Margot's Secrets by Don Boyd

Margot's Secrets by Don Boyd
Buy Margot's Secrets by Don Boyd at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: General Fiction
Reviewer: Simon Dawson
Summary: Margot, a psychologist living in Barcelona, begins an obsessive, sexually charged affair at the same time as two of her clients are found dead, forcing her to question her professional, personal and sexual boundaries.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 308	Date: June 2010
Publisher: Ziji Publishing
ISBN: 978-0955405143
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This is a book which will remain with youWill Self or Martin Amis novels stay with you, and indeed that is not the only similarity between them because Boyd gives you complete and intimate access into the dark, unsettling, uncomfortable and often shocking world of his character.

Margot is a psychologist who specialises in sexual disorders and obsessions. She lives and works for herself in Barcelona amongst the ex-pat community, and although she only has a dozen or so clients at any one time, spends much of her week living at her office. Her clients, both male and female, are bewildering and fascinating in equal portions, and the description of the therapy sessions make fascinating and revealing reading.

Margot’s way of life, however, is threatened. When two of her clients are found horribly mutilated and dead in an attempt to recreate the story of Eulalia, and Margot’s name is mentioned in a note written by one of them at the scene, Margot is forced to look again at the young dead couple she thought she knew so well. Then, possibly more macabre than anything else, the police discover that the deaths were recorded and put on the internet. It becomes apparent that the couple were not working alone. Someone else was in the room when they died. Someone who was egging them on. Helping them. Encouraging them. Even murdering them.

Because of her unique access into the people and minds of anyone capable, and let’s face it intelligent enough to have composed this death (I’d never heard of Eulalia before – but maybe that’s just me), Margot re-evaluates her friends, her clients and even her husband.

Archie is older than Margot, and the marriage between them happy and fulfilling and based on beautiful things; music, art, food and wine, conversation, beautiful sex and enough independence to find real excitement within their marriage when they’re together. The last thing Margot needs, especially with the recent death of her two friends, is to meet someone, someone who is pure sex, someone who pushes every button in her body all at the same time and uncovers an unbelievable longing and passion within her that she never even knew she had, and she simply cannot control. But she does meet someone. She meets Xavier.

Beautifully written, intelligent without being elitist, sexually obsessive without being smutty, frightening without being scary, and needy without being creepy, this is a wonderful book. So convincing is the character of Margot that although I can’t remember Don Boyd describing her other than saying she is beautiful, if she walked past me on the street I swear I’d recognise her. I was totally caught-up in Margot’s story, in her secrets and her life, and will remember this book for a long time to come.

I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to The Bookbag.

If this book appeals then try The Stopping Place by Helen Slavin and Devotion by Nell Leysho.

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