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Mary Beth Strikker is a smart, beautiful, and accomplished lawyer. However, she is mixed up with shady characters in her firm and can't break free. She is emotionally tied to another attorney in the office and also has a mortgage and car payments to make. She can't simply walk away. It sounds a lot like real life for those in abusive relationships. Bystanders usually can't fathom the complex feelings and confusion going on in the mind of the abused.
Good writing can lead readers on emotional rollercoasters. This is stellar writing. Like watching a thriller on television, you can't stand to watch, but you also can't stand not to peek through your fingers. For example, the reader is mesmerized as Strikker describes, "I closed the bathroom door quietly... I just stood there outside and stared through the heated and steam filled up shower door... I watched his silhouette...." Sometimes the reading gets rough, but at other times the book is suddenly funny. Fitzpatrick has readers laughing as Strikker thinks, "He was singing so off key...if the birds outside could hear him, they would find a way to fly into my house and poop on his head."
This story is disturbing, but disturbing in a good, scary movie sort of way. Fitzpatrick does such a superb job of making this fiction seem real that it may be difficult not to scream at the main character to stop loving an abusive man and move on. Without giving away the unpredictable ending, suffice it to say that life goes on for the protagonist, but readers won't guess how before all is revealed. Fans of steamy thrillers and nail-biting situations should read this book.