Renowned geneticist Evelyn Caldwell, a pioneer in cloning, is at the height of her career while her personal life lay in shambles. Her husband has been having an affair ... with her clone, a product of Evelyn's own research. A docile copy of Evelyn, Martine is everything Evelyn is not  - the woman Nathan wishes she was. Until Martine kills him and Evelyn must cover it up or risk losing her entire life's work.

Marketing as a sci fi thriller, The Echo Wife has a little too much science jargon and not enough thrills. A truly good science fiction book makes you contemplate the consequences of the what-if scenario, but The Echo Wife touches on some MAJOR ethical issues without doing any of them justice. In my opinion, although the book had some good twists, it didn't live up to its potential.

📚 Wowowow, THE ECHO WIFE is horrifying and glorious and thorny and beautiful and gross and multilayered.
📚 I love that Gailey writes prickly, even mean women as protagonists, and never apologizes for them.
📚 The book manages to be both action-packed and meditative.
📚 There is so much more going on in this book than your typical domestic thriller. Everything from who counts as people to the right to control your body to should you be held accountable for something your clone did. I think this is Gailey's best book yet.
📚 Some readers are going to reject the ending, but it really worked for me - come talk to me about it once you've read it!
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Content warnings: blood, body horror, child abuse, death, domestic abuse, emotional abuse, gore, infidelity, medical content, physical abuse, and suicide.

The celebration at the beginning of Sarah Gailey’s novel, The Echo Wife, doesn’t feel like much of a celebration. Protagonist Evelyn Caldwell is there to accept an award for her groundbreaking work but the discomfort from her dress and—more importantly—her recent divorce is ruining her night. It wasn’t until later that I learned things about Caldwell that made me uncomfortable about the accolades she’s received. The uneasiness never goes away. Gailey keeps piling it on in this absolutely brilliant retelling of the Faust story.

Evelyn’s work is secretive, but not entirely secret. She works for a private corporation, producing clones to work as doubles for paranoid politicians, doctors, and others. Her great work is “conditioning” clones so that they look (down to the scars) and act exactly like their originals. She never expected her work to be used against her, but that’s precisely what her ex-husband did. Evelyn’s husband stole her work and created a new version to be a perfect wife. It’s clear that Evelyn is still wrestling with the anger and humiliation of that discovery. One might think that it’s a sign of Evelyn’s better nature that she agrees to help her clone when Martine calls her for help with the kind of favor that we all use as the mark of a great friendship: help hiding a body. Unfortunately for Evelyn, that favor also means using her expertise to replace that body with a living replica.

I could follow every step of Evelyn’s logic, but I would never call it impeccable because it just compounds the wrongness of the whole distressing story. Evelyn sees herself as strong. She remembers how her father conditioned her to never cry, never apologize, never ask forgiveness for her pursuit of knowledge. And she doesn’t. She can only see each challenge that comes her way as a chance to push further into the unknown. Evelyn never really shakes that Faustian drive, although she does start to acknowledge that there are things she should have thought of while she was busy trying to perfect her science. For example, she should have thought about whether the clones she creates have rights or independence or even the ability to grow. Martine and her favors bring Evelyn closer to realizing the ethical dilemmas than the poor creature ever could in Frankenstein.

Even though I was deeply uncomfortable throughout The Echo Wife, I enjoyed every page. Gailey is fantastic in her characterization of Evelyn and Martine. Best of all, Gailey is brilliant in the way that she slowly peels away the layers of the story to reveal delicious ethical dilemmas to think about long after the last page. This is science fiction at its best.

Ok, this book was NOT what I was expecting. Much more of a thriller than I thought it would be, but that actually ended up making it more interesting. Lots of good fodder for philosophical discussions of humanity and the future of technology.

Really my only complaint is a little too much science (I know there needs to be some to explain the cloning, but I thought the author's time would be better spent furthering the plot). Definitely a worthy read!

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley. Trigger warning for emotional, physical, and sexual violence, including child abuse.)

One hundred days from sample to sentience, and every building block is based on the DNA of the original.

In hindsight, I don’t know why I ever thought he wouldn’t choose her. She was perfect—everything he wanted. He made her that way.

“No,” she interrupted. “You were right. I was made for something, and I’ve never even wondered about it. I was never asked if I wanted this.”

Dr. Evelyn Caldwell is at the top of her game - in spite of the many obstacles her ex-husband Nathan has thrown up in her way over the years. At the beginning, they were a team: scrappy upstart research scientists valiantly trying to create a perfect carbon copy of a human being. An identical clone, from DNA to behavioral quirks and everything in between. And then came an accidental pregnancy - which Nathan fully expected Evelyn to carry to term, despite all evidence to the contrary - followed by Nathan’s escape into academia and apathy, or so Evelyn thought.

A chance discovery points Evelyn to a much more sinister truth: rather than giving up, Evelyn’s ne'er-do-well husband hijacked her research to build a new, “better” version of her. Martine is submissive, compliant, and unquestioning, with the quiet, unassuming domesticity of June Cleaver (and yet she’s still got the curiosity and intelligence of her source material, much to Nathan’s misfortune). Most importantly, she desires the family that Evelyn does not. Of course she does: Nathan programmed her that way.

Evelyn is unwillingly sucked into Martine’s orbit when “fucking Nathan” winds up dead. The two women - or the woman and her specimen, depending on your POV - are forced to collaborate on the cover-up, since discovery could mean ruination for them both.

The story gets super-twisty after this, so I won’t say more because spoilers! Several times I thought I knew where the plot was headed, but Gailey has created one twisty-turny, mind-boggling roller coaster of a ride in THE ECHO WIFE. The further in you venture, the more the twists (and bodies!) pile up. As far as suspense goes, this book has got it in surplus.

I also enjoyed the deeper, more complex psychological and ethical issues that undergird the story: themes of self-identity, free will, nature vs. nurture, and bioethics are woven into the fabric of the plot and characters. Martine’s attempts - some failed, some not - to “buck” her programming are fascinating, as is Evelyn’s conflicted feelings about it, at once frustrated and excited. She wants to root for Martine on a feminist level, but can’t, because that will spell her own personal scientific failure.

As an ethical vegan, I’m especially drawn to science fiction that explores our obligations to sentient, nonhuman creatures, from clones to cyborgs. (Team Cylon all the way!) Through Evelyn’s relationship with Martine, THE ECHO WIFE probes Dr. Cadlwell’s attitudes towards her research, including the many psychological tricks she employs to keep a clinical, “objective” distance from her subjects:

Clones aren’t people, legally speaking. They don’t have rights. They’re specimens. They’re body doubles, or organ farms, or research subjects. They’re temporary, and when they stop being useful, they become biomedical waste. They are disposable.

While many readers (myself included) will no doubt see this as self-serving and reprehensible, it’s no different from how we dehumanize and objectify non-human animals - who are unfeeling masses of “meat” to be consumed, “natural resources” to be harvested, “guinea pigs” to be vivisected, etc. - in order to justify their exploitation.

Whereas Nathan and Martine occupy entirely different ends of the ethical spectrum, Evelyn is a really slippery character to pin down; she’s both a villain and a hero, a victim and a victimizer. Her inner monologues, then, can be pretty damn frustrating…which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though I do wish we had a more honest look at her ethical compass. We get a taste from Martine -

“I don’t think you’re different from him,” she said. “I think you make people and you dispose of them when it suits you, just like he did. I think that if this had all taken place inside a lab, and if his victims didn’t look just like you? You wouldn’t be conflicted about it at all. You wouldn’t think he’d done anything wrong.”

but the conversations about clone ethics are mostly dominated by Evelyn, self-reported and skewed by her own (arguably dysfunctional) world view. Because of this, I felt like THE ECHO WIFE only started to scratch my longstanding itch in this regard.

The ending is not at all what I expected, and left me with a weirdly conflicted feeling. Like, it’s dissatisfying on its face - I really wanted a certain someone to die! - yet also kind of perfect, in its own way.

I need an epilogue, though! What’s going to happen a few years down the road, when a certain other someone starts asking questions!?

This book is not how I imagined it would be. It is chilling, science fiction, delightfully detailed, somewhat creepy and an amazing read! I devoured it! The initial premise of clones as tools in #theechowife was a little more sci-fi than I was expecting but worked and was ultimately a necessary point. Loved the ending. Thanks to #netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I absolutely adored this novel.

I want to start off by saying that I have a bachelor's in chemistry and have extensive professional laboratory experience. When I saw that this book was about a woman in scientific research, I was hesitant. However, this book did not disappoint me what so ever.

Sarah Gailey did an excellent job writing a realistic laboratory setting while also creating drama that kept me hooked the entire time. I audibly gasped multiple times throughout this novel because the story was so juicy.

The writing style was very accessible and I think most readers will enjoy this title, however, I do feel like the scientific terms should be given in a more easy to understand way. I could see how a reader could feel intimidated or possibly DNF this title because they cannot connect to the story. Thrillers in the laboratory setting are few and far between and I appreciated the amount of research that Sarah Gailey put into this to make the story come together.

I would highly recommend this book to my subscribers on YouTube and plan on doing so during my January reading wrap up.

Content warning: murder, dissection, corpses, abuse (child, spousal, and emotional)

Orphan Black meets Stepford Wives in this twisty, heart-wrenching exploration of marriage, identity, cycles of abuse, and healing. Evelyn Caldwell is an award-winning scientist who specializes in cloning. Martine is everything Evelyn is not, a facsimile of the perfect wife. Until the cheating husband, Nathan, winds up dead. And the journey Gailey takes us on requires a hard examination of self and a weighted blanket to get to its hopeful conclusion.

Author Sarah Gailey will be featured in a blog interview on February 18th, 2021.

Gailey writes deeply character-driven novels and this science fiction entry is no exception. This could not be anyone’s story other than Evelyn Caldwell, but the way it calls to certain feelings and patterns cemented the allegory in a specific experience, with some future-tech thrown in to add even more layers.

One thing that worked effectively for me were the intertwining flashbacks between Evelyn’s upbringing of an uptight parent paired with a docile spouse and hers and Nathan’s courtship. So many of the themes explored felt inevitable, but that’s what made this story really work for me. It’s definitely more introspective than focusing on big set pieces. Evelyn tries to prove herself to the reader and ultimately to herself, even though she doesn’t have to.

The reveal towards the end is shocking, but is easy to spot from a distance and if you know anything about the cycle of abusive relationships. There’s a coldness from Evelyn’s point of view that makes the reader want to whisk her and Martine away. Their dichotomy really shines as they mirror each other, with one personality not necessarily being better than the other. They both deserve respect and affection, and Gailey offers them both such dimensionality, even though the story is told from perspective.

Heart-wrenching with gorgeous prose, this character-driven account of a researcher and her clone trying to fix a terrible situation is something to behold.

TW: implied domestic violence

This is a sci-fi domestic thriller that follows 2 women - Evelyn and Martine - as they navigate a truly unprecedented relationship. Evelyn Caldwell is an award winning research scientist who focuses on cloning - human cloning. Evelyn's lab grows human clones and programs their personalities in order to fit the job - body double for potential assassination attempt, for example. She's dedicated, focused, no-nonsense, and she's recently found out her husband is having an affair with Martine. Martine is a clone made from Evelyn's research and she is the opposite to Evelyn in many ways and a seemingly perfect match for Evelyn's husband. Except now the husband is dead and the two women team up in order to protect themselves and their future.

There are a lot of things I liked about this book, but my favorite was the concept and execution of the overall plot arc. I was telling my mom about the plot and the first thing she said was that it sounds like a movie. And I completely agree. I found this to be a very commercial, fun to read, intriguing story that I would 100% would not be surprised if it got a movie adaptation. This is not a super heavy sci-fi read and there more thriller aspects really do a good job of balancing out the science-y stuff. Gailey's writing was incredibly easy to fall into and I found myself getting lost in the pages for longer than I intended a few times (but who needs to go to bed on time anyway?). One of my main worries going into this book would be that it would have a lot of either sci-fi or thriller elements and not much of the other. However, all the aspects of what I look for in a sci-fi and a thriller were there but neither overpowered the other so my reading experience ended up being really satisfying from both sides.

I didn't love the place in the plot where the book started. We start with Evelyn as she's accepting an award and see her having to dodge questions about her soon to be ex-husband, Nathan. I was expecting to start before she found out about the affair so it felt like I missed out on a pretty central emotional moment to the plot. We do get bits in flashback form where she found out about Martine and confronted Nathan but I still found myself wishing we would have started earlier and found out with her. I also wish we didn't know Martine was a clone going into the book. That reveal was built up so well and it really felt like it would have been a mic-drop moment in the book except that I already knew she was a clone going into the story. I think if the clone reveal and the affair reveal were done together like a one-two punch it would have been really great. But we miss out on the affair reveal happening before the book started and I knew about the clone ahead of time so both were less emotionally hard hitting than I wanted them to be.

I thought the science elements were handled really well. I don't read a ton of sci-fi but the number one aspect that will make or break a sci-fi for me is how naturally integrated the science is in the book. Some books really take me out of the story when they suddenly start feeling like a textbook when the science stuff is introduced. The cloning technology wasn't too far out of reality (they grow humans in tanks filled with artificial amniotic fluid) and there were a lot of words that I recognized from all my soapy TV medical dramas so it felt grounded. The technology felt like it could be only a few years away from current day, not hundreds of years in the future, so I think even non-sci-fi readers could have a good handle on that side of the story. There were some parts that got a bit hand-wavy and skimmed over with general language and I'm glad we didn't get bogged down in every single step of the process being explained to the reader. (but maybe fans of more in depth sci-fi would find those omissions bothersome).

On the thriller side of the story, this was a pretty typical domestic thriller with secrets being revealed throughout the story. There weren't any super high action or high tension scenes (no high speed car chase running away from the killer, for example). However, there were a ton of reveals and twists in the story that I didn't see coming - the one at 80% really threw me for a loop - so they were satisfying. I do wish there was a bit more tension on Evelyn and Martine when they were trying to figure out what to do after Nathan's death and I think that would have helped with the overall stakes in the story. Despite Evelyn stating that her career would be over if any of the events in the book got out, I never felt like she was ever really in danger of being found out. I would have liked maybe a surprise lab inspection or something.

Finally, I found this to be an overall character driven story, which is my preference. The larger discussion in the book centers around what makes a person a person which was really interesting to watch Evelyn and Martine work through their feelings on. There's also a bit of question of what is genetically ingrained in someone vs what can be artificially programmed into them. Evelyn and Martine were the main two characters we followed, but we do get their interactions with Evelyn's lab assistant as well as scenes from Evelyn's childhood which helped show their different relationships. Gailey did a fantastic job at really ingraining in the writing the different ways the characters act with one another. Evelyn would be more curt and straightforward with her lab assistant than with other people and we can see that not only in her outward interactions and dialogue with him, but also her internal monologue would change. I think Gailey did a fantastic job setting up the character relations for the reader to immediately know the status quo only for those relationships to be changed as the story progressed. I wouldn't consider Evelyn an entirely likeable person - she's very cold, a bit rude at times, and does come across as a bit full of herself - but I found her to still be very human and easy to root for as the book's events unfolded which is really the best thing I could hope for.

Overall, this is a very well balanced sci-fi domestic thriller that would appeal to a broad range of readers. I found the characters to be intriguing, the plot well paced with good reveals, and I was satisfied with the ending. I do think we missed out on some emotional connection since the book started after a big plot point that I think would have been better suited to be explored on the page.

256 pages.

Publication date is February 16, 2021.

Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for the ARC in exchange for review.

Every now and then I agree to review a book like The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey that is so far outside my reading comfort zone because I know the author is just fantastic. I loved Sarah Gailey's Magic For Liars and figured that while I may not love this book as much I would still enjoy it. Happily, I can say that that was definitely the case here! While The Echo Wife has a science fiction aspect to it, it's pretty much just a straight-up thriller and I loved it from beginning to end. 

There was a lot that I enjoyed about this book, from its kind of ridiculous premise to its amazing cast of characters, but I think what really stood out about it to me was how unpredictable the story was. I feel like every time I was sure I knew exactly what was going on and what was going to happen next Sarah Gailey managed to take the story down a path that I just did not see coming at all. I was up all night reading this book because I needed to know what was going to happen next and to find out if my theories on what was going on was true or not (They never were). 

I'm so glad I decided to read this book and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to everyone I know. I think there's something in it for everyone to love no matter what genre they normally read. Sarah Gailey has once again proven what a great author she is and I know I at least will be reading everything else she releases from this point forward. 

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The Echo Wife is a RIDE and I questioned every second of it. In a good and unsettling and compulsive way. Evelyn Caldwell is an award-winning scientist, but her world is turned upside down by her ex-husband's wife Martine, Evelyn's clone. We weave in and out of Evelyn's past and present, shifting between the shadows of childhood and the twists of adulthood. Every moment I questioned what I believed, what is good, what is bad, what is moral, what is compassion, what is survival, what is human. And it was a sharp and jolting journey with bits of science fiction and bits of horror, too. I obviously still haven't been able to let this one go, so, yes, it was very good, highly recommend.

Did you ever break the expensive vase and then try to fix it before your mom came home? This book is kinda like that… but with clones.

Evelyn is a diehard workaholic. Nothing is going to get in between herself and her lab… including her husband and the baby he wants. Things get tricky when he eventually has an affair with her lab assistant. Did I mention Martine, the lab assistant, is Evelyn’s clone (built by Nathan to be more compliant than Evelyn)? Pretty soon Nathan wants a divorce and Martine gets preggos… A clone that can get pregnant?

With all this tension in the air, Evelyn’s phone rings… There’s been an accident. She rushes to her ex’s house to find blood everywhere and in the middle of it all is Nathan’s dead body. Martine says it is “Self-defense…”

How do Evelyn and Martine propose to ‘fix the broken vase?” Won’t Nathan’s friends and colleagues start questioning his absence?

Gailey has written some of the best works of SSF in the past several years. Upright Women Wanted was one of my very favorites from last year! They write characters that I undoubtedly relate to. Even at their greediest, Gailey finds a way to get me to empathize with them and their twisted moral compasses. It particularly becomes fun when in the context of a clone and the process it takes to build and condition them.

Let’s talk about science… The reader is given just enough of the amnio and helixes and embryos to get that science-y feeling, that lab credibility. This foundation allows for the “love triangle” to proceed. I write this for those who may shy away from a science fiction novel… I see this as thriller wrapped in a bit of science to give the speculation legitimacy. A perfect blend of creepiness, tension, and intelligence.

I recommend The Echo Wife is a twisty SciFi “love triangle” for the future. It is awesome!

4.5 out of 5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley, Tor Books, and the author for an advanced copy for review.

This should be on everyone's TBR pile. I was expecting more of a "Big Little Lies" feel, but nonetheless, I still enjoyed this book and look forward to hearing everyone else's thoughts when it's out in February.

I'm not sure what exactly I expected going into this. I saw reviews describing it as Westworld meets Stepford Wives meets Big Little Lies. I would say all those comparisons are correct. Author Sarah Gailey did a wonderful job combining sci-fi with suspense. It was a book I truly enjoyed reading from start to finish.

This book is one crazy plot and I love it! Award winning scientist, Evelyn, has been replaced. Her husband has stolen her research and cloned her, ultimately leaving her for Martine, a woman who looks exactly like her and who possesses all the qualities and characteristics her now ex-husband wishes she had.

Evelyn, the main character, is a motivated and brilliant scientist. A workaholic who put her lab and experiments above all else. Many times she left her husband to sit at home alone while she perfected her cloning techniques. The story starts out with her winning a prestigious award for her discovery.

But her personal life has crumbled. Her husband has replaced her. Martine, Evelyn's clone, is the classic housewife- loving, caring, and obedient. She is everything Evelyn can never be.

Now her ex-husband is dead at the hands of her clone. A clone no one can ever know exists. Evelyn must help come up with a plan to cover up this disastrous situation. She is the only one who can solve this problem, it is all up to her.

The author does a phenomenal job explaining the technology and medical terms needed to understand how clones came to be. I will admit it was hard in my mind to wrap my head around the difference between a clone and an android. This was also a struggle for the main character, and I love how Evelyn was constantly struggling with the difference throughout the story.

Every once in while the reader gets a flashback chapter of Evelyn's life as a child, which helps explain why she is the seemingly cold-hearted, no-nonsense person she is now. These flashbacks were very helpful to try an understand Evelyn's way of thinking and decisions she makes.

Overall I highly enjoyed this novel. It was suspenseful, engaging, surprising and somehow heartwarming all in one. A 4 star read for me!

"The Echo Wife" is set to be released here in the U.S. on February 16, 2021 so preorder now! I feel like this is such a genre bending story that even if sci-fi isn't "your thing" you might highly enjoy this!

Thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan-Tor Forge for allowing me an e-galley to read and give my honest review.

Happy Reading!

This was a psychological thriller masquerading as sci-fi. Main character who is pretty much a sociopath? Check. Untrustworthy secondary characters? Check. All sorts of bodies? Check. World-building to support any of the science or uphold the plot? Not even a little bit.

The completely bonkers first person narrator certainly helped with the suspension of disbelief, but there was seriously no accountability in this one, no suspicious outsider saying, "huh, that's weird..." and it just made me wonder exactly WHAT kind of world they were living in.

3/4 of the way there, Gailey. Enough to make me read to the end, but not enough to make this book full of murk that doesn't hold up to closer examination.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing for the ARC.

A very unique sci-fi that has a slow burn of a Shirley Jackson novel. It can can be heavy on science and ethics at times but at the end it made me stop and think of clones and if they will ever be part of our world.

Evelyn Caldwell is an award-winning scientist who has researched and developed the human cloning process. She and her husband Nathan seem to have a perfect life. However, Nathan has secrets of his own that turn their marriage upside down. When Evelyn denies Nathan’s desire to have children of their own, Nathan takes matters into his own hands by stealing Evelyn’s research in order to clone her. When Evelyn eventually meets her clone, Martine, she realizes that Nathan has somehow given her the ability to get pregnant. How can that be? When Martine kills Nathan, how will Evelyn respond?

“She was also a consequence of my failure to keep a handle on things”

This is my first time reading Sarah Gailey’s work and I am extremely impressed! The plot is well-constructed and executed, easily flowing from beginning to end. Gailey does a fantastic job of delving into Evelyn’s psyche and showing why she makes decisions and acts as she does in response to her rogue husband, Nathan. Oftentimes, this is where other psychological thrillers fall short, as they never seem to delve completely into why characters are the way they are. Evelyn’s backstory is an essential component to this story and it is superbly crafted! Gailey successfully answers many questions on ethics throughout the book, ultimately culminating on this statement, “If you are loved, then you cannot be replaced.” I thought that I knew where the plot was headed several times, but I was wrong! This is a major accomplishment, as it is difficult to surprise me!

I am so glad that I took a chance at reading an author slightly out of my wheelhouse. The Echo Wife is a book that covers many genres, as it is part science-fiction, dystopian, and psychological thriller. It will also appeal to fans of Liz Nugent’s writing. I highly recommend The Echo Wife!

5/5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and MacMillan-Tor/Forge for the ARC of The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey in exchange for an honest review.

It’s definitely more of a 3.5 for me.

I decided to pick this one because I really enjoyed one novella of the author, Upright Women Wanted. While that was a lot of fun, this book is a whole collection of WTF moments.

Considering this is my first book with clones, I understood whatever basic scientific information that author wanted to give us. And despite the subject matter of this novel, it is less of a sci-fi and more of a character driven story of two women who’ve been betrayed by the same man. While one of them is full of anger and regrets and wonders who exactly knows the real her, the other woman just wants the agency to be able to make her own decisions and be proud of them. The struggles they go through together until they form a very unique kind of relationship is very fascinating to read about. It was also interesting to contemplate if cloning would become a reality in our future and what kind of moral and ethical dilemmas we would have to face.

In the end, this was both mind blowing and mundane at the same time. Interesting concepts and characters make this an enjoyable thriller, but the ending kinda didn’t live up to my expectations. However, if you enjoy futuristic stories that’ll make you think while also entertaining you, then I would totally recommend this book.

Evelyn is a renown genetists that does ground-breaking work in cloning. Her husband replaces her with..her own clone. Murder and coverups and cloning ensues in this character-driven, super creepy domestic thriller.
I love how the books explores power and consent, gendered stereotypes, and the long-lasting effects of a childhood with domestic violence.
I love every Sarah Gailey book I’ve ever read and this is no exception.

I had high hopes going into this, and I did enjoy misanthropic narrator Evelyn for a while, but to bring back a classic line from Emily, this book has more plot holes than fishnet stockings and it's a frustrating read.