Made it to about 25% in this one. It explores an intense, volatile relationship between a woman and her servant/housekeeper.

However, it falls into a pattern of 1) Emerence crosses a boundary 2) Narrator gets angry and puts her foot down 3) Emerence gets offended and reacts dramatically and extremely 4) Narrator reaches out to apologize. Those steps repeat over and over with nothing much to distinguish one event from another. It doesn’t actually feel like it builds though we’re told the relationship is changing. So for me it was getting quite dull and repetitive, and I decided to put it down.

The climax isn’t the same, but I feel like similar themes are explored in The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani, and I enjoyed that one much more.