The Vixen Amber Halloway by Carol LaHines
The Vixen Amber Halloway by Carol LaHines is the newest addition in the female-rage literary thriller genre. This story is told from Ophelia’s perspective as she slowly descends into madness and is imprisoned for a crime that involves her ex-husband and the woman she believes to be the downfall of not only her marriage, but also her life. As the reader you will follow Ophelia down the rabbit hole as her marriage crumbles, pushing her further down into a state of obsession, jealousy, and rage.
Jealousy Turns Obsessive
Our main character, Ophelia, is a professor teaching Dante when she meets her handsome husband, Andy. They have what we believe to be a happy marriage until one day Ophelia starts seeing the signs of her husband pulling away from her. Once that thought forms in her mind, she cannot stop herself. She decided to check Andy’s emails only to discover he is having an affair with a woman named, you guessed it, Amber Halloway. Loaded with the knowledge of her husband’s affair and her previous trauma of her mother’s abandonment as a child, Ophelia starts to spiral out of control. She begins stalking Amber and Andy, having late-night stakeouts and even moves into the house next door to Amber’s. All of this behavior is unhinged enough but once she learns of their engagement, that is the straw that breaks the camel’s back and ignites a raging fire in Ophelia.
“Nothing can alter the past. No amount of therapeutic role-playing or imaginative gestalt can change the script. The groove in my psyche is too deep.”
Psychological Thriller with Unreliable Narrator
From the beginning, we know this is a jail-house recounting of her actions, but I was not expecting it to go as far as it did! Ophelia redefines the term “unreliable narrator” since this story is literally depicting a psychological breakdown of a scorned woman. We get to peek behind the curtain and look into her traumatic childhood, times when she and her husband were happy and her increasingly obsessive thoughts all coming together to create the chaos that becomes an unhinged story of revenge. Ophelia’s unreliable narration brings a captivating layer to this story, and you’ll find inconsistencies in her details and several instances where she loses track of time which only adds to the sense of thrill and mystery throughout.
Author Carol LaHines created such a compelling, deep, and unlikeable character in Ophelia. While reading, I knew what she was doing was wrong, but I couldn’t help but root for her. She makes you feel everything: sadness, shock, empathy, and sometimes validation – I’m not saying that I’ve done something even remotely crazed as Ophelia did, but I found myself at times, understanding the impulse.
Like Dante leading us through the circles of hell, join Ophelia in this psychological crime-thriller as she descends deeper into her own madness.
About Carol LaHines:
Carol LaHines’s debut novel, Someday Everything Will All Make Sense, was a finalist for the Nilsen Prize for a First Novel and an American Fiction Award. Her fiction has appeared in many noted literary journals.
She is a graduate of New York University, Gallatin Division, and of St. John’s University School of Law. She has taught creative writing at the Bronx H.S. of Science and is a founding member of Telltale Authors, a writers’ collective. Carol LaHines was a musician and practiced commercial law at a large firm before becoming a published writer. She lives with her family in New York City.
