Obsession by Amanda Robson #BlogTour #Review - This Chick Reads
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Obsession by Amanda Robson #BlogTour #Review

Happy Sunday all! Are you having a great weekend? Today I’m taking part in another blog tour, this time I’m on the #Obsession blog tour and I have a guest piece from the author, Amanda Robson as well as my review. As always, many thanks to Team Avon UK and lovely Helena for my review copy and the chance to be part of the blog tour. Keep on reading, lovelies and see you soon!

I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Obsession by Amanda Robson
Published byAvon
Published on 4.5.2017
Genres:thriller, psychological thriller
Pages: 464
Format:paperback

One evening, a wife asks her husband a question: who else would you go for, if you could?

It is a simple question – a little game – that will destroy her life.

Carly and Rob are a perfect couple. They share happy lives with their children and their close friends Craig and Jenny. They’re lucky. But beneath the surface, no relationship is simple: can another woman’s husband and another man’s wife ever just be good friends?

Little by little, Carly’s question sends her life spiralling out of control, as she begins to doubt everything she thought was true. Who can she trust? The man she has promised to stick by forever, or the best friend she has known for years? And is Carly being entirely honest with either of them?

Obsession is a dark, twisting thriller about how quickly our lives can fall apart when we act on our desires.

This was a strange, strange, strange book. Here I am, fingers ready to type a review, but all I can say is ‘The f@ck did I just read?’ I’m all sorts of confused but will do my best to explain the things I liked and disliked about this book.

But first off, about the story… The story is about two couples, Carly and Rob and Jenni & Craig. Carly and Jenni know each other for a while and went to same nursing school and are reunited after a few years. They are so different to each other yet somehow manage to stay friends. I say ‘friends’ very loosely here, cause believe me their friendship is so weird. It all starts one evening when Carly asks her husband, Rob, who would he go for if she wasn’t in the picture. After avoiding the question for a while, Rob answers ‘Jenni’ and shit hits the fan! I am dead serious, all it took is one silly question to start a whole bloody avalanche of terrible events. How could this be?

This is the first thing that kind of bugged me. They’re married for so long and have 3 kids, how can it take so little for them to raise suspicions? It seemed like Carly overreacts and Rob is not that good in showing his wife he appreciates her.

After that evening, nothing is the same for both couples. There are deceits, many lies, tears, revenge…OMG so many negative emotions and stuff. It really was so hard to read all this as I wanted to give them all a good shake and tell them to cut the drama. While the story seemed a but naive to me, I think the author wanted to emphasize the role of her characters. Speaking of the characters, I just went to read a few reviews and none of them liked any of the characters. Seriously, there’s not a single character to like and again, I’m being very mild here. Some of them you might even end up hating. Carly is a self centered drama queen who admits she hates responsibility, hates spending time with her kids and blames Rob for everything in her life, from the lack of sex to unfulfilled life. She’s got a drinking problem but still, even when she’s sober she can’t control herself and be less bitchy. Jenni is naive, very religious, fragile…and there were times when I pitied her. And the minute I would do that and think I finally found a character to root for, she would prove me wrong by doing something stupid.

So now you ask, if I didn’t like the characters and obviously found the story too simple, how come I’m giving it 3.5*? A very valid question and I will get to it..bear with me. No matter how much I disliked the characters (especially the women) and no matter the fact this book is a slow burner, there’s a certain level of readability that made things so much easier for me. While my brain was telling me ‘WTF’, I couldn’t control my fingers and stop reading…or put it away as I had all the ‘facts’ this is not a book for me. But I simply couldn’t stop! I can’t pinpoint to why I was so obsessed by it, but there’s something in it…that just didn’t give me peace till I finished it.

Now, while I obviously can’t find the right words to explain what this was, I assume the ‘wickedness’ of the book was a major factor. While I’ve read many psychological thrillers and some very weird ones in fact, I haven’t ever read anything like Obsession. It intrigued me, it was pulling me in though I certainly wanted out.

So there you go, maybe the title fits the book perfectly. If you don’t believe me, just read the book and you’ll see what I mean. There’s a lot of delicate topics in it, such as religion, mental health issues, drinking etc etc and I do applaud the author for having the courage to write about them. I also find it fascinating how she deliberately created these repulsive characters and yet made the book readable. There’s loads of kinky stuff in it too, and as many reviewers already said, when I started reading it I thought it’s erotica. But it’s definitely a thriller just contains a good amount of kinky sex.

Overall, Obsession was really a strange book and experience for me. It will definitely make you turn the pages and if you don’t mind a bit of repetitiveness and irritating characters, it’s definitely worth giving it a go.

5 Things You didn’t Know About Craig – Guest Post by Amanda Robson

  1. He has been putting on a bit of weight lately, and his blood pressure is going up. Fat is beginning to settle on his tummy and roll into a paunch. Adipose tissue is also gathering beneath his chin, making him fuller in the face. Jenni doesn’t like it. In contrast, Carly thinks a bit more of Craig is self indulgent and sexy, giving him a full faced, handsome, Alec Baldwin look. Why has this been happening, you may ask? Craig has been going to watch the local rugby team each week, and gorging himself on Saturday afternoon treats.  Hotdogs smothered in mustard and ketchup. Hotdogs suffocated by slimy onion slices. He has also been indulging in homemade ice cream from the local delicatessen.  His favourite flavours contain caramel and nuts. Pistachio is  top of the list. Sometimes he puts a scoop on top of his breakfast cereal. When Jenni sees this she wrinkles her nose. He looks at her and laughs. ‘Chill Jenni,’ he says.

‘Chilling, is not what life is about,’ she snaps.

  1. This handsome hunk of ever increasing size, doesn’t want Jenni to know that he loves his fire brigade colleagues as much as he loves her. They are like a family to him. He misses them very much when he goes on holiday.
  2. Craig’s favourite TV programme is Bake-Off. Nadiya Hussain his favourite candidate, ever. As well as her stellar baking skills, he admires her warm personality and expressive face.  He is so pleased for her that her career has really taken off, and always looks out for her in the press.  Jenni thinks Craig is becoming over infatuated with food and that he should stop watching cookery programmes. Jenni is disgusted by the tasteless greed of the West when there are so many starving people in the world.
  3. For a long time, Craig has had a very large crush on Emma Bunton. He liked her when she was Baby Spice, but thinks she is becoming more and more beautiful. Her face is so refined and chiseled now. Since she has become a UNICEF ambassador she has looked more elegant, more dignified. He wishes he could meet her. He has watched her in as many interviews as possible. She seems to be  ‘his sort of girl.’ Jenni thinks the Spice Girls are all inane, and gets very annoyed with him when he watches anything to do with Emma Bunton on the television.  When a Spice Girls song comes on the radio Jenni cuts it off.
  4. Craig supports Manchester United. Come on the Reds. It’s too expensive for him to go and watch live football, so he just has a few beers at home and watches them on television, when he can.

About Amanda Robson

After graduating, Amanda Robson worked in medical research at The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and at the Poisons Unit at Guy’s Hospital where she became a co-author of a book on cyanide poisoning – a subject which has set her in good stead for writing her dark and twisting novel about love affairs gone wrong. Amanda attended the Faber novel writing course and writes full-time. Obsession is her debut novel.

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