Behind Her Eyes (2017) by Sarah Pinborough is a consummate little psychological thriller with twists and turns aplenty. We meet Louise, a divorcee with a young son named Adam. Louise’s ex, Ian, seems to have moved on—while Louise herself hasn’t dated much and is disillusioned with the male species. She focuses a bit too much on “the new wife” Ian has right quickly chosen for himself; Louise compares herself to Lisa, albeit unfairly. It’s plain as day that Louise misses Ian, and also misses what kind of a family she imagined they might have been together. She has custody of Adam, but an upcoming trip to France looms large, and Ian tells Adam about it before seeking permission from Louise. She thinks it would have been less confusing for Adam if she and Ian were still together.
Louise begins a job as a part time secretary at a psychiatry office, for a boss she has not yet had the pleasure of meeting. She’s horrified to discover that her boss is none other than David, the man she just got drunk with out at the bar recently (her first date out since Ian??), and subsequently made out with.
It turns out Dr David is very married. Louise ogles the photos of his wife on his desk. He walks in at that exact moment, says: “What are you doing here?” in shock. She explains that she’s his new secretary. She offers the advice (she thinks it’s well deserved) that they both forget about the kiss and just move on afresh. David agrees.
We then meet Adele, who is David’s wife. She’s smashingly beautiful, model-like even. She has everything she needs. A successful husband. Lots of money. A new home they can expand into together. And yet, cracks start to appear. He drinks rather heavily, and has affairs which she claims to be privy to, but knows she cannot be without David, no matter what his behavior. Adele’s terribly lonely and doesn’t have a ton of friends. She cooks and cleans to please David, but despite her best efforts, he doesn’t really seem to notice her.
Next, Adele meets Louise, one day by happenstance when they run into each other in the middle of town. Louise knows she cannot become friends with her new boss’s wife, and yet they go for coffee and exchange phone numbers. She figures she’ll never hear from Adele again.
Adele may not be so perfectly beautiful as Louise imagines her to be at first. Someone with a past as mysteriously shrouded as hers—someone as manipulative, as terribly secretive—could mean poor Louise is falling into a trap, spun by the conniving spider that is Adele.
We see the perspectives of Louise, Adele/David in present tense (the main timeline), and then Adele/Rob (and in one or two scenes, David too) in past tense—or as a flashback to the days when Adele was staying in a facility called Westlands. We learn that she had a traumatic event around age 17 in which the home she shared with her parents caught on fire. David happened to be “in the area,” and was somehow able to save Adele, with the scars to prove it. Adele’s parents, however, weren’t so lucky. It turns out Adele’s parents were worth A LOT of money. Adele herself now controls that fortune. Or does she?
While David was away training to be a doctor, he placed Adele in Westlands to rehabilitate her from both her nightmares/sleep problems, but also the obvious trauma from losing her parents.
It was during Adele’s stay at Westlands where she met Rob, a scrawny, lanky boy her age addicted to drugs, and generally emotionally flat with people. But not with Adele, though. Rob likes her. It turns out Adele struggled with graphic nightmares which prevented her from sleeping well. Rob had nightmares then, too, but Adele had a solution: Lucid dreaming. She showed Rob how to do it (Adele learned from a lucid dreaming book David had given her years ago), and it’s over this: their shared experience, but also over their subsequent mastery over their dreams, that Adele and Rob became friends. It’s also at Westlands that Rob starts writing in a notebook about his lucid dreaming experience, but also quite a lot about Adele/David, too.
In the present, Adele realizes that Louise also struggles with night terrors, nightmares and occasionally sleepwalking. As a friendly gesture, Adele gives Louise Rob’s old notebook. Why does she have it? How was it not destroyed in the fire? What happened to Rob? How is David involved in all of this?
Not to mention, of course, the main timeline that details Adele and David’s broken marriage. How Adele is practically a prisoner in her own home. How David gives her an allowance, and a cheap flip phone. How he illegally prescribes her medication to do…what? Help her anxiety? Relax her? Tranquilize her? How David and Louise…keep seeing each other, and how Louise doesn’t tell Adele about sleeping with her husband behind her back. Louise also neglects to tell David that she even knows Adele, in the first place.
So, to say this is all a huge love triangle would be an understatement. I was thoroughly annoyed with Louise and some of her naïve decisions. Adele is really more of a snake in the grass; you never know when she’s going to strike, or where. Does David drink because he hates his marriage, or is it for some other reason? Also, Louise can put away some wine—oh yes, she can! So many unanswered questions. Will Louise be smart enough to figure them all out? Or is she too dumb to save herself?
I have to say it now: this book is super well written, and I couldn’t stop turning the pages. Pinborough knows how to craft a story well, and she keeps you on your toes, The. Entire. Time. This is the best book I have read in a long time. I think you’ll like it, too! I am now in the process of reading all the rest of Pinborough’s work, past and present. Next up: Breeding Ground, a creature feature with serious gross-out elements.
