Reviews with content warning for Medical trauma - The Echo Wife

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Reviews tagging 'Medical trauma'

thesincoucher's review

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I don't think this book is Pretty Little Liars meets Black Mirror - I feel if you read this book expecting those many twists and turns, you are going to end up disappointed. Instead this books is about Evelyn suffering the greatest betrayal and humiliation you can suffer from a romantic partner. Not only is he unfaithful but he is unfaithful with a better version of yourself he has made using your life's work. So not only does he betray her but he steals her intellectual property to do it.

Evelyn is a mad, evil scientist and when you realise this, you can completely see why she and Nathan, her ex-husband, got along because he is a psychopath. Evelyn has discovered how to create clones and she thinks of them as tools, not people, and uses them as such: their function, most of the time, is to be for donating organs, body doubles for politicians and so on. They have limited and short time stamps.

The plot starts when the clone her ex-husband created, Martine, decides to meet her and Evelyn quickly realises M is pregnant, which shouldn't be possible. Things take a turn on the worse, when M calls her she has just killer their husband. In her defence, he tried to kill her first.

This book is so quietly hilarious sometimes. There is quite a bit of black humour, which I loved, and quite a lot of splashes of horror, which I adored. Gailey writes with a lot of care about abusive relationships and the side-effects they leave on people. Evelyn and Marine become closer as the book goes on out of necessity which allows the author to explore those effects in more depth as well as maternal feelings. I cannot remember a book that exemplifies so well how it feels not to want children: Evelyn is a cold, ruthless character but there were a lot of moments when she pondered about her lack of maternal instincts that I thought they were spot-on.

I absolutely loved the concepts and ideas it throws on the reader and the ending was absolutely fantastic which makes it a shame that I think it needed more editing at the beginning where it is a bit repetitive and navel-gazey.

Content Warnings

marrowe's review

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challenging dark emotional fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

girlonbooks's review

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

💍💍💍💍(four stars as rated in wedding rings worn until death do us part, do us part, do us part, do us part…)

Evelyn Caldwell’s human cloning technology changed the world for everyone, herself included. When Evelyn’s catches her husband having an affair with a clone of her Evelyn is forced to keep it quiet or risk ruining everything she’s worked for. Now her ex is dead – murdered in self defense by his “new wife” – and the women must work together to cover it up or lose the things that matter most to both of them.

“Why would you ever cut the blooms off the rosebush?”
It was one of the only truly useful things she ever taught me: Stress stimulates growth. Sometimes, in order to make something develop in the right direction, you have to hurt it.

You know that feeling when you’re reading a book and you think, “oh this is going to get made into a movie without question.” I felt that so many times while reading The Echo Wife that I may just go ahead and start my own studio and make the thing myself! It’s just such a gloriously original thriller that the idea of it not getting optioned feels a bit preposterous. I, for one, totally devoured this book and now consider myself an official member of the “Sarah Gailey is brilliantly talented in all ways” club. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys dark themes, LOTS of internal reflection on the part of the protagonist and morally ambiguous characters. To me, though, none of that felt tiring to get through, which is actually rather shocking considering that this book is far more character based than it is plot based. Especially for a thriller. From a literary standpoint, The Echo Wife is edited just beautifully and the flow of the thing itself is outstanding.

The best part of science fiction (imo) is being asked to suspend your disbelief in order to entertain a false reality. It turns out, though, that there are a lot of people who don’t actually like that. Which is wild to me since, that is literally the POINT behind the genre? The Echo Wife asks a lot of disbelief suspension on the part of the reader. So, if you’re not ready to do that then this book will not hit the mark for you. On that note, if you can’t get on board with fake science then you probably should mosey on out of the sci-fi genre and stay out of it forever. 🙈

✨ Rep in this book: NB author

✨ Content warnings for this book: death of a spouse, death of a parent, murder, blood, medical stuff, adultery, domestic violence, confinement

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shelfmadewoman's review

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adventurous dark reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

You won’t find me reading a lot of domestic thrillers... but you can certainly find me picking up a domestic thriller by Sarah Gailey that are about... well... what this is about. I suggest not looking at the summary before reading if you can bear it. As with most thrillers, its best to go in with a blank slate!

Without getting into any specifics, I can tell you that Gailey goes beyond the surface ideas of the story and explores ethics and consent in a new way.

I liked it a lot! It was twisty as heck! I would do it again!

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sunsetcity's review

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emotional informative tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I went into this book thinking it would be one genre, and was pleasantly surprised by the direction it took! In this book we follow Evelyn, who is recently divorced and has been recognized for her work with cloning humans. What she didn't realize that the person her ex-husband left her for was a clone of herself. Not only that, but the clone, Marteen, has killed her ex-husband and needs her help.

I thought this one was going to be a mystery/thriller, but it leaned pretty heavily into scifi. There was a lot of discussion about how cloning humans work and the ethics involved in their creation in this world. I really enjoyed learning the theoretical parts of what Evelyn was doing in her lab and how they made replicas of various people. I also enjoyed Evelyn as a character. She was very no nonsense and very direct in her thoughts and actions. I also enjoyed seeing how Marteen changed throughout the story and how external factors really influenced her personality later in the story.

There were a lot of twists and turn throughout the books, but the end of the story was a little anti climactic comparatively and I couldn't help but feel a little let down by that fact. But overall I enjoyed this one!

Content Warnings

birdbrainbooks's review

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challenging dark reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

3.8 - What a WILD ride of a book! I suggest going into this one without knowing many details—although note that it’s not for the weak of stomach (gore). Scientist Evelyn has won an award for inventing the ability to create adult human clones—at the same moment her husband leaves her for another woman. Who is that woman? Buckle your seatbelt for many plot twists. This book is sci-fi and a bit thriller, while also packing in a lot of character building and introspection (some of which can be a little repetitive at times). I loved the unexpected turns the story and relationship building took between the main characters and will definitely be reading more from Sarah Gailey.

Content Warnings