Eye of the Beholder

De: Emma Bamford

Narrado por: Jane Collingwood

“Highly recommended for fans of Vertigo and readers who enjoy the intricately plotted novels of Ruth Ware, Sarah Pearse, and Riley Sager” (Booklist), this atmospheric and sinister novel follows a ghostwriter searching for answers when her lover reappears after his mysterious death.

When Maddy Wight is hired to ghostwrite the memoir of world-renowned cosmetic surgeon Dr. Angela Reynolds, she thinks it might just be her chance to get her career back on track. She travels to Angela’s remote estate in the Scottish Highlands to learn everything she can but the deeper she digs, the more elusive the doctor becomes. Is there more hidden beneath the surface of the kaleidoscopic beauty industry than Angela wants to reveal?

Sharing the estate is Angela’s enigmatic and mercurial business partner, Scott. Confined to the glass-walled house, Maddy can’t shake the feeling of being watched. As objects go missing, handprints appear on the windows, and a stranger lurks in the grounds, she finds herself drawn ever closer to Scott. Returning to London once the book is finished, Maddy is excited for their future together. But her dreams are shattered at the book launch when Angela learns that Scott has leapt to his death from the Scottish cliffs.

Which is why, months later and lost in a fog of grief, Maddy is completely blindsided when she sees Scott entering the Tube station just in front of her. It can’t be him, can it? After all, Scott is dead...or is he?

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Jane Collingwood keeps listeners in Hitchcockian suspense with this new thriller set in the world of antiaging, beauty, and murder most foul. Ghostwriter Maddy Wight understands the need to be discreet about her clients, but her latest one, Dr. Angela Reynolds, brings new meaning to the word “secrecy.” Left alone to write at Reynolds’s massive estate in the Scottish Highlands, Maddy finds herself falling in love with Reynolds’s seemingly emotionally unstable business partner, Scott. Maddy is crushed when she hears of Scott’s death—until she sees him exiting a Tube station in London. Jane Collingwood deftly moves between English, Scottish, and American accents, creating believable characters. Collingwood’s performance captures the confusion and frustration of Maddy’s quest for the truth."

Disappointing

This book had immense potential.
A phenomenal location, an interesting premise, and a fairly charismatic protagonist.
But reading this book it almost feels like the story doesn’t want to commit to any clear passage. It ducks and weaves all over the place and it’s never suspenseful enough to make the reader want more.
I held on for twenty plus chapters because I was certain that eventually we would get there.
Instead, the characters fall flat, there is absolutely nothing creepy or unnerving about this setup (as we’re promised in the summary) and there is never a real sense of place established-even though the place should be insanely interesting (a unique pile in the Scottish highlands on a giant loch).
There is almost no descriptive prose.
Random characters are introduced and that don’t add anything of interest to the story, and I could go on but why?
It’s just not good.
The narration is. The plot summary is.
And I absolutely loved her one of her other books “Deep Water” which was exceptional.
Don’t waste a credit here. If you want to read something fantastic and truly impossible to put down give “Deep Water” a shot.
This book could’ve been fantastic.
It was really a bummer that it fell so flat.
Hopefully it was just fluke.