Sweet Fury

by Sarah Bischoff

I REALLY enjoyed this book. It was the soap-operatic suspenseful novel I needed to get me out of a minor reading slump. Told from various points of view, the reader soon realizes they cannot trust any narrator.

Lila Crayne is beautiful and brilliant. She is THE most sought-after actress of the moment. She has everything she could have ever wished for: beauty, fame, a handsome famous actor as a fiance and now the role of a lifetime. Lila and her husband are producing a feminist version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Tender is the Night” (a rendition I would love to read in real life). For Lila to fully envelope her character, she seeks therapy under the care of Johna Gabriel, who coincidentally has an infatuation with F. Scott Fitzgerald. The story is told in the third person narrative with chapters in first person under the guise of Jonah’s private patient notes on Lila and Lila’s journal. Soon, forbidden attractions occur, secrets are revealed, and half-truths are believed, culminating in a shocking act of violence. 

I enjoyed this novel’s pace, plot, and finding very few characters with redeeming characteristics. Now, I want to go out and read Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night.

Thank you to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster for the free copy