Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough

There has been tons of buzz surrounding the release of Sarah Pinborough's just released novel, Behind Her Eyes.

Especially the ending. And to get to the ending, you need to start at the beginning. (no cheating!) I started reading and was immediately immersed in the story.

David, a psychiatrist and his wife Adele have just moved to a new city. It's a new job for David and what looks to be a fresh start for their marriage. Louise is a single mom who works as a secretary, out on the town for a night, when she meets a handsome man. And takes him home. Unbelievably, that man turns out to be David - her new boss. And Adele wants to be friends with Louise.

So much could go wrong here eh? Nothing is as you expect it to be in this book. But there is definitely something wrong - in so many ways. I thought I had things pegged in the first few chapters and that Pinborough's plot would be similar to others in the psychological suspense genre. But I was mistaken, very mistaken. The character I thought was the victim is not. One of these three is playing a long range 'game', one you can't even begin to imagine.

The reader is privy to all the machinations of that character. We know what the other two players do not. But it's still not easy to fit together what's going on. Pinborough is quite cryptic with her dropped clues and foreshadowing.

So, that ending. It's definitely good. I thought the book had ended and then there was that one last 'gotcha'. That I did not see coming. Surprise endings are hard to pull off but Pinborough does.

So why would I rate this a four and not a five? Well, being deliberately obtuse so as not to ruin the book for you, I wasn't one hundred per cent sold on the plot device Pinborough employs to achieve that ending. Pragmatic me found it a bit of a stretch. But overall, Behind Her Eyes was a good read, one that will keep you intrigued. Read an excerpt of Behind Her Eyes.