Reviews tagging 'Child death'

The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey

2 reviews

nyoom's review

Go to review page

challenging emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

0.25


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

thesincoucher's review

Go to review page

dark mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

 
I don't think this book is Pretty Little Liars meets Black Mirror - I feel if you read this book expecting those many twists and turns, you are going to end up disappointed. Instead this books is about Evelyn suffering the greatest betrayal and humiliation you can suffer from a romantic partner. Not only is he unfaithful but he is unfaithful with a better version of yourself he has made using your life's work. So not only does he betray her but he steals her intellectual property to do it.

Evelyn is a mad, evil scientist and when you realise this, you can completely see why she and Nathan, her ex-husband, got along because he is a psychopath. Evelyn has discovered how to create clones and she thinks of them as tools, not people, and uses them as such: their function, most of the time, is to be for donating organs, body doubles for politicians and so on. They have limited and short time stamps.

The plot starts when the clone her ex-husband created, Martine, decides to meet her and Evelyn quickly realises M is pregnant, which shouldn't be possible. Things take a turn on the worse, when M calls her she has just killer their husband. In her defence, he tried to kill her first.

This book is so quietly hilarious sometimes. There is quite a bit of black humour, which I loved, and quite a lot of splashes of horror, which I adored. Gailey writes with a lot of care about abusive relationships and the side-effects they leave on people. Evelyn and Marine become closer as the book goes on out of necessity which allows the author to explore those effects in more depth as well as maternal feelings. I cannot remember a book that exemplifies so well how it feels not to want children: Evelyn is a cold, ruthless character but there were a lot of moments when she pondered about her lack of maternal instincts that I thought they were spot-on.

I absolutely loved the concepts and ideas it throws on the reader and the ending was absolutely fantastic which makes it a shame that I think it needed more editing at the beginning where it is a bit repetitive and navel-gazey.
 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
More...