
I can’t imagine how terrifying it must be if someone stalks you. To feel their eyes on you, or to receive disturbing messages, and not knowing who sends them.
Then there’s the other side of that medal — being the stalker. Intruding in a life where you don’t belong. Terrifying a person, for whatever reason. No, I can’t see myself doing that either.
Yes, of course I have searched for people online. People I have gone to school with many moons ago, but also people I was curious about after meeting them at our regular hangout. Sometimes I scroll through their Facebook profiles, looking at images they share, at comments on their postings, and more.
I guess that’s also stalking, albeit a harmless one, and I am sure if someone finds me interesting enough, they are doing exactly the same — ‘stalking’ me online.
At least that’s a harmless form of stalking, and not at all intended to damage anyone. Stalking to hurt someone is never a good thing!
When listening to The Stalker by Gemma Rogers, it surprised me how much I approved of the main character doing the stalking.
I shared more of the author in the first of two reviews I did of her books. You can find them here:
* The Teacher by Gemma Rogers
* The Secret by Gemma Rogers
From abuse to stalking
Eve Harding has a normal every-day job and lives in a flat where she rents a room to Ben, with whom she has a platonic friendship. One Sunday morning she walks through a London park to the station to meet her best friend, but she never makes it there. She’s attacked from behind, severely beaten and raped. When Eve reports it to the police — by then she had already showered — it turns out this was not the rapist’s first attack.
Eve wants him found and vows he will not do it to another person. On a mission to find him, she does, and she sets a plan in motion to deliver justice on her own terms.
The book actually tells two stories — the one after Eve’s rape, and the one after yet another assault by the same man. I don’t want to say more about this, as it will give too much of the plot away. What I will say is that the author masterly combines the two stories into one, and there comes a stage in the book where you wonder who is stalking who.
Physical and mental effects
Not once in the book to you get the idea that the author is romanticizing rape. In fact, her story shows the effects of sexual assault are not only physical but also mentally. After the assault, Eve’s world completely changes. She no longer sees herself the way she did before, and doesn’t feel comfortable in familiar places.
The way Eve reacts to her friend after the attack, as well as to Ben, her lodger, shows the state of her mind — how traumatized and emotionally scarred she is. You understand why she does what she does, why she cannot just sit and wait for the police to find a rapist they have already been trying to find for too long.
This debut novel of Gemma Rogers is definitely worth a read — one you will not be able to put down.
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