I am so excited to share my thoughts with you on this intoxicating read.
Detangling Emma Webster:
Emma Webster is a respectable MP.
Emma Webster is a devoted mother.
Emma Webster is innocent of the murder of a tabloid journalist.
Emma Webster is a liar.
As a politician, Emma has sacrificed a great deal for her career—including her marriage and her relationship with her daughter, Flora.
A former teacher, the glare of the spotlight is unnerving for Emma, particularly when it leads to countless insults, threats, and trolling as she tries to work in the public eye. As a woman, she knows her reputation is worth its weight in gold but as a politician, she discovers it only takes one slip-up to destroy it completely.
Fourteen-year-old Flora is learning the same hard lessons at school as she encounters heartless bullying. When another teenager takes her own life, Emma lobbies for a new law to protect women and girls from the effects of online abuse. Now, Emma and Flora find their personal lives uncomfortably intersected…but then the unthinkable happens.
A man is found dead in Emma’s home. A man she had every reason to be afraid of and to want gone. Fighting to protect her reputation, and determined to protect her family at all costs, Emma is pushed to the limits as the worst happens and her life is torn apart.
Bobs and Books honest review:
Ok, confession time. I was drawn to this book due to the most unusual reason. I grew up as Emma Webster. It was my name for my first 21 years. Seeing those first few lines of the blurb was haunting, yet I felt compelled to read it.
I think having now read it, I am even more haunted.
This book could not be released at a more apt time for its subject matter. At a time where MPs, particularly female MPs are threatened on a regular basis, women's safety remains dangerous, tabloids rule the roost and social media/explicit images litter our worlds, Vaughan has encapsulated all of this into one thrilling read,
Hooked from the very first sentence, I was torn between wanting to race through this at an enormous pace to get to the conclusion, yet also slow down to devour every single word thoughtfully. This is such clever writing. I could not take my eyes off the page.
The courtroom scenes note every detail, movement, remark. It is chilling yet captivating. I felt I was sat in the room watching the reactions unfold moment by moment.
The points of view alternate in this too, including Emma, her daughter Flora and Flora's step mother Caroline to name a couple. This add layers and depths to the read and as more revelations spill out, makes for riveting reading. This also expresses a lot of emotions, Flora reacts to being bullied, Emma's threats put her on high alert. Fear driven by women has no place to go in a society where public commentary is everywhere and almost too accessible.
There is so much to think about in this read. Addictive, chilling, intense.
About the author:
Brought up in Devon, Sarah Vaughan read English at Oxford and went on to become a journalist. After training at the Press Association, she spent eleven years at the Guardian as a news reporter, political correspondent and health correspondent, before leaving to freelance and write fiction. Anatomy of a Scandal, her third novel was an instant international bestseller and translated into 22 languages, long-listed for the Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year 2018 and short-listed for the Audible Sounds of Crime Award, GoodReads Jury’s Out award, French Elle’s Prix des Lectrices and Richard & Judy’s ‘Best of the Decade.’ Anatomy of a Scandal has been adapted for screen and will air on Netflix as a six-part series in Spring 2022. Little Disasters, her fourth novel, was selected as a Waterstones Thriller of the Month in 2021, has been sold to the US, France, Portugal, Sweden and Spain, and optioned for TV. Reputation is her fifth novel.
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