Bestselling author of Elizabeth is Missing, Emma Healey returns with her highly anticipated new book Sweat. A suspenseful revenge tale about power and obsession, Sweat follows protagonist Cassie as she is unexpectedly becomes the personal trainer for her controlling ex-partner, and suddenly has a chance to take control after the pain and anguish he caused during their relationship. To celebrate the book’s publication, Emma has shared with us five of her favourite books that explore the emotional complexities of toxic relationships.

Longlisted for the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction
Stuck in the middle of an Iron-age re-enactment with her exhausted mother and brutal father, teenage Silvie finds herself torn between duty and self-preservation. Ancient rituals, desolate countryside, and a disappointed and pitiless patriarch combine to inspire real terror in this vivid and beautiful novel.

Funny and unhinged in equal measures, the narrator of this claustrophobic novel is either madly unreliable or frighteningly accurate in her description of her marriage. She loves her husband with unmatched passion and creates a long list of unsaid rules for him to follow. The action is all in the (obsessive) detail. I’ll never look at a clementine the same way again.

What would your life be like if your mother had registered you under another name? That’s the question at the heart of this book, but it’s really just a catalyst for a bigger question about how women can live in, die from, or escape abusive relationships. Tense and heart-breaking, this debut novel (published in May 2025) is an unflinching examination of the consequences of having a violent husband.

A woman and her children wait for the man of the house to return for dinner. While they wait, the teenage daughter chronicles her father’s life and career, subtly revising and retelling the story, until the reader is left with a new and uncomfortable impression of a repressive and controlling man. Written just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the novel works as an exploration of domestic abuse, and also as an analogy for the human struggle against oppressive regimes.

This fictional account of Lenin’s affair with feminist Bolshevik Inessa Armand is a familiar (and infuriating) story of a man expecting a woman to sacrifice her feelings for a greater purpose, while giving up almost nothing in return. ‘Natasha’ is shown working happily and energetically towards revolution while made bitter and miserable by a man ‘spoilt by the love and rivalry of two women’. Unfortunately, toxic relationships exist even the socialist utopia.
SWEAT by Emma Healey, published by Hutchinson Heinemann, on 30 January 2025.
