“Desire and lack, I told myself, and the space between them, was what I had to negotiate. I sometimes saw my life as a web of tightropes to be walked, stretched between what I could give, or make believe I gave, and what I would possess.”
Maestra follows Judith Rashleigh as she grows from an undervalued assistant at an art auction house in London into a femme fatale who travels the world in search of ways to gain entrance into the upper echelons. Peppered throughout with provocative, brazen and rather discriptive sexual encounters, Maestra is not for the faint of heart. Judith begins to work at an escort club in London where she becomes Lauren- a freer, wilder and more confidant version of herself. This sets off her transformation fueled by her desire to become one of those on the “inside”- the rich, the beautiful, the coveted.
“Anyone’s placement on the social scale could be calibrated to the nth degree at a single glace, and learning the rules was a lot more difficult than identifying paintings because the whole point of those rules was that if you were on the inside, you never had to be told. Those hours of carefully teaching myself how to speak and how to walk might have passed the test with most people.”
We begin to learn, in snippets, about Judith’s past which helps put into perspective her desire to be someone else. Taunted, bullied and isolated as an adolesent, Judith’s deep insecurities are revealed through her need to be fulfilled by male attention. We follow her journey to overcome and as the story moves along we see just what lengths Judith will go to get what she wants- deception, theft and murder just to name a few.
This story will engage those who loved Fifty Shades of Gray, Dexter, The Girl on the Train, and Gone Girl.
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Thoughts?
A review copy of this title was provided via Netgalley.
The Life Between Pages 