A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE DAILY MAIL AND WOMAN AND HOMEA New York Times Editors Pick. One of the Observers Ten Best Debut Novelists of 2020. Shortlisted for the Authors Club First Novel Award. Longlisted for the Jhalak Prize. Longlisted for the CWA John Creasy New Blood Dagger. Enrapturing. This richly imagined novel considers the many permutations of love and what we are capable of doing in its name New York TimesA brilliant debut Louise Doughty, author of Apple Tree Yard. Youll have the heart rate of an Olympic hurdler Sunday ExpressI read it with my heart in my throat Sara Collins, author of The Confessions of Frannie Langton. An exquisitely crafted masterpiece youll be pressing into the hands of others Woman & Home. An intoxicatingly atmospheric mystery Daily Mail. Dark, addictive and eye-opening, this is a brilliant debut StylistA gripping debut set in modern-day Tokyo and inspired by a true crime, Whats Left of Me Is Yours follows a young womans search for the truth about her mothers life - and her murder. In Japan, a covert industry has grown up around the wakaresaseya (literally "breaker-upper"), a person hired by one spouse to seduce the other in order to gain the advantage in divorce proceedings. When Sato hires Kaitaro, a wakaresaseya agent, to have an affair with his wife, Rina, he assumes it will be an easy case. But Sato has never truly understood Rina or her desires and Kaitaros job is to do exactly that - until he does it too well. While Rina remains ignorant of the circumstances that brought them together, she and Kaitaro fall in a desperate, singular love, setting in motion a series of violent acts that will forever haunt her daughter Sumikos life. Told from alternating points of view and across the breathtaking landscapes of Japan, Whats Left of Me Is Yours explores the thorny psychological and moral grounds of the actions we take in the name of love, asking where we draw the line between passion and possession
