Magma - Þóra Hjörleifsdóttir

Release Date: Expected 8th July 2021

Genre: Fiction | Novella

Trigger Warning: This novel contains in depth depictions of abusive relationships, self-harm, graphic language, sex and mentions of rape.

Lilja has fallen in love with him. He's beautiful and so much smarter than her, he cooks perfectly balanced vegetarian meals and reads in latin. He is perfect in every way, and she is obsessed with him. Soon she finds herself living in his flat, eating his food, sharing his bed and his shower as she tries to become the perfect person for him so he will stop f*cking other women and fall in love with her too. Fully blinded to his manipulations, she doesn't realise how much she is losing herself to get him until it's too late.

Magma was haunting and addictive from the first page, I felt the obsession and despair deep in my stomach as Lilja was gripped tighter by her manipulating lover and started to act more and more like the "Crazy Girlfriend" that men create and then complain about. She doesn't ask for committment, she tries her best to please him so she finally feels she is enough.

I saw myself and many of the women I know in the pages of this book and my heart broke a thousand times over - in the way she began to doubt herself, make excuses for him, in the way she broke down in such small peices that she never even realised.

Utterly unique and captivating, written in a disjointed but somehow fluid style that kept me both extremely uncomfortable but desperate to know more. It burned slowly, like magma, so slow you almost don't realise anything has happened until you're in too deep.

Completely devoid of information, we never know his name or what he looks like - but somehow it was still so visceral and real where it mattered.

Magma read like poetry, like a series of daydreams and nightmares blending seamlessly into one another until the sudden and abrupt ending snaps us awake. It felt like just the end of a chapter and left my head spinning and desperate to know more - just like reality. The translation was flawless, nothing was lost at all.

RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thank you to Þóra Hjörleifsdóttir and Pan Macmillan for an ARC in return for an honest review.

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