Araminta Hall’s Our Kind of Cruelty is not a surprising read filled with twists and turns. It is largely exposition with very little action. From the first pages, you know how the story is going to evolve, and it is straightforward in its arc. The message is more powerful than the plot, and it is as subtle and potent as it is hair-raising and disturbing.

Hall’s work is clever and timely, and the feminist outcry is so seamlessly woven into the tale that I was gripped. The plot is straightforward: a man is obsessed with his ex-girlfriend, and his fixation spirals out of control when he receives an invitation to her wedding. Hall’s execution is as harrowing as it is profound.

This is a tale that serves as a pointed commentary on how society views women, never as true victims but as participants in the attacks against them. Society puts far more weight into the male narrative and far more readily judges a woman for her sexuality. Our Kind of Cruelty inserts the reader right into the warped, twisted mind of a man horribly damaged by his childhood. He is sympathetic and devoted and so astonishingly delusional that the way he twists things to suit his agenda is appallingly believable.

The prose is straightforward, the narrator hauntingly unreliable, and the unhinged introspection that dominates the tale drives it forward at a surprisingly swift pace. History and culture has shaped society’s mindset to doubt women, to judge and question them and to make them orchestrators of men’s fantasies. Our Kind of Cruelty illustrates this in a way that is noteworthy, suspenseful, and chilling.

Highly recommended for fans of psychological thrillers revolving around the mindset of a stalker and for fans of tales with a pointed feminist agenda.