The Sunday Girl

March 1, 2020
After a breakup, Taylor Bishop plots revenge on the man who broke her heart in Drysdale's U.S. debut. Twenty-nine-year-old Taylor, a research analyst, thought London banker Angus Hollingsworth was her dream man, and wedding bells were ringing for Taylor from the beginning of their 18-month relationship. Being with Angus was like living in a fairy tale, complete with luxurious trips to Paris. After Angus unceremoniously dumps her right before a ski trip, Taylor is heartbroken and then discovers Angus has posted a video online of a threesome she participated in with him and another woman. The humiliated Taylor gathers up her wits and the shards of her heart and decides she'll take revenge on Angus if it's the last thing she does. Well, after some rebound sex with her friend-with-benefits, Jamie, that is. When Taylor spots Jamie's copy of Sun Tzu's The Art of War, she builds a revenge plot (loosely) around its tenets. Taylor then embarks on a series of admittedly cathartic, but definitely illegal, actions to make Angus suffer, but she gets back together with him after he apologizes for posting the video and promises to take it down. One sweetly uttered "Baby" from his sexy mouth is all it takes for the vulnerable Taylor to give in. After all, surely Angus' bad behavior, including frequent hiring of prostitutes and actual physical abuse, can be attributed to his raging cocaine habit, and he claims he's joined Narcotics Anonymous. But getting Taylor back feeds right into Angus' devious plans, and Taylor quickly learns that she'll need to take more extreme measures to escape him for good. Drysdale somewhat successfully attempts to dig into the psychology that keeps women with abusive men, but her portrait of Taylor lacks nuance, and Angus is equally two-dimensional. Readers might stick it out until the end, if only in the hope that Taylor makes the truly vile Angus pay, but those expecting a clever twist will be sorely disappointed. A by-the-numbers psychological thriller that fails to distinguish itself from the pack.

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