moral justice for family sins

Karla wants to go to law school. She doesn’t want to be a lawyer though. She wants to be a judge. She’s old for her age, as she’s had to care for her drug-addicted mother since she was very young. She cleaned up after her mother, lied for her, tried to help her, and now she’s moved away from her, to try to make a better life for herself. She doesn’t have much money though, so she’s cleaning house for a wealthy couple, Steven and Regina Rytter, and renting a room from a single father.

Bill has been struggling for a while, as he had to watch as his partner got sicker and sicker until she died. Despite his grief, he had to continue to raise their young daughter. Her long illness had wrecked their finances, and he had unwisely stolen and then tried online gambling to try to put them into a better position. Instead, he lost his job and got increasingly desperate for money to keep them afloat. He finally decided to take in a lodger for Sally’s bedroom, even though it’s not exactly legal where he lives.

When Karla figures out that the student housing is too loud for her to be able to study, she rents the bedroom from Bill and Sally. Although she divides most of her time between studying for the exam that will get her into the law program and her job cleaning, she also spends a little time with Bill and Sally. She sees how hard Bill struggles to create a good, stable life for Sally, and it reminds Karla of the chaos she grew up in. She wants to help them how she can, even going so far as to steal a ring from the family she cleans for.

She immediately feels awful about taking that ring, even though she thought the couple would never notice. The husband is almost never there, and the wife is so ill she can hardly get out of bed. But Karla knows that if she gets caught, she’ll never become the judge she wants to be. But when she tries to get the ring back, to set things right, she runs into a wall.

Meanwhile, Jennica finds herself in a new relationship. She works as a phone psychic, although she tells her clients that she’s not psychic and merely acts as an advisor, and looks for dates on Tinder. It doesn’t really go well until she gets set up with Steven, who is charming and smart and a doctor. He tells her that his wife had died. As she had watched her father cheat on her mother as she was growing up, she promised herself she would never get involved with a married man. So when she finds out that her new perfect boyfriend, Steven Rytter, is actually still married, she is heartbroken.

And then, when the Rytters both end up dead in their own home, the police have to piece together what happened to everyone involved with the couple, to figure out just what kind of family tragedy they have.

M.T. Edvardsson’s The Woman Inside is a powerful slow-burn thriller about the secrets that families have and how they affect all the members of a family. There are questions of justice, of morality, and of love, all threaded together into a tapestry of loyalty and lies. Set in Sweden, this story is another twisted domestic thriller from the author of A Nearly Normal Family.

I really enjoyed The Woman Inside. There were layers of secrets, with the themes of the story being intertwined as the various characters came together. The way these characters all came together was fascinating and chilling, and I couldn’t stop reading this book. It’s definitely a dark one, but it’s worth the time it takes to get to the answers, and in the end it is a very satisfying read.

Egalleys for The Woman Inside were provided by Celadon Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.