Annabelle’s harrowing childhood experience unfolds perfectly in its crafting and impact, eventually allowing the reader to understand how she could be so open to being manipulated.

I don’t think it was what I was expecting, which sometimes is a good thing, but other times it’s not. But as the boundaries between her hypnotic trance and reality begin to dissolve, Annabelle becomes increasingly vulnerable to much darker forces.I could feel Annabelle's insecurity and anxiety radiating off the page; Spiers does a fantastic job of showing not telling. There were times when I wanted to shout at Annabelle to wake up and not to be so trusting but I was invested in her as a main character which is important to me in a book. This is where Cassandra comes in: glamorous and confident, you think she is the ideal friend for Annabelle.

Cassandra concludes that she must tactfully deflect Stephen's offer of love, and encourage him in his emerging career as a model and a film actor. This thriller is well-written, covering dark themes, such as self-harm, trust issues and manipulation, as well as the potential dangers of hypnosis and the complexities of the human mind. Stephen plagiarises from numerous poets in an attempt to impress Cassandra, including Algernon Charles Swinburne, then tries to imitate Robert Herrick in his first attempts at original verse. The first-person narrator is Cassandra Mortmain, an intelligent teenager who tells the story through her journal.

To stop herself from causing more harm and become a fitter mother, Anabelle decided to visit a hypnotherapist. Biblical episodes, mainly Jacob's Ladder and Jacob Wrestling, are apparently referred to in Mr Mortmain's successful novel Jacob Wrestling, though the content of that novel is never clearly represented to the reader. I enjoyed the way the book was written, it had a beginning, middle and end and the plot was well thought out and delivered without it dragging or feeling rushed.