📖 Blog Tour ~ The Glass Woman by Alice McIlroy

 

Datura
2 January 2024

Thanks to the publisher for my copy of the book
and to Ruth Killick for the invitation to the blog tour

Pioneering scientist Iris Henderson awakes in a hospital bed with no memories. She is told that she is the first test-subject for an experimental therapy, placing a piece of AI technology into her brain. She is also told that she volunteered for it. But without her memories, Iris doesn't know what the therapy is or why she would ever choose it. Everyone warns her to leave it alone, but Iris doesn't know who to trust. As she scratches beneath the surface of her seemingly happy marriage and successful career, a catastrophic chain of events is set in motion, and secrets will be revealed that have the capacity to destroy her whole life.

📖 My Review...

The Glass Woman gets off to a dramatic start when we meet thirty-five year old Iris Henderson who wakes in a clinical research facility with no idea of who she is or why she is there. Surrounded by strangers, including the man who tells Iris that he is her husband, Iris must try to make sense of an alien world over which she has no control. 

There are definite sinister undertones in this cleverly put together psychological thriller with more than a hint of the futuristic involvement of artificial intelligence so that we are never quite sure where the truth is hidden or indeed if, like Iris, we are also being drip fed only the information we think we need to know. That's what made the story all the more compelling as even when I thought I had the measure of the plot it veered off into a direction I didn't see coming.

Iris is an interesting character, completely flawed and quite often unreliable in her narration but that lends a certain frisson of excitement to this sophisticated and intelligent thriller. I enjoyed the fast pace of the story, it certainly doesn't drag its feet and the intricacy of the plot is perfectly maintained in short and concise chapters which help to keep up the claustrophobic and daunting atmosphere of Iris and her newly emerging life. Very believable, and with a futuristic edginess I found fascinating The Glass Woman is a commendable debut novel which makes us question the truth about morals, memory and how, maybe in the future, all this will be manipulated and controlled by Artificial Intelligence.

About the Author

Alice McIlroy was born in London. She graduated in English and has a post-graduate in Law. She completed Faber Academy’s novel-writing programme. She has taught English in state schools in London and Milan, and volunteers with a post-natal depression charity. Her writing has been longlisted for the Stylist Prize for Feminist Fiction and Grindstone International Novel Prize. The Glass Woman is her debut novel. 

Twitter/X @alice_mcilroy

Website 

@DaturaBooks

@rkbookpublicist