Sara Sligar

A spellbinding novel of psychological suspense that follows a young archivist’s obsession with her subject’s mysterious death as it threatens to destroy her fragile grasp on sanity

Take Me Apart

A young archivist’s obsession with her subject’s mysterious death threatens to destroy her fragile grasp on sanity, in a riveting debut novel of psychological suspense When the famed photographer Miranda Brand died mysteriously at the height of her career, it sent shock waves through Callinas, California. Decades later, old wounds are reopened when her son, Theo, hires the ex-journalist Kate Aitken to create an archive of his mother’s work. From Miranda’s vast maze of personal effects, Kate pieces together a portrait of a vibrant artist buckling under the pressures of ambition, motherhood, and marriage. As the summer progresses, Kate navigates vicious local rumors and her growing attraction to the enigmatic Theo, all while unearthing the shocking details of Miranda’s private life. But Kate has secrets of her own, and when she stumbles across a diary that may finally resolve the mystery of Miranda’s death, her curiosity starts to spiral into a dangerous obsession. With breathtaking and haunting imagery, Take Me Apart paints a vivid picture of two magnetic young women, separated by years, but bonded by shared struggles. Sara Sligar draws readers into a web of secrets and lies, alternating between the present and the past and revealing the truth about Miranda’s death through the objects she left behind. A brilliant take on art, illness, and power, from a fresh, seductive new voice in suspense.

A Novel

Clara Gauthier

I want to suffer in bursts and splats and scintillations. Something more than lying awake at night running my fingers along my veins, wondering which one is the most fragile, wondering which one would be the first to break.

why do i keep reading books about post partum depression ??? and women falling into mental illness ?

Micah

It is always refreshing to find books that discuss pregnancy in the ways that I resonate with, in ways that do not say that the suffering was worth it. There were parts that were painful to get through in this book, but ultimately, this story tells a narrative of two strong women finding strength in their femininity, their faults, and putting to words the subtle ways that men try to control women.

sophia n

this was a fairly slow-paced psychological mystery that honestly read almost more like literary fiction than a true mystery, though the questions and suspense element was incredibly engaging, and i thoroughly enjoyed reading it. that being said, i think i wanted a bit more, though i can't quite put my finger on what.

trigger warnings for: suicide, self harm, domestic violence, rape, gaslighting, workplace sexual assault, postpartum depression and psychosis.

Fraser Simons

Tense as hell. Navigates a lot of fraught subjects. Mental illness. Power and gender dynamics. Relationships between husband and wife and children. I think it does a good job but I’m hardly able to speak intelligently about these things, so all I can say is it was always compelling and suspenseful, and I really liked the ending, which I expected not to like.

Jen Estrella

“I didn’t know fear before. I didn’t know how it could shape you. Make you do things you didn’t want to do. I didn’t know how it lives in you like dye, like a stain that will never come out. How it works its way through you until your blood is made of it, until it is fear that pushes oxygen through your veins, fear that pumps your heart, open and shut, open and shut. The fear has no subject. It has no ground. It has only me, and some days it eats me alive.”
3.5/5 - This is more of a psychological drama than a thriller. I thought this was great, initially, but it felt too long for me, just because I could not connect with Kate. I liked Miranda's chapters a lot and found her character really interesting.

Take Me Apart

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