One for those who like their psychology hand fed and their thrills more slow burn than edge-of-your-seat.

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About the Book

Morgan Prager, at age thirty, is completing her thesis on victim psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. She is newly engaged to Bennett, a seductive but possessive and secretive man. She returns from class one day to find Bennett mauled to death, and her dogs—a Great Pyrenees and two pit bulls she has rescued—covered in blood. Bewildered and devastated that her dogs could have committed such violence, she worries that she might suffer from one of the syndromes she studies: pathological altruism, when selfless acts do more damage than good.

When Morgan tries to locate Bennett’s parents to tell them about their son’s hideous death, she discovers he was not the man he said he was. Everything he has told her—where he was born, where he lives and works—was a lie. In fact, he has several fiancées, and fits the clinical definition of a sociopath. And then, one by one, these other women are murdered. Suddenly Morgan’s research into Bennett takes on the urgency of survival: to stay alive, she must find out who is killing the women Bennett was closest to.

Unsettling and highly suspenseful, this is a brilliant collaboration between two outstanding writers.

{from the publisher’s website}

My Thoughts

Morgan is in the middle of her Masters thesis into victimology when she returns home to find her fiancé ripped apart, supposedly by her own rescue dogs. In that moment she loses everything she loves as her dogs are taken and a search for her fiance’s family reveals that Bennet was as false as his past.

On the surface The Hand That Feeds You has everything I love in a psychological thriller—a flawed protagonist, a dead man who isn’t who he said (and possibly isn’t dead), and plenty of surprise revelations. The only problem is I didn’t find the revelations that surprising and I couldn’t care about Morgan or her fiancé. I did care about the fate of the dogs and at first I worried about reading it for this reason. Why do so many animals come a cropper in these thrillers?

The idea of a former victim studying victimology while becoming a victim is good. The explanations about victims, sociopaths, psychopaths and even a friend’s funeral were, however, a series of sidetracks that did little to flesh out the characters or contribute to the story. Morgan discovers most of her ‘truths’ through reading emails, and that and the linear nature of the novel’s structure mean she ends up ‘telling’ most of the details that explain what’s going on and why. For me this made for dull reading. But I admit to a preference to more subtle clues and story structures, so this may not be an issue for others.

Upon reflection my major problem with this novel is the lack of emotion, both in the protagonist and in me, the reader. We don’t get to spend any time with Morgan and Bennet as a couple so I found it impossible to care about his death. Morgan tells us she wants to see her dogs, that she’s freaking out about finding Bennet and the facts she uncovers, but I never saw her aguish or frustration. I was never pulled into her emotions in a way that made me care when she was in danger or related her (rather harrowing) backstory. In a way I’m glad. If I had been on an emotional roller coaster it would have been impossible to cope with the dog storyline.

The Hand That Feeds You is one for those who like a tale of mind-games and manipulation and who prefer to beat the protagonist to the truth. If that’s you, then go for it.

*Thanks to Simon and Schuster Australia for an ARC

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