What to say about this book? If you are at all squeamish about toxic love and sex then don’t read it. If, however, you want a new and refreshing take on how, in this case a man, can manipulate a partner to do their bidding, hanging if not clinging on for any crumbs thrown, then this is the book for you!

No one is named in this story making what feels like a fairly autobiographical novel more generic. Told from the narrator’s point of view about the man that she wants and their relationship and the constant stalking of some of his other women on Instagram, in particular an influencer. It is about obsession and about collaboration in that obsession.

The book is told in a series of scenes, not unlike a diary although they are not dated, some longer, others just a couple of lines detailing the narrator’s falling for the man she wants to be with and the fact that when he calls she runs. For him it is all about the chase, for her it is about having him and having his children. All the while, though, he is still with his wife and has at least two other women who are hanging on him.

It is through the stalking on Instagram of the influencer that the narrator starts to define what racism and privilege looks like online. The influencer has a wealthy father who obviously supports his daughter in pretending to run a business (according to the narrator).

If only we could all be buffered from exploitatively neoliberal regimes by family money and luxuriously austere domestic settings.

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So in part, this is also a book about how hard it is for women of colour to break into the creative industries and how when they do they are often sponsored by a man, their husband or their father. Those who do not have access to this type of support have to work very hard, battering down the doors to even get a look-in.

I did start to get a bit bored half-way through the book as we got more and more of the same. It focuses so tightly on these three characters that there is little room for anyone else. Where were her friends telling her to stop seeing the man she wants to be with? What was her Mum doing? Taking her to seances was her mother’s answer to whether she would end up with this man or not until the psychic told her to stop contacting and visiting her.

I was also a little confused by what felt like to me the disparity between the front cover and the content. The cover led me to think about a lighter, more witty book, a little bit more towards the chic-lit end of the literary scale and this is definitely not that.

This is about an obsession with an emotionally unavailable man and the narrator confusing violence with love. I didn’t enjoy this book although I recognise its uniqueness and how well written it is. I suspect this will get on to the Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist as it is definitely original.