Review: The Echo Wife

3 stars. Ahh, interesting. I see why this is compared to a Megan Abbott book - it's a delicious thriller with a solid premise and some serious twists and turns. It's a well-written pageturner with a questionable protagonist who makes questionable decisions while navigating very specific and severe traumas, both old and fresh. I guess I kind of thought it would be more of a straightforward sci-fi, focused on the science and the tech and the clone aspect. But this really is about so much more: identity, a marriage, secrets, and laboratory ethics. There's actually a lot of writing in this book that takes us through the narrator's long thought spirals into each of these topics.

The plot, though, is this: Evelyn, a successful scientist, discovers that her husband has stolen her research with the intention of replacing her with her own clone, manufactured and programmed without flaws and designed to have his child. Evelyn, deeply wounded by this betrayal, embraces a cold and focused part of her identity and thrown herself into her work, determined to avoid the emotional nature of the situation. But when her clone - Martine, his new and newly pregnant fiance - calls her, begging for her help to come and clean up an impossible situation, Evelyn can't refuse, taking them both down an insane, irreversible, groundbreaking path.

I want to talk about Nathan, and how he is barely a part of this story, though the consequences of his actions drive the entire plot from beginning to end. Evelyn may be the narrator, but she has been shaped by abusive men her entire life, as has Martine, and both of them continue to be even in their absence. The tragedy here to me is that they must carve out a way to exist beyond and without Nathan - and go to great lengths to do so - while ensuring they are safe from him, in a way. And he barely appears on screen. It's an interesting angle.

So why 3 stars? This obviously made me think a lot, and I was engrossed. I think what it comes down to is that I liked the idea of Evelyn (cold, calculating, bloodthirsty, cruel, self-awarely selfish, focused, constantly simmering with rage and ambition), but I didn't like the reality of being in her head, mostly because her inner monologue delayed the action so often. I mentioned her thought spirals above - I did find myself skimming a bit in the second half as she tried to navigate descending (or climbing?) the hill she'd built for herself. I am also embarrassingly, personally triggered by toxic bosses and couldn't stand the way she tried to justify being a cruel employer.

That's a lot of words for a short book, though, so I do recommend picking this one up, maybe as a beach read. The scientific aspects are super well-done for something so implausible (for now...). I can't wait to read more from this author!

The Echo Wife on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads