Reviews with content warning for Gaslighting - The Echo Wife

Reviews tagging 'Gaslighting'

The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey

39 reviews

kt2e56's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

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

5.0

I’m speechless. Oh my GOD, this was so good. The sci-fi and mystery angle is interesting in and of itself, but what really pulled me in was the ethics of cloning interwoven throughout. I think it’s because I’m a survivor myself, but I really related to a lot of this book and my heart ached quite a bit for Evelyn who was replaced for not being perfect for her husband and of course Martine who was groomed and molded based on the whims of a deeply fucked up individual.

The parts where Martine can’t figure out what *she* wants versus what she was created to want were really just so chilling. Reading the acknowledgements at the end and discovering that the author is also a survivor helped process a lot of this for me and my instincts about why certain aspects of this book crawled under my skin.

Definitely give this one a read if you can.

Content Warnings

mshusky's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Dark, disturbing domestic thriller with Sci-Fi elements. This was brilliant. Horrifying but brilliant.

Evelyn, the main protagonist, is a very brilliant, ambitious, driven, obsessive scientist. At the start of the book (omg that first chapter – stunning) wins a prestigious award for her cloning research. However, what should be her triumph is completely overtaken by the fact that she knows her husband stole her research and has left her for her ‘Stepford Wife’ version clone. And if you think you know how the novel is going to go from there, you are so wrong.

I want to continue, to explain how the lifelong domestic abuse brings a character who is such an unreliable narrator that others have to explain emotional currency, a character who has been trained to be an unobservant observer. But if I explain it will create spoilers, let me just say this will stay with you long after you have read this novel.

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robinsong's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.5

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mklein319's review

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dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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shakakan's review

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dark tense fast-paced

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

3.25

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laurareads87's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense fast-paced

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

4.25

The plot of The Echo Wife follows Evelyn, a scientist engaged in research on the possibilities of human cloning, and Martine, a clone of Evelyn that, as the plot description for the book notes, is having a relationship with Evelyn's (ex-)husband. The story is told from Evelyn's point of view; as a character, she is brilliantly written but a very uncomfortable mind for the reader to inhabit: she describes her 'subjects,' the living, breathing, sentient human clones she has created, in such cold terms ('medical waste'), refusing to even acknowledge very real ethical complexities involved in cloning that the reader absolutely cannot avoid facing. At its heart, though, this book is about dehumanization -- the particular kinds of abuse that involve treating another as an instrument with a function rather than a person, that involve breaking another down with the clear intent of making them subservient rather than independent -- and, also, about survival. This was a very emotional read.

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