"the perfect match" by Dandy Smith

An audio book.

Zara, 28, has blood on her hands. There's a body in the morgue. She'll be asked questions.

We go back a few months. She's known Luke since they were 3, and lost her virginity with him at 16. He's a travel writer. She wants to settle down. His brother died a few years before. Zara's mother is a depressed drinker. She never married Zara's father. A university lecturer, he left to happily marry and have a child Polly. Zara lives with promiscuous Ivy whose grandfather disinherited her and whose mother died young.

Zara gets on well with Henry though he's 40 (it's Ivy who's into older, usually married, men). She discovers that he's rich. She's called to help her mother when she's drunk too much. He comes too and doesn't mind. Ivy gets inheritance money after all - a mansion. Zara and Ivy move in. They have a party. Henry arrives and Zara takes him upstairs - they've known each other for 3 months and haven't slept together yet. Zara makes sure that Ivy notices. She receives an anonymous e-mail warning about him.

Zara likes her half-sister's little daughter, Bonny. Ivy doesn't like Henry. An intruder enters their house. He's known to Ivy but they're no longer friends. Zara moves in with Henry.

Henry tells Zara that he thinks Ivy fancies her. He pays for Zara's mother to go to a distant clinic. During a party at Henry's Ivy argues with a man, and goes upstairs with him. He's found dead on the ground (but this isn't the death mentioned at the start). He'd known that Ivy's mother wasn't her real mother, which would have stopped her getting the inheritance money. He'd been the intruder. Henry's security cameras catch the death. Ivy's biological mother appears on the scene. Ivy tells Zara that Henry once raped her. Henry's friend Jonti uses a date-rape drug on her with Henry's permission. A threesome begins. She's saved. She wakes, goes to Henry's, who locks her in a room and leaves. She's saved again - by Hazel, the person who'd been sending her anonymous mail. She's seen before how Henry tries to isolate his lovers from their relatives, friends and workmates. She knew Tabetha, an ex of Henry, who disappeared.

When Ivy and Zara are back in the house together, Henry breaks in and threatens Ivy. Ivy kills him. Ivy was Henry's lover when he was with Tabetha. She also quite recently slept with Luke. Back in the present Zara is on the way to court having to decide whether to tell the court that Ivy killed in self-defense.

The "Emotion-Verb-Bodypart" template is extensively exploited - e.g. -

• "A prickle of unease whispers across my chin"
• "A realisation arrives like a slap to the face"
• "Fear winds itself around my body"
• "Shock rolls through me"
• "Shame creeps across her cheeks"
• "Terrible icy fear drips inside me"