Lead Review (I’m Not Done With You Yet)
- Book: I’m Not Done With You Yet
- Location: England, New York City (NYC), Oxford
- Author: Jesse Sutanto
I’m Not Done With You Yet by Jesse Sutanto, psychological thriller set in Oxford, UK and New York City.
Should you renew a friendship after many years? Can it ever be the same? I’m Not Done With You Yet is an intriguing title for this psychological thriller, and Jesse Sutanto has no intention of explaining until the very end of the book. Her characters, Jane and Thalia, met on a Masters writing course in Oxford many years ago. They had a great friendship, which was a girl-crush verging on an obsession on Jane’s part, but the girls were torn apart by a terrible event.
Many years later, Jane rediscovers her friend online and is overjoyed when Thalia seems pleased to renew their friendship. Their lives have changed over the years; Jane is married to Ted and living back in the States where she is a commercial writer, whereas Thalia is now a highly successful author and married to Ivan. Thalia and Ivan had met in Oxford and he is now stupidly rich, meaning that Thalia can afford to pull Jane back into her circle and be generous with her time and her money. For her part, Jane has low self-esteem and repeatedly tells herself that she is a sociopath and therefore unworthy of such a great friendship. Nevertheless, she is determined that Thalia won’t escape again.
Eventually we learn that what parted the two young women all those years ago was a problem of giant proportions. It remains constantly in the background and Jane is terrified that the renewed friendship is threatened and it won’t last. Will her fierce love for her friend be enough to carry them through the challenges? Or are there things that she doesn’t know about Thalia that might even make her unworthy of Jane’s devotion?
This is a very readable book, which keeps you in suspense. I got really involved with the characters, especially Jane’s wish to exist in the orbit of her somewhat exotic and powerful friend at any cost. No friendships are ever totally evenly balanced, and in this toxic relationship it was fascinating to see what each woman would allow the other to get away with before they would draw a line in the sand. As a writer, I loved that Jane and Thalia are writers and also written about. It’s quite meta! For the most part they seem in control of their own fates but then the author has a few hand grenades and surprises that throw them off script. A chilling and involving book about the meaning of friendship, trust and loyalty.
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