Anna is a very bright student, just starting a PhD at Cambridge. She strains her wrist rowing, and meets Caden, a physiotherapist, and soon they are a couple. Not far in the background however is Caden's ex-girlfriend, a stunningly attractive French footballer, and Anna becomes obsessed about whether Caden is still involved with her. Its a terrific plot, well written, with a pretty dark ending

An oddly engaging book; full of unlikeable, unknowable characters doing odd things, but, the author's writing was so good that I wanted to carry on reading and find out what happened to them. There were also enough plot twists to wrongfoot my expectations of where the story would end up. Thank you to netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book

"Plaything" is told entirely from the viewpoint of Anna - the story starts with her going to Cambridge University to begin her PHD. She is clearly very intelligent but has various neuroses about that intelligence and her appearance. When she falls for the gorgeous Caden, she becomes obsessed with him but their relationship only damages her further with tragic consequences. I am struggling to work out my opinion on this book. It covers some interesting topics like obsession, abuse (mostly verbal), self-esteem, mental health, the ethics of scientific research and many more. But I can't really say that I enjoyed it. I don't think it's because of the nature of some of the themes. I even think it's been quite well written and I could identify with some aspects of Anna's thoughts and experiences. But I just couldn't identify with some of her behaviours (it might have helped to have the perspectives of other characters) and I found it hard to suspend disbelief enough to believe the ending. But I applaud the author for tackling some of the difficult topics in an accessible way. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.