Book Review: Because She Loves Me by Mark Edwards

When Andrew meets Charlie he can't believe his luck has changed; she seems perfect in every way and miraculously just as into him. Life is on the up.

But then a series of seemingly unrelated events unfold and one by one the people around Andrew get scared, hurt or worse. Slowly Andrew begins to suspect the events may be connected and starts to doubt if his perfect girlfriend is a perfect as she seems...

As my last few book reviews show I have read a lot of psychological thrillers about dysfunctional relationships lately, I don't know why by the cosmos is sending them all my way at the moment but I'm racking them up! This one was interesting as it followed a more traditional formula; boy meets girl, girl seems to good to be true, girl turns out to be too good to be true, without trying to be too clever with the narrative - it's first person and is really easy to read, it all kinda rolls off Andrews tongue in a very sophisticated way. I'm thinking specifically here of a comparison with YOU by Caroline Kepnes which was one of the most difficult narratives I have ever read being kinda not quite first or second person.

So what did I think of the story, well firstly I thought it was too obvious that Charlie was behind it all, so I spent the whole book trying to work out who baddie is and I was pretty sure I had it worked out... but I was wrong. I hadn't even considered this ending, it was so out of left field. And to be honest the fact that Andrew had to explain to us a convoluted background to the story and how it all came about for pretty much a whole chapter was a bit of a let down. I love a good twist but I do like a few more clues to be dropped along the way, nothing is hinted at in the book (unless I completely missed something) and I actually had to remind myself who this character was. I was like 'oh right, wow, right, who is she again? Oh yeah, ok, bizarre'. Kinda reminded me of Agatha Christie's 'And Then There Were None' which also leaves you completely confused and needs a explanation at the end. Impossible to guess.

I actually think this book would work much better as a film and in my mind Andrew is Domhnall Gleeson so he has to play him in the movie version. Perfect casting!

Overall 3.5/5

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