Second Life by S.J. Watson
This novel is one of psychological suspense. I loved his first novel Before I Go to Sleep, but this one didn't grab me in the same way.
Julia Plummer, that central character here, and the narrator, is a photographer. She had a difficult childhood, with her mother dying young, and her father an alcoholic, making her the chief caretaker of her younger sister. She struggled with addiction, and then left home for love of a boyfriend, but ended up back home in England again, rebuilding her life.
An exhibit including one of her photographs has just gone up, and as she warily goes to see it, she is taken back mentally to the life she was living when she took it. It is a photo of the young man she was in love with at the time, near the end of their relationship.
She returns home from the gallery to hear news that her younger sister Kate, who has been living in Paris, and supposedly putting her own life back together, is a murder victim. Many things are going on inside Julia with this news: guilt at not being there for her sister when she was needed; relief at not having to fight her sister to keep custody of her sister's son Connor, now 14, whom Julia and her husband have raised; anger and sorrow at the loss of her sister; and a deep sense of vengeance to find out who is behind her sister's death.
As Julia reaches out to her sister's roommate Anna for more information, she also tries to keep what she is doing from her husband Hugh who is trying to shelter her. Their relationship is a complicated one, and only gets more so. Julia follows her sister into the online world of cyberdating, and finds herself caught up in the new persona she has taken on.
This is a tale of escape, of the past coming back to haunt us, and of secrets kept.
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