Caleb was not attuned enough to her, he knew she was closed off emotionally but instead of making her feel loved and safe enough to break through those barriers, he pushed her out of her comfort zone. She and Caleb never really stood a chance in the beginning. There was only so long before he discovered who I really was and wanted nothing to do with me. So she does more bad things to compensate and cover up past bad things and she’s forever stuck in her self-inflicted cycle of hell. She does everything in her power to attain happiness but she deep down believes she does not deserve it because of all the bad things she’s done. Unfortunately, it also came at a price of not feeling worthy of being loved and always anticipating the worst. She comes from a dysfunctional family where her father played yo-yo with her and her mother’s feelings all throughout her childhood and she had to learn early on to detach herself emotionally. But I still wanted a happy ending for her because she is not a bad person. Her actions had to catch up with her eventually. We cringe at the things she does and the decisions she makes but then she does something and you realize, “Crap, I’ve done that!” I couldn’t sympathize with her for most of the book because all the things that happen to her, all the unhappiness she experiences are her own doing. She is the imperfect heroine that we love and hate. I can’t say I am an Olivia or that I have even met an Olivia in my lifetime but she is really in all of us, perhaps in not such an amplified form but nonetheless she is in there. It’s not too often that one finds a story that appeals to you on so many levels and a heroine that draws you so much into her psyche.

The Opportunist by Tarryn Fisher