Strangers on a Bridge

by Louise Mangos

[zooloo1983]

This was a debut! Wow! What a way to introduce yourself to the world!

Alice saves a man. She talks him off the bridge, tries to get him help and get back on with her life after doing a good deed. Should be the end of it shouldn’t it…..wrong! First, I want to say it was an amazing thing she did, saving Manfred but her actions after….welll she needed a bit of a harsh word or two said to her, for own stupidity.

Manfred sees a connection to Alice, that she does not reciprocate. The stalker tendencies magnify, and at times it was damn right frightening. As horrible as this sounds, it makes you question whether she should have saved him and maybe she should have just carried on running. He is just so creepy and his behaviour just does not help the situation, and just fuels to reinforce the isolation of Alice.

This was the second book I have read recently where it is a British woman is isolated in a foreign country and with a language barrier despite her trying to overcome this. You really can feel the isolation in this book, the locals turn their backs on Alice, as she made an error once with her children and walking them to school – dramatic much, her husband is away on his business trips and her two boys are growing up busy with their own lives. All of this, Manfred plays upon, the man she saved, and he takes it to the limits where her own family begin to doubt her.

The tension in this book is papable, and I was gripped, swiping quicker and quicker on the Kindle to get to the next page, to see where we would go with this story. The description of the scenery and location were breathtaking and beautiful, I would love to go for a run through the woods and bridge that Alice does……I may run with my eyes closed though.