Great book, hard to put down.

The writer writes; the reader reads. As you slowly become immersed in the book a delicate balance of trust develops. As a reader you trust that the writer will tell you the story, because in the end it’s the story that really matters. You hope that the writer will be honest and fair and will not cheat. You hope that your faith will be rewarded. Steve Watson understands his genre perfectly. His writing is simple yet nuanced. His prose is sparse yet perfectly pitched. His structure is beautifully judged. When writing in the first person as a female protagonist he is utterly believable. He draws you in. You begin to trust him. Don’t. As a writer he screws with your mind and he does it brilliantly. I am in awe. If you are currently wondering “Should I read this book?” do not hesitate. Buy it. Read it. Reach your own decision. But do not trust the judgment of anyone who tells you that this is not well-written, because it is.

When Julia hears of her sister Kate’s death in Paris, she’s distraught. However, just before she died, she’d been demanding the return of the teenage son Julia adopted from her as a baby. So at least for Julia, losing the teenage boy she’s brought up as her own, is no longer an issue. But there’s a question mark over how exactly Kate died and Julia then goes online to try and trace her sister's last movements. But she gets carried away with her own research. Very soon Julia is hooked on the excitement of secret online affairs and she starts up a relationship which will threaten everything she holds dear. I found this book quite engrossing and it certainly had plenty of twists and flips. The lead character is certainly not the most likeable protagonist but the fact she has had addiction issues in the past and lived in a Berlin squat makes the character plausible. She’s now married to a successful consultant surgeon. Secretly she’s bored and craves breaking out a bit, which is how she gets suckered into the whole online hook-up thing. The secret calls and messages and other aspects of her living two lives got me turning pages, waiting for the whole wheels to fall off. Second Life has pace and intrigue. if you get into the story you’re definitely going to want to see what happens at the end.

Starting from the same domestic setting as Watson's first book, "Second Life" takes a darker turn as Julia first investigates and then begins to use internet sites to live her sexual fantasies, but as Julia complicates her own life by living a second, secret life, she (and the reader) no longer knows who she can trust. I probably preferred this book to "Before I Go To Sleep" - the style is similar, and in both the main characters are damaged and even the reader can't entirely trust their judgement, and both are quite slow to develop but rapidly pick up pace towards the end. The whole thing is written well, perhaps better than the average psychological thriller. I enjoyed reading this book - although you really have to question Julia's actions and choices at several points, and some of the plot twists and turns seem to be a little bit too unlikely to make the final outcome entirely satisfying, but overall it's a good read and in my opinion makes SJ Watson a writer to watch out for in future.

I bought this book after reading 'Before I Go to Sleep', I'm not complaining by any means when I say that the narrator is at times extremely frustrating and the fact this book is slow to get started, because I was soon absorbed into the world of our female protagonist and her "perfect" life as a mother and a wife. It is written in four parts, each establishing a different time frame in the narrative, and before you know it things begin to unravel and, as a reader, you begin to question...who do I really trust? Will the truth get out? and will everything be lost? Overall, it was a great book and brilliantly written considering the pressure on S J Watson to produce another spectacular thriller like 'Before I Go to Sleep'. It's gripping nature and dark twists and turns made a compelling read that left me hanging from the edge of my seat anticipating what was round the corner. It ultimately left me wanting more.