Andi Arndt

Hannah Wilson can't text her ex again - it's too sad. She can't snap back at the new boss who took her promotion either - she'll be fired. But what she can do is write a series of furious letters to William Thompson, arrested for the murders of multiple women he got close to.

You're a monster, I hope you know that.

I want you to listen when I tell you that I'll never be able to go on a date again without thinking of you. Every moment I will wonder whether he wants to love me or murder me.

Hannah's shocked when William writes back, each response more surprising than the last. And as communication tips from curiosity to obsession, Hannah has to wonder if William might be innocent, and whether she even wants him to be...

Rachel Aviv is known for her radical empathy: she excels at seeing the world through the eyes of her fellow human beings. Writing first about her own experience of being on an anorexia ward at the age of six, she introduces, among others, a fiercely intelligent mother recovering from incarceration and psychosis; a woman who lives in healing temples in Kerala, where she is celebrated as a saint; and a young woman who, after a decade of defining herself through her diagnosis, decides to stop her medication because she doesn't know who she is without it. Through startling connections, intimate testimonies, and diverse social and cultural perspectives, Aviv opens up fresh ways of thinking about illness and the mind, in a book which is curious, transformative, and above all, deeply human.