If I Can't Have You

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We meet Janet on what would have been the 18th birthday of her daughter, Claire, who died in a tragic car accident 11 years earlier. Janet blames herself and so does her husband, Colin. They say there's a fine line between love and hate. But I don't think there's a line at all. They're the same thing. What we love we hate for loving. What makes us more vulnerable than love? What hurts as much?"

However Samuel's sense of entitlement, self-importance and arrogance as well as his inability to see the depth of his treatment of not only Constance, but women in general, speaks volumes as to the type of man he is. Why is it that these are the men who attract the most vulnerable kind of woman? They fall for his charm, his smile, the way he makes them laugh all without seeing that he is really laughing at them not with them. He comes from a world of entitlement and privilege and is used to getting what he wants and then justifying his disgraceful actions by accusing women of being sulky and clingy who dare to mistake sexual intimacy as a relationship when all he is really after is a good time. Levin’s prose is fierce and original - not once did my attention stray. It fairly bristles with anger - almost everyone in Constance’s life is subject to her cynical scrutiny, but this brings laughs too, especially when she regales us with details about her fellow receptionists and Linda and Alison. Different but relatively enjoyable, IF I CAN'T HAVE YOU is the literary cross of "Fatal Attraction" and "Gone Girl" that is truly imaginative and compelling. Recommended though it may not be for all. On the surface, Samuel is handsome and educated and he’s a doctor too so he must be kind, right? Wrong. He is wilfully blind, making false promises to women, pretending that he wants a relationship with them even though all he wants is casual sex. When those women call him out on his behaviour, he dismisses them as ‘nutters’. Working as a receptionist for a doctors surgery in affluent Kensington, Constance falls in love with Dr Samuel Stevens the moment she sets eyes on him. Brought in to fill the gap a deceased doctor has left behind, Samuel arrives with his smiles and self-importance. Despite this Constance sees only attraction and is immediately infatuated with him, finding any excuse she can to be alone with him. Soon her every thought is consumed with him particularly when her advances are reciprocated and Constance believes their stolen moments to be true love.bookshelf #bookshelflove #booklove #bookishlove #bookish #booktok #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagramuk #bookobsessed #booknerd #bookreviewer #bookrecommendations #instabooks When the sexy Dr Stevens begins to show interest, her whole world changes. They begin an exciting affair, Constance is in Love for the first time. He whispers sweetness to her ear, he's smitten... right? One thing it does have in common with others of its purported genre is its readability. There is a creepy compulsiveness to the story, a sense from the start that things are going to go tits up. You just don’t know how and when. In this sense it shares something in common with Harriet Lane’s Alys Always which also features a woman insinuating herself into the lives of others. What makes this protagonist’s journey so seductive, however, is both its plausibility and its possibility. We might like to believe that Constance Little is none of us, but in reality she is all of us, for who can tell what lies around the corner of our lives, what particular synergy of experiences, or accidents of birth will presage the perfect storm towards tragedy? IfICantHaveYou #psychologicalthriller #NoRulesJustThrills #InExchangeForReview #JustFinished #BookReview If I Can't Have You by Charlotte Levin is an all-consuming novel about loneliness, obsession and how far we go for the ones we love.

This psychological thriller is a darkly twisted tale of love and obsession written in the form of a detailed letter from Constance to Samuel, the object of her desire, and is a twisted blend of "Fatal Attraction" and "Gone Girl". I couldn't help but feel sorry for Constance even if she was a tad psycho. It was Samuel and Dale that I loathed the most...and I had to question who was the most twisted one of them all? As we move into the story there is a clever twist and a central dilemma which might alter the way that we see Janet. The dilemma is one of those which starts small and grows and grows..and I just wanted to shout out to Janet RUN!! The dilemma and the consequences of Janet’s response sent the plot into another gear and at this point it became extremely difficult to put the book down and I think many of us had to sprint to the end. Having felt such an overwhelming sense of pity for Janet I was then gripped by a deep unease and felt a little uncomfortable.. I really enjoyed “If I Can’t Have You” so I was super keen to find this book in the shop last week. Unfortunately, it widely missed the mark for me. After a night out drinking with her friends she wakes up the next day in hospital having survived a horrific train crash and saved the life of a little girl but with no memory of the event. Thrust into the public eye and seen as a heroine, Janet slowly starts to regain memories of that night and it’s not quite what everyone is led to believe.If you want a story to get its fingernails into you and have you both wanting to cover your eyes and not stop reading, then this is the story for you. I honestly cannot believe that this is a debut novel. I feel as though Constance is my friend and I wanted to shake her and stop her ridiculous risk taking behaviour. But as I learnt what had happened to her, my arms reached out to hug her. I wanted to hurt the people who hurt her. I wanted to teach her the difference between love and obsession. The powerful writing takes the reader full circle from the first meeting with Constance on a train, bloodied and wearing a wedding dress, to the final heartbreaking diary entry which made my heart bleed, engrossing me in the story and some of the poignant descriptions of grief and despair I have ever read. I am so sorry that I judged Constance before I knew her story.