The writer is a sadist and his book is horrible. You really must read it. So says the blurb on the front and so you are forewarned that this is not going to be an easy one to read even by Glen Duncan's standards. Nick and Chloe are the perfect young couple. Almost from the moment they meet they know they will spend the rest of their lives together. Yet the story begins with Nicholas in an almost catatonic state fleeing to New York, alone and seeking numbness in a bar described as the place drunks go to die. The preceding six years of his life with Chloe are described in flashback while being interspersed with momentary glimpses of his current time falling prey to the debauchery of wealthy heiress Mickey and her cronies and meeting fellow barfly and expat Lancelot. It's not until halfway through the book that we get to the event that changed everything. Not just an infidelity that could possibly be worked around but something much more brutal that leaves Chloe in hospital and near death and sets Nick on his downward spiral.

The first part of the book deals with an idyllic relationship where nothing matters but each other, mostly seen from Nick's perspective. The second half then shifts more towards Chloe as she has to find a way of dealing with what happened and Nick's subsequent abandonment. This is probably the darkest in tone of the books I've read from this author and there were times that I could have been reading it that I didn't feel like picking it up again and although less than 300 pages in length it took a while to reach the end. Does that mean it's a bad book? No! Just not a light and fluffy one. ( )