From the outside it would look as if Kate Whittier was living a dream life in Southern California. Her husband is a successful businessman from an old-money New England family. They have two well-adjusted kids in elementary and middle school. She lives in a gorgeous home in a gated community north of San Diego. Her life revolves around her family and their friends. Taking the kids to soccer practice and games, attending family parties, taking walks along the San Diego beaches.

But Kate feels like an impostor in her own life. She comes from a broken family, and there are enough nightmares in her past that she has hidden her childhood and youth from all her friends and her husband. She thinks they don’t know who she is, the believes she is living a lie, and has been doing that for decades.

When her husband suddenly confesses to a sexual indiscretion, her life comes crashing down, and the lies and deceptions no longer hold up. In a matter of days, her peaceful and successful life unravels into a maelstrom of emotional chaos, confusion and even amnesia. While she is vulnerable and exposed, the demons of her past come knocking, and suddenly there seems to be no way out.

I would not normally pick up this book to read. The cover does not talk to me, and the description on the back is not about a subject I would choose read a novel about. But the paths of books into my life are sometimes mysterious, and I definitely  like to pick up material at random just to open my horizon.

My wife is in a book club of about a dozen women.  They read a book a month, and then meet and discuss it over dinner at one of their homes. Sometimes I read their book, if it’s the kind that interests me. Last month, they read Anastasia Zadeik’s second book,  The Other Side of Nothing. It turns out that one of the members knew the author and invited her to the book club meeting discussing that book. She came, and apparently they had a great meeting, the author posted about it in her Instagram page later, and left some hardcopies of her first novel with them, autographed. When my wife brought one of the copies home, I picked it up and started reading that night on the couch, and — could not put it down.

Blurred Fates is Zadeik’s first novel. I have read and reviewed the first works of other authors, sometimes by their personal invitations. (If you review as many books as I do, sometimes authors send you their books and ask for reviews. I have had a few of those). Blurred Fates stands out among first novels for a number of reasons:

It is impeccably edited. There isn’t a typo, there aren’t any grammatical errors that I noticed.

It is written in the first person present tense, which is unusual. But it also creates a sense of pace and urgency. Everything is happening right in front of the reader. It it hard to write that way, but Zadeik pulls it off effortlessly. I was right there with her all along, inside Kate’s head.

Being in someone’s head, in their thoughts, can be exhausting for the reader. I believe it’s also hard to write that way. But even with those challenges, Kate’s emotional and psychological turmoil never seems unreal. As a reader, you become Kate, and you feel her anguish and terror.

The author did a remarkable job with this novel. I am sure her second one, The Other Side of Nothing, is just as good.

Blurred Fates is a well-structured story about a subject of our times, namely rape, sexual abuse, domestic violence and child abandonment, and the permanent, lifelong psychological trauma that victims have to live with. With that, the author takes on a challenging subject and handles it well.

I also enjoyed her description of Kate’s life in San Diego. I live here, and I felt like I have been at her house and her community. I have driven by the soccer practices that she went to. I have shopped at the Vons and gone to the same Starbucks she is describing. And I have been to the same beaches. Those images and feelings brought it home even more vivid and clear than otherwise. This story played in my neighborhood.

I finished the book last night – I cranked through the last third of the book, and when I closed it and looked up, it was 1:25am. Need I point out: It’s a page turner.