This was a page-turner that also came over me in hard emotional waves.
Do we ever really know our husband or to be fair, our wife? Can a good-looking charming man really be a rapist? Why would he need to? (She says with her sarcastic voice) Do people ever really change from those spoiled twits they may have been in college to something more honorable once an adult, especially someone in political office?
MP James comes home to admit to his wife, Sophie, that he's had a brief affair with someone in his office. He's very sorry, it meant nothing, was only a fling, yet it is going to hit the papers soon. Only that's not the end of it. Soon that other woman profers charges of rape and QC Kate knows, deep down, that he's guilty and is determined to prosecute him and prove it.
Each chapter paints a different view and sometimes goes back in time to college to tell the deeper story, which could be disorienting, but flows easily in part thanks to the chapters being well headed by name and date and they just seem to flow.
It's nerve-wracking for James, the PM's best bud since they were schoolboys. His fears and uncomfortability are nothing compared to what the women, his wife, Sophie, his victim, and his prosecutor, Kate. go through emotionally. While we only relive the event and see the victim with her court testimony, even that is hard to read. The other two women though are both constant rollercoasters, reexamining the past, looking and valuing who and what they have become since, and both looking at the same man with vastly different views...in the beginning. One despises the man and is hoping that it is finally time for his comeuppance. The other stands by her man, while also slowly looking back at things in a new light or being forced to do so.
I'm so close to saying that Vaughan did an amazing job of painting the emotional worlds of two different women, BUT I'm, not sold completely on her portrait of the wife, at least in the beginning. Maybe it's me, or maybe it's an English stiff upper lip thing, but I'd be pissed as hell if my husband had an affair that was made public and then is charged with rape. It's one thing to face this situation privately, but in public, I can't even imagine. Sophie, at first, seemed to take it in stride. They sleep in the same bed and she sticks around until she finally realizes that the public scrutiny is too much for their young children and goes away to her mom's for a few days with the kids, then comes back in time to support him for his testimony. I'm sorry, he'd be lucky if he was sleeping on the couch even without the paparazzi at my door and other mummies suddenly blowing me off.
However, that is me and eventually, my thoughts on her reactions aline and that is why I haven't really dinged it starwise.
There are times that it is really a tough read yet you keep turning pages so fast that the gut punches pass quickly. It was an awesome timesuck that made me explore being in the different emotional situations.
Do we ever really know our husband or to be fair, our wife? Can a good-looking charming man really be a rapist? Why would he need to? (She says with her sarcastic voice) Do people ever really change from those spoiled twits they may have been in college to something more honorable once an adult, especially someone in political office?
MP James comes home to admit to his wife, Sophie, that he's had a brief affair with someone in his office. He's very sorry, it meant nothing, was only a fling, yet it is going to hit the papers soon. Only that's not the end of it. Soon that other woman profers charges of rape and QC Kate knows, deep down, that he's guilty and is determined to prosecute him and prove it.
Each chapter paints a different view and sometimes goes back in time to college to tell the deeper story, which could be disorienting, but flows easily in part thanks to the chapters being well headed by name and date and they just seem to flow.
It's nerve-wracking for James, the PM's best bud since they were schoolboys. His fears and uncomfortability are nothing compared to what the women, his wife, Sophie, his victim, and his prosecutor, Kate. go through emotionally. While we only relive the event and see the victim with her court testimony, even that is hard to read. The other two women though are both constant rollercoasters, reexamining the past, looking and valuing who and what they have become since, and both looking at the same man with vastly different views...in the beginning. One despises the man and is hoping that it is finally time for his comeuppance. The other stands by her man, while also slowly looking back at things in a new light or being forced to do so.
I'm so close to saying that Vaughan did an amazing job of painting the emotional worlds of two different women, BUT I'm, not sold completely on her portrait of the wife, at least in the beginning. Maybe it's me, or maybe it's an English stiff upper lip thing, but I'd be pissed as hell if my husband had an affair that was made public and then is charged with rape. It's one thing to face this situation privately, but in public, I can't even imagine. Sophie, at first, seemed to take it in stride. They sleep in the same bed and she sticks around until she finally realizes that the public scrutiny is too much for their young children and goes away to her mom's for a few days with the kids, then comes back in time to support him for his testimony. I'm sorry, he'd be lucky if he was sleeping on the couch even without the paparazzi at my door and other mummies suddenly blowing me off.
However, that is me and eventually, my thoughts on her reactions aline and that is why I haven't really dinged it starwise.
There are times that it is really a tough read yet you keep turning pages so fast that the gut punches pass quickly. It was an awesome timesuck that made me explore being in the different emotional situations.