Hello everyone! It’s been a busy 10 days for me, and tumbleweeds were rolling on the blog. I had my lovely friend visiting from Italy, had a terribly hectic week at work, my cleaner gone to holiday (lucky her!) so had to take care of the house myself and I have been crawling to bed every night without even properly reading. (I don’t know how you do it; but me, son and husband, cooking, dishes, laundry and constant tidy up seems like an endless struggle with working 32 hours a week)

Frances’s first book, The Girlfriend was an audible listen for me and  was quite a good one. So I didn’t hesitate to get my hands on her new book, The Temp.

I know, it sounds like an old story: Woman against woman, one woman wants the other ones life. But hey, the book is full of twists, and it’s not your usual straightforward ‘Evil bitch’ story. Which I quite enjoyed!

The story starts with a slow pace. We have Carrie and Adrian, a power couple in their early 40’s, both very successful in TV production career. Then one day Carrie gets pregnant. The ‘Temporary’ replacement for Carrie is Emma. Emma is coming from a wealthy family but she has always struggled to be ‘the girl’ her parents wanted her to be.  I loved how Michelle Frances mapped out and opened up all the three characters, Carrie, Emma and Adrian. She develops each one enough to let us see why everything happens the way they are- which is a rare treat in thrillers!

The Temp isn’t as fast paced as The Girlfriend but still pretty satisfying, psychological thriller, but I don’t understand why book cover pushes the reader into the idea of one woman stealing another woman’s life. It is much more than that!

One thing I really enjoyed in this book is that you get to know how TV production business works. Frances has worked in Entertainment and you can tell experience talks. I have never known how TV sector worked behind the scenes, so it was definitely eye opening to read how Script Writers / producers / other TV crew operated. Also Carrie’s dilemma as a mum between her child and her career, the visit to the ‘Outstanding’ nursery, the descriptions were so vivid and accurate, I really enjoyed reading this book. Only criticism will be that it could have been shorter. After 60% I got a bit distracted but the end was worth the read.

Thanks to Panmacmillan for this copy to review.

4 stars