The Sunday Girl by Pip Drysdale
My Review
The Sunday Girl by Pip Drysdale is a great Domestic Noir debut for this new author who has shown she is wickedly capable of the cunningly warped and twisted thoughts fans of psychological thrillers love.
The eponymous Sunday Girl of the title is one Taylor Bishop, a modern girl many readers will find it easy to relate to. She has a successful career and lives in a great area of London, albeit in a minuscule flat. She’s bright, sexy and sassy, she is also ragingly, seriously angry and hurt and about to prove that “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” as the old adage goes.
She has just split up with her long term boyfriend Angus, who she hoped was THE one, her forever man, but turned out to be the boyfriend you really don’t want to be involved with and he’s about to prove he’s an even worse louse than he at first appeared to be.
This book is heart-racingly fast-paced, pulls no punches and reminded me of the original twisty tome Gone Girl. Although this thriller has plenty of twists it is really quite straightforward in that it is a tale of a woman on a mission of revenge who will stop at nothing to get her own back on her nasty ex-boyfriend.
Angus, with whom she has just broken up, really hurt her he treated her very badly, he even took his ex-girlfriend on the holiday which was booked for him and Taylor! The shit! She is still reeling from the break up when she discovers he is even more of a cad than she already thinks when she finds some very private moments between the two of them, splattered all over the internet. These explicit sex tapes can only have been put there by Angus and she sees red. Vowing revenge and setting out to achieve it any way she can with her very own plan of war. Spitting venom and screaming hate she wants him ruined.
As their past together is revealed it becomes obvious that he is a controlling, domineering, excuse for a man and the only reason she stayed with him, despite her best instincts is that she was in love with the swine.
Taylor vows to get her own back and intent on getting back at the guy who’s revealed himself as bad and dangerous to know, she tries to fight fire with a burning flame of her own.
She sets in motion a series of vengeful events which soon spiral out of control. They say that revenge is a dish best served cold but she dishes it up straight from the oven. She is hurt and on the rebound and totally focussed on revenge and as she begins a series of retaliatory acts to get back at Angus she dives into a night or two of passion of her own, with an ex friend with benefits and a new flame who is set to burn brightly in her future but creates even more problems to pile on her already overloaded plate.
Her behaviour is excusable and understandable, she has almost lost her reason over this guy but manages to keep her cool, considering how wrong things go! But just how far will she go and will she get away with it? As events gather momentum we are swept along as vengeance is served but it seems as though it might come back and bite the hand that is feeding it.
That’s what kept me turning the pages and I fair rattled through this stunning debut novel.
Contemporary, sexy and all about retribution it’s a well plotted, unpredictable thriller which I devoured.
The Blurb
The Girl on the Train meets Before I Go to
Sleep in this chilling tale of love gone horribly
wrong …
“Some love affairs change you forever. Someone comes into your orbit
and swivels you on your axis, like the wind working on a rooftop
weather vane. And when they leave, as the wind always does, you are
different; you have a new direction. And it’s not always north.”
Any woman who’s ever been involved with a bad, bad
man and been dumped will understand what it feels like to
be broken, broken-hearted and bent on revenge.
Taylor Bishop is hurt, angry and wants to destroy Angus
Hollingsworth in the way he destroyed her: ‘Insidiously.
Irreparably. Like a puzzle he’d slowly dissembled … stolen
a couple of pieces from, and then discarded, knowing that
nobody would ever be able to put it back together ever
again.’
So Taylor consults The Art of War and makes a plan. Then
she takes the next irrevocable step – one that will change
her life forever.
Things start to spiral out of her control – and The Sunday Girl becomes impossible to put down.
Pip Drysdale is a writer, actor and musician who grew up in Africa and Australia. At 20 she moved to
New York to study acting, worked in indie films and off-off Broadway theatre, started writing songs
and made four records. After graduating with a BA in English, Pip moved to London where she dated
some interesting men and played shows across Europe. The Sunday Girl is her first novel and she is
working on a second. She currently lives in Australia.
You can find the book on Amazon or look for it in your favourite bookshop
I'd like to thank @simonschusterUK and Random Things Tours for inviting me along for this roller coaster ride.
