Taut, racy and unpredictable. This book is a fast paced thriller that’s changes plots just when you had thought you had figured it all. The innumerable twists and turns leave you breathless as the dastardly cunning characters try to edge each other out. The story’s principle protagonist, Florence Darrow, is this mediocre girl working in the publishing industry, forever dreaming of making it big as an acclaimed author and never being able to do so. Her aspirations don’t match her actions. This makes her dissatisfied and petulant. At the same time, the world has been taken over by this novelist Maud Dixon and their debut novel, who goes by the pseudonym and nobody actually knows who Maud Dixon is!
Do Florence and Maud ever meet; well that’s for you to find out.
The first half of the book is set in New York and moves at a languid pace. Though languorous, it builds an uneasy atmospheric tonality. This ominous narrative reaches it’s zenith once the story shifts to Morocco. As the story delves into a whirlwind of baleful events, the characters get so volatile and mercurial, making your assumptions naïveté at every wicked hairpin turn.
It’s hard to believe that this a debut book from the author Alexandra Andrews. The flair and expertise in Alexandra’s writing can be ascertained from her linguistic skills. The Moroccan cities of Semat and Marrakech have been described so eloquently. In fact, Semat, where the whole unravelling takes place, becomes a character integral to the plot line.
This sharp and enormously entertaining book is riveting and can leave you dizzy by the end of it.
Do read.
( PS. Is Semat a fictional city or does it really exist? )
~ JUST A GAY GUY. 🥶
the shiny diaries 