One Step Too Far follows the life of Emily as she leaves her family (inexplicably) and becomes Catherine in her new life. It isn’t about the people she left behind, it is about her transformation and her hurdles. The ‘why’ is deliberately left unclear because you need to understand the person first.
Emily loves her family, that is not in question.
And she does make a new life. She starts at the bottom and moves up rapidly.
She earns your respect.
I’m liking
The pace of the book and the way you have to concentrate is intense. Don’t try to skip bits, you’ll miss too much information. This isn’t a mind-numbing read though – this is fast-paced and there is a lot to understand.
Things that made me go hmmmm
Perhaps the ending was a bit OTT, but it fills in all the gaps and you have to respect the author’s direction for where she wanted to take the story.
The conclusion
This is a new author and she has set the bar at a very high level for a debut novel.
I would like to add a quote from the ‘Praise’ page which says everything. This is from ‘Kirkus Reviews’:
‘The author reveals Emily’s motivations for leaving her family with great patience and narrative skill… there is excellent dramatic pacing, dialogue and prose, culminating in poignant concluding chapters which examine Emily’s decisions without sentimentality. An evocative, skillful novel about the price of escape. Recommended.’
