academia, Covid and Cambridge seemed like ingredients for a cracker of a novel. There was a lot I liked about this novel, but the plot was obscured by too much overwriting, and too often I felt a need to say, out loud, 'Just get on with it'. When the writing flows, it's true, it flows well, and it's clear that Setton has the capacity to do this, but far too often, there were great patches of narrative that went on and on and on, for no narrative purpose, only, strangely for the plot to gallop to a close at the end. There's something wrong with the pacing, and I felt that the writer was working hard to crank up the word count rather than tell the story. This could, and would, have worked much better as a short novel because some of the threads were just left hanging, in fact, it felt as if there was a lack of editing about that. The resolution was bumpy, with some revelation about a character's son whom he'd never mentioned, and a sense that the writer themselves thought enough was enough. I'm being critical, I know. I also know how tricky it is to write a novel - it's a marathon - and this isn't a bad novel at all, but take a deep breath if you decide to read it because it is definitely longer than it ought to be. My grateful thanks go to the publisher and to NetGalley for the ARC.

There was a dark and menacing tone throughout the novel but I did actually find the twists and turns surprising. The narrator was unreliable which was helpful, although not deceitful to the reader. She was also not particularly likeable but also someone you could relate with to some extent. The descriptions of place and her work were jarring creating the tense atmosphere throughout and after the first quarter I began to fly through it. Due to the bleak tone it did feel heavy going at first.

Anna is a very bright student, just starting a PhD at Cambridge. She strains her wrist rowing, and meets Caden, a physiotherapist, and soon they are a couple. Not far in the background however is Caden's ex-girlfriend, a stunningly attractive French footballer, and Anna becomes obsessed about whether Caden is still involved with her. Its a terrific plot, well written, with a pretty dark ending

When Anna is accepted for her PhD at Cambridge, life is just about perfect. With busy lab work, an acclaimed Professor to impress and great girlfriends the only thing missing is an amazing boyfriend. When she meets Physio Caden everything seems to fall into place. But both University and lab are closed when Covid lockdown is put in place, and, reluctant to move back to her unhappy home life, she accepts Caden’s invitation to move in with him.
Plaything is a novel about obsession, set against the backdrop of Academia and Covid, who could resist? As it turns out, I should have. This is well written, but often long drawn out and not overly interesting for a lot of the time. I am not sure this will be a memorable experience for me.

Plaything by Bea Setton is set in a Cambridge university, but is not a campus novel, Its events take place against the backdrop of Covid, but it is not a Covid novel. Anna, our narrator, tells us this at the outset, immediately causing the reader to question what this and where it might go. It is an effective opening which leads to a narrative of a young woman becoming involved with a withdrawn man, Caden, whose ex-girlfriend Anna is still around. This is not a love triangle novel either. What this novel is, is a thrilling examination of love, loss, jealousy, and obsession. It drips with that hazy ooze of youthful passion. There are twists, and moments of violence, all held together by a narrator whom you will love and loathe in equal measure and for different reasons.

I have not read Setton's first novel, Berlin, but based on the strength of this one I shall be tracking it down.

Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.

This is my second book by this author and I throughly enjoyed Berlin but this was a bit of a let down. It sounded interesting but I didn’t enjoy the format.

If I had to describe this book in one word, it’d be ‘powerful’. I’ve read few books that are as vivid and atmospheric as this one. I was completely immersed in the protagonist’s life, and the unsettled feeling I got from this book stayed with me for a while after finishing it.

I can’t say that I enjoyed this exactly - some parts of the book are disturbing to say the least - but I appreciate its power and the sheer experience of reading it.

Plaything is a novel about obsession, image and cruelty, as a Cambridge PhD student becomes entangled with a closed-off man with an ever-present ex-girlfriend. Anna moves to Cambridge to start her PhD, and soon finds herself top in her lab and with new close friends, even though she's haunted by a chance car accident when she arrived. She meets Caden, a physiotherapist, and is enthralled, but she also feels the echoes of his ex-girlfriend, who he will barely talk about, and Anna starts to become obsessed, as the Covid lockdown removes other distractions from her life.

Told from Anna's first person perspective, the narrative unfolds with a languid menace, an undercurrent of violence and a strange sense of unknowing because Anna doesn't really know much about Caden, even when you think she should. The actual plot is pretty straightforward, with a twist or two at the end that leave unanswered questions about guilt and blame that do seem to tie together some of the themes of the book in their unanswered nature. The book is full of unlikeable characters and that makes it compelling in wondering what they will do (and why, as there's a few random plot/character details that come out of nowhere and don't really go anywhere).

The narrative explicitly states it is not a Cambridge novel nor a Covid novel at various points, but what is quite interesting is how it is those things. Though the book is at its heart about a relationship between two people who weren't really connected to each other and about a clever twentysomething woman who should have it all but falls into a hazy world of obsession, it is also—despite Anna's protestations—a look at Cambridge and Covid. The Cambridge element, not just the setting but in Anna's position as a PhD scientist and elements like the cruelty of lab animals, catalyses the obsession, making her someone who needs to know, and it is interesting to think how much this is crucial to the narrative. At the same time, the book depicts the onset of Covid and the first lockdown, and that too feels crucial to the obsession and threat, and the choices people made during that time.

The central plot with Anna, Caden, and Caden's ex-girlfriend is perhaps less interesting to me than a lot of the other elements of the book, but I enjoyed the atmosphere of it and its occasional forays into questions about what violence people inflict on others. I find it funny how much it was explicitly not dark academia, when for me, it's the sort of thing dark academia should be, exploring how particular academic environments might cause violence and harm, and it's interesting to see this kind of narrative focused on a scientist.