This book was just okay for me. I guess I found it unpleasant to be inside the head of such a disturbed person, although I suppose that was the point of the book. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to love this book - the writing was excellent and I loved the main characters voice and POV (I do love a book about an unhinged woman). However, I think the story would have been more successful if structured differently. From the get go, you know Ophelia has done something that has landed her in prison and once I figured out what it was, there was just not enough suspense or intrigue for me to keep reading. I considered DNFing around 70%, but I pushed through to finish it. It was a very interesting character study, but plot-wise, it just didn’t hit for me.

Thanks NetGalley and Regal House Publishing for the eARC, provided in exchange for an unbiased review.

At first, I was very much not sure about this one. The way that our MC speaks is kind of off-putting. Ophelia is…a lot.

But, oh boy, that ‘lot’ turns into one entertaining hot mess!

The author brings us the ultimate in unreliable narrators and an intense story that ratchets up into absolute insanity. Eventually, you’re just reading this completely riveted while muttering in utter disbelief. The obsession (yours and our narrator’s) is nail-biting.

Expect an entertaining, upside-down but very warped world where you find yourself rooting for the absolute wrong person – and you just don’t care.

• ARC via Publisher

I liked this books. It was interesting watching Ophelia’s life unravel. She is an unreliable narrator. But seeing her justifications is so interesting. Her husband was a shit and slimey but her fixation is so intense it becomes all consuming. It was quick good read.

This was a perfect book for what I needed it for, which was a quick read to get my mind off a heavier book I'd just finished. This book reminds me a lot of YOU by Caroline Kepnes, but it was different enough to be interesting. I really hated our main character in a satisfying, love-to-hate them way, but was impressed with the author's ability to still make her a little sympathetic to the reader.

Apart from that, there wasn't a ton that I loved. The comparisons to Dante fell flat for me, and while I understood its purpose in the story, I really don't like the girl-on-girl hate that was so prevalent here. Overall this book served its purpose for me, but I don't see it being anything remarkably deep-cutting.

A portrait of one woman's descent into madness. Ophelia is a professor of Dante who has been married to Andy for 5 years. Of course, she finds out he's cheating and he leaves her for his colleague, Amber, whom he met on one of his many "business" trips. Ophelia is left bereft and decides to spy on the lovers, staking them out from the foreclosed neighbor's home and digitally. This all culminates in a harrowing scene where not everyone makes it out alive.
In the beginning, I really felt for Ophelia, who has HUGE abandonment issues. But as the insanity creeps on and her break from reality is complete, you just kind of want her to get some help. This is unrequited love taken WAY too far.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Regal House Publishing for this e-arc.*

This was an enjoyable light thriller that focuses mainly on the unraveling of a woman after her beloved husband leaves her for another woman. This felt like it was inspired by Maud Ventura's 'My Husband' in a good way -- more commercial than literary, more plot-driven than psychological. Ophelia isn't quite as obsessed with her husband, but she is still fixated on him to a deeply unhealthy degree. At the same time, you develop a bit of sympathy for her -- after all, she hadn't done anything wrong (until she did).

At times difficult to believe and a little overwrought, The Vixen Amber Halloway will appeal to readers who enjoy humor in their domestic suspense/thrillers. I believe that the narrative gets stuck and spins around in circles for a while as we watch her watching her ex and Amber, with little pushing the action forward until forced by outside forces.

The Vixen Amber Halloway is Carol LaHines’s addition to the ever-growing microgenre of “good for her” literary thrillers. The story itself is told from the perspective of Ophelia, a former Dante scholar imprisoned for a nebulous crime involving her ex-husband and the woman that, in Ophelia’s eyes, caused the downfall of her marriage. Told in a series of short vignettes, the reader follows Ophelia as her marriage crumbles and she spirals further and further into a state of obsession, jealousy, and rage.

Several things were going on here that I enjoyed, as well as a couple of other aspects of the novel that didn’t work as well for me. For one, LaHines did a great job integrating literary allusion into the text. Ophelia’s academic interest in divine and medieval punishment and her specialization in Dante’s work are mirrored quite effectively in her own journey into the subconscious and the unraveling of her sanity. It’s also a pretty fast-paced book and the writing style fosters this in a way that kept me on the edge of my seat, waiting to see what Ophelia would do next. It’s not told in a purely linear, chronological style, and skipping back and forth between Ophelia and Andy’s marriage, Ophelia’s time in prison, and all of the moments in between revealed important information when it would be most effective.

However, I found myself rather let down by the ending, and the novel's tendency to drag in the middle made its mere 200 pages still feel too long. If you’re going to write a “good for her” thriller from the perspective of the jilted and borderline-psychopathic ex-wife, go all in! The ending felt like a bit of a cop-out, not necessarily in line with Ophelia’s perspective on her crime. I can also see that LaHines was trying to integrate aspects of Ophelia’s childhood into the story in order to give her a more complex psychological background, but even by the 20% mark I was tired of Ophelia’s repetitive musings on abandonment and her thoughts on her mother leaving her as a child. There is a lot of soliloquizing throughout, and to have Ophelia be SO aware of the damage that this abandonment did for her psychologically ends up feeling a bit out of line with the otherwise aloof and unreliable tone. There’s also something to be said for subtlety—the links between Ophelia being abandoned by her mother and then cheated on/left by Andy feel less impactful when the narrator herself explicitly makes this comparison at every given chance.

This could have been a great short story or novella if some elements were tightened up a bit. I would still recommend it as a quick and engaging thriller with some interesting academic perspectives, although it's not necessarily adding anything new to the genre.

Thank you to NetGalley and Regal House Publishing for the e-ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

this book started good and I was curious to see where it would go however there were some things that did not live up to the expectations


some parts were repetitive and it got boring. i still wanted to see what would happen so kept on reading.

the ending felt really flat; everything seemed so rushed with the hostage situation and the trail and everything.

i wish we could see more of the characters and their mental state, especially the FMC

Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced reader copy.

As much as I wanted to like this book--the premise and the fact that the main character lives in the world of academia made me primed to be interested--I couldn't get into the book, even though it wasn't very long. The repetition from the narrator made things feel redundant, as opposed to feeling intentional for a particular reason (even with the unreliable narrator). The beginning moved too slowly for me to hang in there.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. I was completely glued to this story. My heart went out to the MC. I could feel her anguish and heartbreak. The author did a great job of putting you in the shoes of the one being mistreated and embarrassed while hubby is galavanting around with zero remorse. But then there is a shift and things get wild... I can't give spoilers, but I recommend everyone read this. I absolutely couldn't put this book down!

This is an enjoyable enough thriller, but it doesn't really reinvent the wheel. There's not much I can say beyond "it kept my attention", and while there are certainly worse things for a book to be, I don't have strong enough feelings to go out of my way to recommend it. The frequent timeline jumps were jarring, and I'm growing tired of the trend in women's thriller fiction to emphasize the mental illness of the unreliable narrator (it's just getting tired at this point), but I did find the plot engaging and the writing was competent enough to keep me from getting frustrated or distracted. I don't have high praise for this book, but I don't have too many critiques, either. I expect fans of the genre will enjoy it - and, disclosure of bias, I'm not a huge thriller reader, so it does take more for a book to hook me than it might for true fans of this type of book.

I originally DNFd this book a few months ago, but decided to give it another try. My reading experience didn't go any better the second time. I love a good unhinged female story, but this one was unoriginal and the writing was horrible. There was so much repetition of the same information (the main character mentioned her mother's abandonment almost 15 times by chapter 28) and the author must have expected the reader to have a dictionary on hand because there were way too many words I had to look up their meaning. I honestly don't like leaving bad reviews, but I didn't like this one at all.

Thanks Netgalley for allowing me an early copy of this book.
Wow what a book I raced through this story devouring every word. Such beautiful writing that really conjured up the feelings of this unreliable narrator. We are aware from the start what we are dealing with in terms of her actions and the consequences but you can't help feeling sorry for her and getting dragged along for the ride.

This was a quick and fun read- told mostly from recollections of the main character, Ophelia. She was cheated on by her husband, Andy and it kind of spirals down into her obsessively stalking her husband and the mistress. Some childhood abandonment trauma from her mother comes up throughout the book.

Overall this was a great read and would definitely recommend!

Carol LaHines successfully wrote a compelling look inside the mind of a woman’s spiral into obsession and chaos. I found myself invested in putting together what led this woman to commit murder, and the “prison confessional style” kept it fresh and addictive.
I do feel it would excel more as a novella, as parts felt overwritten, or longer than they needed to be. A more ambiguous and sick ending would have felt more symbolic in my opinion.
That being said, the prose is enveloping and rich, with the sentence level craft feeling poetic but unsettling at the same time. Working in and out of second person is challenging and I was impressed with how well it was done.
I easily think this will be a new favorite for many readers who enjoy a good “feral woman mental breakdowns” fiction novel, with a less dark energy akin to “A Certain Hunger” by Chelsea G Summers or “Animal” by Lisa Taddeo. While it didn’t floor me in the same way, I will definitely be recommending this to others.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ ½
Genre: Mystery Thriller

When Ophelia finds out that her husband, Andy, has been cheating on her with a coworker named Amber Halloway, she is devastated and filled with anger and grief. As Ophelia's anger and hurt consume her, she makes the decision to follow the two lovers and carefully watch their every move. Andy's betrayal reawakens the trauma of her mother abandoning her when she was only eight years old. This occurs as Ophelia becomes more and more detached from reality.

This is not a very long book, and despite the fact that there is some repetition in the narration—during which it is important to keep in mind that the narrator is not reliable—it was still an enjoyable book to read. The story keeps going back and forth between the past and present, something I’m not a fan of. But I guess the author’s writing made it work for me, at least most of the time.

As you make your way through the remainder of the book, you will discover that the protagonist's mental health is put in a more precarious position. And all this is due to her deteriorating relationship with her husband. It is important to keep in mind that this book deals with a number of topics that could be extremely upsetting to certain readers, such as obsession, mental breakdown, and betrayal. So just proceed with caution.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this book.

"My husband" meets "you"

If you're a fan of either then this is for you! A short book that I could not put down, nicely written and with good use of language.
Opheilia drags you along her spiral into a crazy lady whil she stalks her ex husband. It was a rollacoaster ride with her, from empathising with her to wanting to shake her and tell her shes crazy! The character was an educated individual which made the craziness even crazier, she was an intelligent lady which is reflected in the lamguage she uses. You can't help but like her, she's in no way an unlikable character although her actions are questionable, and does have a sense of humor too, my favourite line being "Im sorry, but you're giving me a headache" when her ex is tied up and "waffling"

The way the book is written is all from her head, recalling events and trauma, there isn't much dialogue, only her recollection and her side of the story. It was an interesting and different read, which I really enjoyed

This isn't a long book and was an enjoyable read. It was interesting being in the mind of an unreliable narrator while they are having a mental breakdown, I just don't feel like there was any mystery or tension to the story and it needed that.

3.75 rounded up for goodreads purposes

listen do i agree with what ophelia did? no. would i also go absolutely feral if my husband cheated on me with a hotter woman half my age? yeah probably.

a new one for the weird book girlies. getting into the brain of someone who needs intensive therapy is always a wild ride and this didn’t disappoint.

the dog was unwarranted though. and i understand hearing about ophelia’s past to explain maybe why she overreacted but i feel like it would’ve packed a bigger punch if it was left more ambiguous.

thank you to netgalley & the publishers for the ARC!