Published by Denoël, in the Sueurs froides collection, “Obsessions” by Luana Lewis, with its heavy secrets and neurotic heroine, manages to sow doubt in the reader’s mind, making for a perplexing thriller encounter.
Vivien is a young, beautiful, and wealthy woman, married to a charming man and mother to a little boy; she seemingly had it all. For all these reasons, her mother, Rose, cannot accept the idea that Vivien could have committed suicide.
At a grieving parents’ support group, she meets Isaac, a former journalist who lost his son in the 2005 London bombings. She turns to him to undertake an investigation and uncover what lies behind Vivien’s death.
Obsessions is a thriller filled with false appearances and tormented characters. Indeed, through flashbacks alternating between eras, Luana Lewis reveals the troubled story of Vivien, her eating disorders, her selfishness, her indifference, her insolent charm, but also the morbid obesity of her mother and her sordid childhood. We also discover Charlotte, the admiring good friend for whom Vivien represents a fantasy, a kind of dark double who shared Vivien’s childhood and whom she has forgotten since her life changed. Charlotte, incredibly fragile, constantly mistreated by Vivien but unable to resist returning to her tormentor.
It is mainly around these two unstable personalities that Luana Lewis constructs her novel, preventing the reader from having certainties and ensuring that everything they thought they knew is shattered in the next chapter!
The fast-paced rhythm of this thriller with numerous psychological aspects is accentuated by short chapters and a lively writing style. With strong themes such as obsessive-compulsive disorders, anorexia, family, and the loss of a child, Obsessions is an intense thriller that you will find hard to put down and whose ending you will struggle to predict…
