The typical plot of a Sophie Hannah thriller sounds ridiculous when you condense it. A man yearns for a family. His wife has a child to please him, but she does not love her daughter. Desperate for affection, the little girl gets angrier and angrier and throws an electric heater in her mother’s bath. Realising her mother is hurt, she throws herself on top of her, and electrocutes herself as well. To cover up the scandal, the father hides the bodies. When a spiteful classmate of his daughter hints to her mother that she knows about the tensions in her family, he kills her and her mother, and hides their bodies as well. Then he has an affair with the novel’s heroine, kidnaps her, locks her up and tries to impregnate her so that they can raise in captivity the happy family he could never enjoy in freedom.
Absurd, as I said.
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