This Is Me by Shari Low Review

This Is Me

By Shari Low

Release Date: May 2nd, 2019

Aria

Source: ARC provided by the publisher

This is... Denise.

Married to Ray, her first and only love, Denise has never for one moment regretted putting the husband she idolised on a pedestal above everyone and everything else. But, after forty years of marriage, he is gone, leaving Denise to discover that their perfect marriage was fatally flawed. Now she faces a future alone, but first she must face the betrayals of the past.

This is... Claire.

he estranged daughter of Denise, the woman who put her husband before her children, Claire took the opposite path and devoted her life to raising her family, sacrificing her marriage along the way. With her teenage sons about to flee the nest, she realises she may have left it too late to find her own happy ever after.

This is the story of two women, both alone, both cautionary tales of one of motherhood's biggest decisions

*ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest and unbiased review*

When I choose a book to read there is normally a big battle going on inside my head, so do I stick with the simple easy going books I normally stick to? Or do I try something different? Expand my horizons if you will, and the latter is exactly what I did with This Is Me by Shari Low. 

This Is Me is the story of Denise, a woman who put her husband Ray before EVERYONE in their lives, including their children. Then there is her estranged daughter Claire, who has a failed marriage and is suffering from empty nest syndrome. There has been no contact for years between Claire and her parents, until one day she gets a call from her mother... 

This book is brilliant! But boy does it goes to extremes! This is no simple book about relationships and a mother making a choice between who she puts first, her spouse or her children, this is rather a book on Perspecticide! 

Now Perspecticide is a term, coined by Sociologist and Forensic Social Worker Evan D.  Stark of Rutgers University–Newark, is defined as "an extreme form of coercive control over an intimate partner." It has been suggested that it is similar to Stockholm Syndrome, which when I read about it, it made me think that this is one of the worse types of emotional abuses I had ever heard of. 

I feel that this is a very brave topic for an author to take on, and I applauded Shari Low for taking on such a difficult subject. 

I give This Is Me 5 stars

  

Shari Low has published eighteen books under her own name and pseudonyms Millie Conway and Ronni Cooper. She is also one half of the writing duo, Shari King, with old friend and TV presenter, Ross King.

Back in the nineties, after living abroad for many years, Shari returned to Scotland, met a guy, got engaged after a week, and twenty-something years later she lives near Glasgow with her husband, two teenagers and a labradoodle.
Shari also writes an opinion column and a literary page for a newspaper and is working on the TV adaptation of one of her books.