Plaything by Bea Setton

Plaything by Bea Setton

'I just loved it – it truly wedged itself into my brain. Absolutely vile and brilliant. Plaything is an unhinged melody, and it will serenade fans of the darkest narratives.' Alice Slater, author of Death of a Bookseller

Anna is smart. Smarter than you, probably. But when she falls for the beautiful, enigmatic Caden, her need to get under his skin, to truly know him becomes overpowering.

Anna’s new life in Cambridge is full of promise – she’s the top student in her PhD cohort, she has great friends and she has met an exhaustingly attractive man – but something is a little off. Perhaps it’s the routine violence of her lab work with animals, or maybe it’s something to do with her boyfriend’s icy reserve but it seems there is a kind of menace hiding beneath the Cambridge dream.

When Anna and Caden's lives become tightly entangled, her obsession with Caden’s seemingly ever-present ex-girlfriend reaches a dangerous pitch… Just how far will she go to satiate her curiosity?

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'Pleasingly unpredictable' Daily Mail
'A gloriously tense tale of obsession' Financial Times
'One that will remain with me . . . the final page made me shudder' John Boyne, Irish Times
'A seductive tale of infatuation and the complexities of romance' Amy Twigg, author of Spoilt Creatures

Setton offers a slow drip-feed of apprehension and unease as the novel swells towards a satisfying – and pleasingly unpredictable – climax * Daily Mail *
A gloriously tense tale of obsession . . At times the reader feels like Setton's plaything, but she does it so well, we don't really mind. * Financial Times *
A cold novel, then, but one that will remain with me. The surprises work, a twist towards the end left me uttering an expletive aloud, and the final page made me shudder. Animal lovers, however, be warned. It’s not just the mice who suffer. -- John Boyne * Irish Times *
There are twists and turns and moments of real poignancy in this smart, dark academia book * My Weekly *
I just loved it – it truly wedged itself into my brain. Absolutely vile and brilliant. Plaything is an unhinged melody, and it will serenade fans of the darkest narratives. In this utterly gripping, stomach-turning and explosive novel, obsession and jealousy are heightened by the claustrophobia, paranoia and loneliness of lockdown. I couldn’t leave it alone, right until the bitter, bloody end. * Alice Slater, author of Death of a Bookseller *
Full of sticky moral situations punctuated with gory details * Rose Cleary, author of How to Be a French Girl *
Fascinating and mysterious, the darkness and depth of this daring novel will linger long after reading. Big big fan. * Ashley Hickson-Lovence, author of Your Show *
A seductive tale of infatuation and the complexities of romance. Setton’s talent for unravelling the love-drunk narrative is thrilling. * Amy Twigg, author of Spoilt Creatures *
An exquisite deep dive into jealousy. * Sainsbury's Magazine *

Bea Setton was born in France and has lived in Paris, the USA and Berlin, the city which inspired her critically acclaimed debut novel. She then studied at Cambridge for a master's in Philosophy & Theology, and this inspired the setting of her second book, Plaything. Bea currently divides her time between Berlin and Oxford, Mississippi, where she is writing her third novel.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781804994498
ISBN 10	1804994499
Title	Plaything
Author	Bea Setton
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Transworld Publishers Ltd
Year published	2025-08-07
Number of pages	336
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.