When She Was Bad by Tammy Cohen
Genre; Psychological crime fiction
You see the people you work with every day.
But what can’t you see?
Amira, Sarah, Paula, Ewan and Charlie have worked together for years – they know how each one likes their coffee, whose love life is a mess, whose children keep them up at night. But their comfortable routine life is suddenly shattered when an aggressive new boss walks in ….
Now, there’s something chilling in the air.
Who secretly hates everyone?
Who is tortured by their past?
Who is capable of murder?
My thoughts:
I loved this. But then again, I have loved the last four books I’ve read by Tammy Cohen. She can do no wrong in my eyes and this didn’t disappoint.
It’s a story told from multiple viewpoints leading up an event we already know happened. Though we are unaware of who the specific people involved are. There is also a concurrent storyline from Anne who is a psychiatrist, remembering an old case she was involved in. This sounds complicated but Cohen makes it extremely easy to follow because it’s one group of people interacting with the same set of people.
Quite an enclosed tinderbox really.
Being in an office, which is such a closed environment and one you are forced to be in for so many hours of a day is a great place to put characters you want to put under stress. There is no escape, no place to hide.
Anne’s storyline is fascinating and creepy and has your brain ticking over. She’s a great character. Strong in difficult circumstances, because she’s remembering a time in her life when working under the supervision of a male superior was a more submissive time that in is now. She didn’t feel comfortable giving her own opinions and she felt undermined.
And when everything all comes together. Just wow. I took to twitter to show my shock at the turn of events. The minute the specific sentence was in my brain, I was, struck with the shock of events and that Tammy Cohen had indeed done it again. Another belter of a book that I’d recommend to anyone. I can’t really say more than that without giving too much away and that’s the difficulty I find with talking about my reading experience with a book, I can never say too much for fear of spoiling the reading experience for someone else.
With thanks to the publisher, author and NetGalley for my copy.
As for the ‘offsite teambuilding activities’ – I howled with laughter at that – spot on (and subverted into something very creepy by the clever author). Have been through far too many of those things in my life, clearly!
Brilliant wasn’t it. Imagine going on one of those when there’s so much tension! Fun if you’re all getting on, but boy, not if not so.
Great opportunities for murder, though… Not that I’ve been tempted, you understand! 😉
The office is the perfect setting all right. Of course, I’d look at my co-workers differently after reading it…
You would, Alex. Luckily I only have to look in a mirror. Though that can be pretty suspicious!
I do keep hearing great things about this one, Rebecca. And the office setting is a fine choice for the story, too. All sorts of things can brew and boil over in offices… Glad you enjoyed this.
It’s a great read. And yes, the office setting is ideal because it’s so closed in.