This guide was initially despatched to me by the writer, Simon and Schuster Canada, for evaluate early final yr. I set it on my shelf and promptly forgot about it, as there is no such thing as a scarcity of home thrillers to select from proper now. However a couple of months in the past, I used to be chatting with one other lady who had introduced The Subsequent Lady by Pip Drysdale together with her on a seaside trip, so I popped it in my carry-on bag and hopped on a airplane to Brazil a couple of weeks in the past. It didn’t ‘wow’ me as I had hoped, however it acquired the job accomplished and held my consideration for almost all of its 360ish pages.
Plot Abstract
Billie is in her twenties, single, and simply misplaced her job as a paralegal. She’s additionally simply woken up in a stranger’s mattress with a large hangover, and no recollection of the night time earlier than. The final case she assisted with was charging a rich, good-looking younger physician, Dr. Grange, of sexual assault of certainly one of his ex-girlfriends. The witness that Billie discovered (one other certainly one of his ex-girlfriends) was keen to testify in opposition to him, however denied this on the stand and accused Billie of asking her to lie as an alternative. Billie has a historical past of mendacity, however not on this case. Previously she has helped put different males behind bars, guys who’ve cash and beauty behind them, by some means slithering their manner out of punishment, and she or he’s determined she gained’t let Dr. Grange off the hook, so now jobless, she approaches him as one other potential goal, placing herself in his sights in hopes she will be able to collect proof in opposition to him. Billie has a couple of different spectacular expertise, primarily monitoring folks on-line and protecting her personal digital footprint, so she’s capable of hack into Dr. Grange’s on-line recordsdata to search out damning movies he’s taken and shared with different males. Along with the the assistance of her pal Heather who nonetheless works at that very same regulation agency, Billie will get nearer to lastly revealing Dr. Grange for the monster he actually is – however her behind-the-scenes work places her at risk as Dr. Grange’s physique turns up on the ground of his swanky condominium the night time after she visits him at house.
My Ideas
It’s a fantastic premise for a thriller, and Billie is a protagonist you need to root for. Items of her historical past are revealed, together with the truth that her mom was bullied on-line, and killed herself as a result of this harassment. It’s this anger in the direction of folks and their careless actions in opposition to others that spurs on Billie’s want to ‘make issues proper’ for victims. She doesn’t have a lot to her identify aside from a small cat named Buttons that she rescued from one other abusive man, however due to her unbelievable (albeit, considerably unbelievable) expertise of digital monitoring, she isn’t portrayed as a sufferer. As an alternative, she’s pushed by the previous wrongs accomplished to her, and like a superhero, she’s keen to place herself in harms manner to assist others.
Regardless of Billie’s distinctive background and motivations, I discovered this guide manner too lengthy. It didn’t must be greater than 200 pages because it felt bloated with extraneous details about her on-line actions, and pointless pink herrings that served to confuse relatively than develop the suspense. A lot of it was additionally unbelievable; the coincidences, the returning plot threads from earlier, Billie’s expertise, it was all an excessive amount of when showing in the identical novel. As I stated above, it will get the job accomplished as a seaside learn to cross the time, however it might have been improved in many alternative methods, and this style is just too crowded to waste one’s time on a guide with so many faults.
