The Golden Cage (2020)
By Camilla Läckberg
Alfred A. Knopf, 300 pages.
★

Where is the line between a steamy romance novel and soft porn? I’m not certain, but I’m sure that Camilla Läckberg (Jean Edith Camilla Eriksson) crossed it. Her newest novel, The Golden Cage, came with promo telling me that this Swedish crime fiction writer has written a dozen and a half novels that have been translated into 40 languages, so I guess her formula is working for her. It’s not working for me. I needed a shower after reading The Golden Cage and it wasn’t a cold one.

Many English speakers will recognize the title as a reference to living in a situation that inspires envy by outsiders but is actually a prison for those on the inside. Betty Friedan used it in her definitive feminist work The Feminine Mystique. More on Friedan in a moment.

Unless one is born into obscene wealth, most gilded age occupants were once the envious ones on the outside. This is certainly the case for the novel’s putative heroine, Faye. She was actually born as Matilda, but assumed a new identity when she fled from a dark family secret in her native Fjälbacka, relocated to the anonymity of Stockholm, and reinvented herself. (Ironically, Läckberg lives in Fjälbacka.) In Stockholm Faye struggles at first, then acquires both a boyfriend and a BFF named Chris. The boyfriend has to go when Faye first feasts her eyes–and I’m being kind about the relevant body part–on Jack Adelheim, whom she identifies as both hot and a high flyer. Faye helps him build Compare, a marketing firm, and before you can say “knickers off,” they are filthy rich and the envy of their nouveau riche peers. It’s a dream life, but one that changes when Faye gives birth to Julienne and Jack becomes a workaholic and sexist pig. Faye abases herself to try to please Jack, but he’s soon addicted to porn and sleeping with half of Stockholm, before Faye discovers him with Ylva, a younger version of herself.

At this point, The Golden Cage becomes a revenge novel masquerading as feminist. Faye once again reinvents herself and launches a beauty product line named–you guessed it–Revenge. She draws investors from loads of women, including her landlord Kersten, who have one thing in common: Each has been screwed over by a man or two or more. At this juncture I should say that I “get” it. Millions of women have been abused (psychologically, physically, or both) by men and there’s no excusing it under the rubric of “the way things used to be.” Faye’s plan to avenge Jack’s sexism is, to say the least, unique.

All of this raises the question of whether this novel is feminist or just trashy. Jack is a truly despicable human being, but there is exactly one male character in the book who is anything more than a cardboard cutout chauvinist: Chris’ boyfriend Johan. There is also the question of what is morally justifiable. There is a theory that claims there is no such thing as reverse sexism; another that says neither misogyny nor misandry is morally justifiable. If only these were the sole choices in Läckberg’s novel. Hers is a troubling amoral version of feminism, and almost none of how Läckberg extricates women from their golden cage is what Betty Friedan would have condoned.

The phrase “revenge is a dish best served cold” comes from Pierre Chordelos de Laclos in the novel whose English title is Dangerous Liaisons. Perhaps you’ve seen the wonderful 1988 film of that title, where the revenge is both frosty and complex. Now would be the time to say that Camilla Läckberg is no Pierre Chordelos de Laclos. A list of what The Golden Cage lacks would include wit, verisimilitude, and suspense. There is, however, crime. And let us not forget soft porn. Had I read the phrase “wet between the legs” one more time in relation to Faye, I might have hurled this book across the room despite the fact that it was loaded onto my iPad. In the opening line of my review I asked where the line is drawn between steamy romance and porn. Perhaps this novel reads better in Swedish but from where I sit, it’s not worth making distinctions. In English, The Golden Cage is trashy pyrite pulp.

Rob Weir

Intriguing novel of a woman scorned. It is so well crafted with layers to the story that struck so many emotions and thoughts about the situation as well as the characters.. Wonderful roller-coaster ride, full of twists and turns.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange of an honest review.

I loved this book! It's brilliant and kept me hooked since the very beginning! The story is captivating, the characters well written and I fell in love with the plot and the characterization. I was attracted by the plot and the cover (it's really beautiful) and it was the first book I've read by Camilla Läckberg, even though I know of her. I was impressed by her writing style and the characters. Faye is amazing, brilliant, smart and I love her revenge.

I really enjoyed this book as will any woman who has been screwed over by a guy and wished she could get revenge. That is basically shat this book is about, a woman who gives up who she is to please a man she loves, allows him to take credit for her ideas and creates the perfect home life he says he wants, only to be traded in for the younger, thinner version and left behind.
Faye came from an abusive upbringing and after the death of her brother and years of abuse by her father who is now incarcerated for her mother’s death, she leaves her small village behind determined to reinvent herself. She is accepted into an economics school where she is one of the top students but she puts aside her dreams when she meets a handsome young man named Jack who she marries and helps him build a multimillion dollar company. Faye has everything money can buy but as the title says she lives in a golden cage. She unexpectedly returns hone to find her husband in her bed with another woman and he calmly informs her he wants a divorce. Jack has underestimated the woman he was married to and the cliche “ hell hath no fury” is definitely played out. While Jack is a loathsome character, Faye is not truly likable though I did find myself rooting for her. This was a quick enjoyable read and I look forward to exploring more from this author. Thank you to # netgalley and #knophpublishinh for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Wow! I was blown away by the totally unexpected mind blowing twist at the end of this phenomenal psychological thriller~ revenge is a dish best served by Camilla Lackberg. Faye is a woman who finds herself facing a life-changing situation but ultimately gets what she wants out of life through ingenuity and a fire in her belly.

Ok... first thing that caught my eye with this book is THAT cover! Wow... talk about awe.

This also was my first read by Camilla Lackberg and I have to say that it definitely won't be my last! I would say to go into this one pretty blindly. This is a story of love, friendship, betrayal, and oh my sweet revenge.

I have to say that the initial part of the book was a tad slow for me but after part 2 it definitely picked up the pace. There are some serious page turning scenes here and was cringing and rooting towards the end!!

I will definitely be checking out more from Camilla and am glad that I requested this one.

Overall, 4 stars!

Thank you so much to Knopf Publishing and Netgalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

Pub date: 7/7/20
Published to GR: 2/29/20

This was an excellent thriller that really made me think. Impressive character development along with a fascinating storyline make this book a resounding success.

Thank you NetGalley and Knopf for the eARC.
I love the Fjallbacka series of books and was really looking forward to reading this standalone. Unfortunately I was disappointed, I just couldn't like this book. The main character Faye was not likeable, neither was Jack, her husband. The story was unbelievable, it seemed totally unrealistic: how a woman can be that cowed by her husband and then, in revenge, become a billionaire business icon was beyond me. Plus, I'm not fond of sex scenes. The best part of the book was Faye's close friendship with Chris, who was the only character I liked. I think I'll stick with the series. Sorry!

This book has it all: revenge, jealousy, hidden secrets and characters that you love to hate.

But even Faye who is not the nicest you cant help but cheer her on at times !

The Golden Cage is dark, twisty and the pages will turn themselves as you just have to find out what happens to Faye.

Its a departure from Camilla Lackberg's regular books but I enjoyed it just as much , she knows how to keep you guessing.

Don't want to say too much and give away the story so just put it on your TBR pile, you will be glad you did !

Thanks to NetGalley, Knoph Doubleday Publishing Group for a twisted read !

A thirst for revenge is the drive that propels this rocket-paced novel. While the characters don't have extraordinary depth, the pages fly, as Camilla Lackberg demonstrates her masterful talent for twists and landmines aplenty.

This book is filled with brutality, revenge, love, hate, friendship and so so much more. It can be brutal in parts, so, step inside this book with the lights on.

My thanks to Netgalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for this advanced readers copy. This book is set to release in July, 2020.

This book was amazing-- I couldn't put it down and as soon as I finished it I walked into the breakroom at my bookstore and told everyone out there that they must read it (someone already was too!).

Amazing storyline, amazing characters and amazing story right until the end.

My only bad feedback is that I have to wait until July to sell it!!

3.5/5 If you've ever shaken your fist and vowed to get revenge on a man who has cheated on you, have I got a book for you! This book is full of women who turn their lives into taking down a man- even starting a company called Revenge. While this is a fun read, it's also pretty predictable and follows the path that many psychological thrillers run: husband is a cheat, wife is super clever, we get to cackle as the husband gets what is coming to him. I didn't think this book necessarily brought anything new to that set up, but it was still fun to read.

This was my first time reading Camilla Lackberg. I’ve already purchased two of her other books to read.
Lackberg may just be my new favorite - psychological - suspense thrilling author *discovery*.

Faye Adelheim is an interesting protagonist- two dimensional- an anti-heroine.....in “The Golden Cage”.
Faye shares a few things in common with Lisbeth Salander from Steig
Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) ....
Both women were outsiders. Both had evil fathers.
Both women were out for revenge. And that’s where the differences end.

In “The Golden Cage”....
Faye was hardly the first woman in the world to be humiliated by her husband, to be treated like an idiot, to be replaced by a younger model.
However...Faye had a tortuous past life that she was running from - a past that nobody knew about - and by golly she was determined to never let anyone humiliate her ‘again’. She even changed her name. Matilda no longer existed. Two years after Faye graduated high school she left Fjallbacka behind -both mentally and physically and moved to Stockholm.

Faye says in the beginning...
“It was me against the world. Far from home, in a city I had dreamed about my whole life. I hadn’t merely wanted to get away. I had been desperate to come here. Slowly I made Stockholm my city. It gave me hope that I might be able to heal and forget”.
“I was free. Free to do whatever I wanted. To be whoever I wanted. Without the past messing up everything around me, inside me. Without all the people who have been pulling me down. I was slowly turning myself into someone else, little by little”.

Faye was smart! ( not always wise) - She had been accepted to an MBA at Stockholm school of economics. It’s where she met Jack, ( aristocracy golden boy), from a family with a tarnished reputation). Jack’s father had an alcohol and gambling addiction. His parents fought constantly - but Jack was determined to shine - and succeed far beyond his father. Faye was determined to marry him

Jack’s and his close friend, Henrik, both graduated from Stockholm school of economics. Henrik with top grades Jack with average ones.
It was Faye who gave Jack and Henrik the business idea - she helped them launch a telemarketing company ( different and more brilliant than all others). The company was called “Compare”.
Faye told Jack that she was willing to take a sabbatical from college… a year off....work... so that Jack could focus on his dream and get his business off the ground. Faye believed that Jack was going to make millions and he could pay her back then. He did make millions.
Jack tells Faye:
“And I will! Everything that’s mine is yours, darling. Ours!”
Faye ( the knucklehead was blinded by love), signed a prenuptial agreement when she married Jack. She didn’t get it amended after their daughter, Julienne was born.
Does that sound like, “what’s mine, is yours to you?”
Not for us readers, either.
Security? what’s that? Ha!

Jack and Henrik hit it HUGE...’Compare’ became an instant success. They achieved results unmatched by anyone before.
Faye got none of the credit - but she was happy to be the submissive humble unworthy wife - anything to please her man.
NOTE....if sex scenes bother you ( they don’t me), then be aware - there are explicit sex scenes.

Mr. Jack-Billionaire turned into a total dickhead....and started treating Faye like scum.
Lackberg sure can write...stimulating a full range of emotions from some outrageous original memorable scenes.
Jack’s hottie charms never fooled us, by the way, at anytime, but things went from worse to worse.

CRAZY FUN PAGE TURNING SCENES AND DIALOGUE....with an intriguing cast of characters- both main and supporting.
I admit to cringing, laughing, swearing, empathizing, cheering, unifying, questioning, calculating, and simply enjoying Lackberg’s great acuity about the hazards and rewards of the magnificent vindictiveness that builds as the story unfolds.

Funniest & yuckiest scene - involves an eggyoke....[ I’ll never get the visual out of my head]....
AND....
I laughed silly when Faye caught Jack butt naked with Ylva in their bedroom doing the naughty!
Faye’s first thought was....
“He was bound to be frustrated by the fact that he hadn’t been able to come. He hated to be interrupted. He used to say that a ruined orgasm stayed in his body all day”.
Poor poor Jack! 😂

A ‘few’ other noted characters:
....Chris Nydahl...is Faye’s best friend... ( a likable powerhouse successful businesswoman and character)...loved this woman.
....Ylva Lehdorf —trouble for Faye...
....John Descentis - is trouble for Faye - in a different way than Ylva is.
....Alice Bergendahl .... married to Henrik.. At age 31, she had a waist like a ten year old and long ( f#@king), legs like Heidi Klum.
....Victor Blom.... a man Faye dated who actually treated her ‘decent’...( God forbid)
....Sebastian... he had been Faye’s brother who haunts her dreams
....Julienne- Jack and Faye’s seven year old daughter.
....Kerstin - a good friend to Faye ( with her own past history)...
....etc etc.

Taken directly from the blurb.....this line speaks TOTALLY TRUE:
“In this splashy, electrifying story of sex, betrayal, and secrets, a woman’s revenge is a brutal but beautiful thing” ( kudos to the person who wrote that sentence)

LOVED IT! Perfect for readers in the mood for an intelligent enjoyable psychological thriller who introduces us to a new textured anti-heroine.

Hoping for a sequel.

Thank you Knoph Doubleday Publishing Group, Netgalley, and Camilla Lackberg. I’m a new fan.

Thank you, thank you to the publisher and NetGalley!
The Golden Cage kept me up all last night! It is a page-turner, but with so many twists that I couldn't wait until the end. I normally don't want a book to end, but The Golden Cage is different you get so invested in Faye's life that you can't help, but want to see where she will end up. I can't gush over this novel enough. A vengeance tale that becomes so much more by the end of the novel. A MUST READ!

The story left me breathless, a read-it-all-in-one-night deal. She did bad things, he did bad things. He was rich and powerful she became rich and powerful. The female empowerment marketing campaign seemed over the top but not impossible to imagine in 2020. Thanks for the great read!

“The Golden Cage” is a psychological thriller by Camilla Lackberg set in Sweden.
The main character,Faye, is the wife of millionaire Jack who treats her terribly. The novel is about Faye’s revenge after he throws her aside for a younger woman.
I had a hard time putting this book down even though it was rather soap opera-ish and campy.

Delicious new ready from Camilla Lackberg. Always a "can't put it down" story. Different kind of plot with a very satisfactory ending. Highly recommend.

There was something about the time frame and the characters in The Golden Cage that I just could not empathize with them. Don't get me wrong, I love a good woman scorned novel. However, this one fell flat for me since I just was not able to become emotionally involved in the story. I felt it moved around a lot in location and time and I just was not able to keep up. I think this book will be an enjoyable read for many others, just not me.

I've been a fan of Camilla Lackberg ever since I read The Ice Princess years ago. While I haven't read all ten books in her Fjallbacka series, I have managed to get through quite a few, most recently The Drowning. Like The Ice Princess, The Drowning features writer Erica Falck and detective Patrik Hedstrom; it's an engaging, well plotted mystery set in a small town in Sweden. Lackberg's 11th novel, The Golden Cage, is an entirely different type of psychological thriller, one that features a protagonist who is nearly the polar opposite of Erica. From what I've read, it is the first of a two-book series that will feature Faye, a woman with a shadowy past who falls in love with a man destined to become one of Sweden's sexiest, most successful businessmen.

The Golden Cage begins near the end of the story, with a dark, brutal scene. Faye's seven-year-old daughter Julienne is missing and it looks as if her ex-husband Jack may well have murdered the young girl. The narrative then circles back in time, to the point where Faye leaves the small town she grew up in to start a new life in Stockholm. For the rest of the novel, chapters alternate between Faye's story in the immediate past with flashbacks to the more distant past. This is a revenge tale that is influenced by the #MeToo movement and I don't think I'm giving much away if I say that Jack is unquestionably a bastard. Though Faye is a brilliant economics student, she leaves school and works as a waitress so Jack can make his new business a success. Before long, he and his partner do indeed achieve their dreams. As the wife of one of the country's wealthiest men, Faye is soon living the sort of life she's always wanted. But she eventually comes to realize she's little more than a beautiful bird in a gilded cage: her marriage is nothing but a sleekly decorated prison. As bad as that is, things are about to get worse.

Faye is more than a victim, however. Not only does her childhood complicate that characterization, but her recent past and present do as well. It's hard to avoid spoilers but suffice it to repeat: this is a revenge tale. And for me, that is where this review gets difficult. While I appreciated that Lackberg didn't write a simple tale of victim and victimizer, I disliked almost all of the characters in this book. The author has touted this as a tale about sisterhood, but I simply don't buy it—Faye may have women she cares deeply about but she can also be utterly self-interested and callous toward others, some of whom are women. Yet as I write about Faye, I hear echoes of Lisbeth Salander, one of my favorite Nordic characters. There are definite parallels between the two – I even wondered at times if Faye could be considered a sociopath, a term Stieg Larsson once used loosely when referring to Lisbeth. But whereas I find Lisbeth compelling and sympathetic (and most certainly not a sociopath), Faye has the opposite effect on me. Despite her strength and her plight as Jack's unlucky wife, she is more of an anti-heroine in the Gone Girl sense of the term.

For some readers, that may be a good thing. Also, not all readers will dislike Faye—some may admire her intelligence and her ability to raise herself up again. There were times I felt exactly the same way. And I will say I found The Golden Cage oddly enthralling, though it's not a whodunit in any sense. I read it over a couple of days and could not put it down during certain sections. Lackberg is clearly a very talented writer who can craft a story and will no doubt continue to produce strong books in the future.

Much thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.