“Fates and Furies meets The Silent Patient when movie star Lila Crayne and her film director fiancé embark on a feminist adaptation of Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night, prompting Lila to enter therapy in preparation for her leading role—but in doing so, she finds herself the victim in a deadly game of revenge in which everyone, on screen and off, is playing a part.”
Sweet Fury, Sash Biscoff
I think the biggest caveat for this book is that you’re going to need to either really like F. Scott Fitzgerald or unhinged women. If neither of those are topics you want to spend a lot of time with, this may not be the book for you. I’m not a Fitzgerald devotee, but I definitely love a woman hellbent on revenge.
We follow Lila, an actress married to an accomplished director, and Jonah, Lila’s new therapist. Lila is working with her husband on a feminist retelling of a Fitzgerald book. With alternating POVs, we learn that Lila is determined to get her movie completed at any costs, and needs Jonah’s help to accomplish that. Luckily, Jonah is just as obsessed with Fitzgerald as Lila, and the two throw caution to the wind for the movie’s success.
This book was a seamless mix of dark academia and psychological thriller. We spend time with two main characters who both acknowledge their mistrust in each other and their own perceptions, doubling the unreliable narrators. Large portions of the story are spent in philosophical arguments about topics ranging from feminism, lust, cheating, and revenge. Throughout the book, the pacing gets quicker and more frenetic, crescendoing in a huge and intense scene fitting of the movie set where we spent so much time.
I enjoyed the plot and quick pacing, and the book kept my attention until the last page. However, I never truly cared about either main character, and didn’t feel attached to their outcomes. I also enjoyed the majority of the twists and turns the plot took, but the ending was almost too overly dramatic. Overall, I think this is a good psychological thriller option, but it didn’t wow me.
Read with Fern 
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