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Strange Attractors

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Strange Attractors

By: Ana K. Wrenn
Narrated by: Abby Craden
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About this listen

What happens when you teach chaos theory and life starts to mirror your lessons? The tiniest events transform the most driven woman in this beautifully written lesbian psychological thriller.

Fierce and frosty high achiever Professor Sonja J. Storey is on the verge of seizing power in her department. She has exacting plans to remake her backwoods North Carolina university, just as she has painstakingly remade herself.

Sonja's perfectly ordered life takes a dramatic turn when she meets laid-back, magnetic junior professor Crystal Byrd.

But then come threatening notes, sinister emails, and shadowy nocturnal figures, and suddenly, Sonja's controlled world starts to tremble like a butterfly in a storm.

Is someone out to get her? Is it a specter from Sonja's past? It's hard not to be suspicious of everyone, even intoxicating Crystal with her temptingly warm presence.

Seeing danger everywhere, Sonja must hunt down the source of the chaos before she loses her brilliant mind, and her chance at the one thing she's never known - love.

Contains mature themes.

©2022 Ana K. Wrenn (P)2022 Tantor Literature & Fiction Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Psychological Thriller & Suspense Fiction Suspense
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i was attracted to this by Abby Craden's voice initially, and the expectation of something along the lines of Mona Awad's All's Well--another psychological roller-coaster, based around a cranky, traumatised academic.

At first i wasn't sure how to take this story. It's so extreme in its ironic portrayal of a toxic work environment that it inclines towards satire. And as other reviewers suggest, the obnoxious Sonja is hard to like. But then Chrystal emerges as a strong and engaging presence to off-set the sheer madness of both Sonja and the working environment.
Best of all, however, is the portrayal of the impacts of trauma -- of Sonja's fragile defences, endless projection and compulsive, self defeating resentment. She is the person we all want to walk away from, so it is a delight to see how Chrystal challenges and changes her. The fact that their no nonsense, straight talking relationship takes place against the backdrop of occasionally funny, slapstick, almost-satire means that cliche and sentimentality is avoided. There is a streak of hard core realism in the narrative of survivor empowerment. But really this is a story about the push and pull of flawed human relationships, underpinned by a high level of insight into the psychology of trauma.

Surprisingly good

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Not a comfortable story but, a fascinating one. It’s very well narrated and soon becomes compulsive listening. The environmental background of Dr Sonja Storey’s entire life was horrifying and that she could even function day to day was incredible. Her saviour came in the form of the wonderful and admirable Crystal Byrd who has had her own demons to fight but has done so in a completely different way. That she didn’t give up on Sonja was a miracle, as was the fact that this didn’t become a murder mystery with Sonja dispatching some deplorable colleagues about the campus.

Compulsive listening

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