In this intense thriller, Lila Bennett is an attorney with an insatiable hunger for success. To get to where she is, Lila has made many bad choices, and one of those choices has literally split her life in two.
In one life, after celebratory drinks, she's taken captive by a masked man who seemingly knows a lot about her. Lila is trapped in a concrete cell with her feet and hands bound. She is forced to face her unsavoury actions or be killed.
Although she manages to evade being captured in her alternate life, she is still hunted by someone who is exposing her secrets one at a time. As result, her happiness, and everything she has worked for, is slowly being chipped away.
You see, in both of these scenarios, everything is on the line—her marriage, her career, and her life. Lila must make a list of those in her past that she's wronged to determine who is responsible, before it's too late. And even if she can figure out who is behind what is happening to her, will she even survive? Which Lila Bennett will emerge? Because one thing is for certain, life as she knows it is over.
Inspired by the movie Sliding Doors, Liz and Lisa have ratcheted up the suspense in their newest novel. The story starts out as linear, but when Lila literally muses that her life "could split in two," and that the choices laid at her feet would lead her on completely different paths, the narrative actually splits into two. From here, Fenton & Steinke alternate between the two scenarios at the same point in time (each chapter is title "Captured" and "Free"). Readers are not only treated to some pretty incredible writing, but are tasked to figure out who is responsible.
Lila is a complex, layered character and the perfect unreliable narrator. She's whip-smart, but her intelligence and success are ironically part of her downfall. Also, her conscious is questionable—she gets people off for murder—yet for someone who is so bold and brazen, she actually fosters insecurities about her persona.
What is remarkable, besides the writing, is that it totally makes you start to question some of the decisions you have made in your own life, and that there are always several possibilities in every scenario. Both endings are outstanding and overall, this book is so damn clever! This ambitious narrative style could have easily gotten away from Fenton & Steinke, but it figuratively knocked my socks off.
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LIZ FENTON & LISA STEINKE are the author team of five novels, including Girls' Night Out and the The Good Widow.
Liz and Lisa have been best friends for 30 years.
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