Whizzed through this hungrily and dished out loads of points for having a sexually alive middle-aged woman as the protagonist and for keeping me hooked with flashbacks, twists and turns and a multi-layered cake of a plot. All that said, I felt it could have gone deeper into many of the events and issues it discussed - rape, affairs, love, mental health - and I believe Doughty to be a novelist capable of exactly that. I also found myself asking many questions at the end that stayed unanswered, and not in a good way...

Spoiler

Why didn't the husband ask her more questions about her affair? Why didn't she see the twist coming as it did seem a bit obvious and she as a scientist should have needed a bit more evidence before coming to certain conclusions? And why did the jury come to the conclusion it did when she effectively admitted part of the crime?

Perhaps these are questions for a book club, and in fairness they haven't kept me awake at night. I just wonder if this book could have gone so much further in so many different ways to add a little substance to the suspense.