I felt so sorry for Eve and her children but I loved how her character evolved as the story progressed and she started to get more confident in building a new life for herself. She found some really good friends and began to hope that she might even find love again. I really enjoyed the fact that she went from downtrodden to ambitious and I admired her for what she achieved.

But, after one drunken rage too many, she has the courage to leave him. Eve is warned that it's a difficult path, yet she needs to give her children hope for the future. Also the writing style is written in a way my 15 year old self wrote fan fictions. Just so simple and boring.

Eve decides to permanently move her family to Sidmouth, to finally start over and to work on the interior decorating career she has always wanted. But secrets have a way of following you and Eve soon learns that even in a quaint little fisherman's town like Sidmouth, there are still monsters lurking around every corner. And sometimes those monsters are the people you trust the most. The main character, Eve, is well played and her teenage children are very involved in all that happens to her but then towards the end her daughter does something that for me was totally out of character and changed the whole direction of the book, I just couldn’t buy into her reaction and stance at all

Opening with a brutal act of violence upon his wife, Donny Hathaway establishes himself as a brute of the worst sort. This is clearly not the first time he has bestowed this casually bloody act on Eve, but the effect it has on her is to determine that it will be his last.

I can't help to admire Eve, Tabby and Ollie's transformation from beginning to end. Despite all the nastiness thrown at them, they've chosen to rise above it and make a better life for themselves.

But then here’s the contrasting thing…the book highlighted some really difficult subjects including marital abuse, grooming and suicide, to name but a few, and didn’t shy away from them, in fact it is a brutal start to the book….which then made the other parts seem so contrasted In this book, we see just how strong and resilient women can be even when things literally "beat" us down! We see that sometimes the people closest to us can hurt us the most and how total strangers can become the best of friends! By the next evening, mum and kids are staying in a women's refuge and major plans to ensure a happier future are in motion. Of course, this doesn't sit too well with Don. One night, Eve decides to teach her husband a lesson... And it goes horribly wrong.

The story then follows Eve and her children over the years after breaking free but it looks as if the past is always lurking around the corner waiting for the truth to come out and justice to be done. She could not do it for herself, even when they arrive at the women's refuge that a specialist solicitor has gotten them into, Eve's sense of denial is such that she finds it hard to relate her circumstances to the other women there. Despite the drifting plotline and a crammed conclusion of events, this is classic Lesley Pearse through and through. Betrayal is a great read, if a tough one. Despite some flaws, I found Eve to be a strong and brave protagonist in many ways. All she wants is the best for her children, even if she's weighed down with such a burden that she can't share. This also means that's she has surpressed trust issues and can't fully commit to another romance in the future. Her children and the thought of being labelled a subpar wife have kept her in marital chains for years, her wedding was a drunken event not worth recalling, Don's behaviour towards her family marking as a day to forget and not remember. It shows how insidiously the coercive control has co-opted Eve's sense of self and her world view, she would stay for the sake of shame and social propriety than leave.