I Become Her by Joe Hart

Published by Thomas & Mercer on August 26, 2025

Victimized woman flees from abusive husband/boyfriend/ex before proving her toughness by saving herself from his clutches is a popular thriller subgenre. The stories tend to be formulaic. I Become Her twists the formula by adding a second victimized women and creating some uncertainty about the character of the abuser. The ending is predictable and the characters are unappealing, but fans of the subgenre will probably enjoy it.

Imogen Carmichael is on a honeymoon cruise when she becomes irrationally jealous of Lev, her new husband, because he touched the hand of a waitress. When she wakes up and her husband isn’t in their cabin, she thinks he’s gone ashore. She searches the bars, then spies a couple canoodling on the beach. The man is the same size and shape as her husband, but she can’t be sure if it’s him.

Back on the ship, Lev returns to their room and claims to have been in the ship’s casino, although Imogen didn’t see him there. They have a spat. Imogen shoves Lev. He hits his head and tumbles off the balcony and into the ocean. After a moment of hesitation, Imogen calls the ship’s emergency number, all but certain that Lev has died.

Lev is improbably saved by a fisherman but doesn’t remember the shove. He recalls Imogen as being his fiancé, not his wife. The last six months of his memory are gone. Lucky for Imogen, right? Not so much, since she will now live in fear that Lev will recover his memory and conclude that she tried to kill him. Which, to be fair, is the logical conclusion to draw. In any event, the story is just getting started.

A rational person might take her husband’s near-death experience as a wakeup call, a warning about the consequences of excessive jealousy. Not Imogen. After she and Lev are safely home (in a house Lev doesn’t remember), Imogen searches for the name of the waitress (Lyra Markos) and begins to obsess about her yet again. After every man in a restaurant (including her husband) notices the entrance of a beautiful woman, Imogen has a nightmare about stabbing her (although in her dream, the bloody victim morphs into Lyra).

My thought at this point was that Lev didn’t know what he was getting into when he married Imogen and didn't deserve her paranoid suspicions — unless, of course, Lev really did sneak off to shag Lyra on his honeymoon. That would be naughty indeed, but still not an excuse for murder.

As these events unfold, Imogen makes occasional references to a man with whom she once shared an apartment. She clearly feels some guilt about an incident involving the man and a knife, but she doesn’t explain what happened until the novel’s midway point. None of this is likely to endear a reader to Imogen.

Imogen narrates most of the chapters, but some (including the first) are narrated by Sierra. Sierra’s short chapters reveal her fear of being discovered. She swims across a lake every day to build her strength, in case she one day needs to swim away from a predator. The novel is at its midpoint before we learn Sierra’s connection to the rest of the story. Only at the end do we learn the full truth about Sierra.

Also at the novel’s midpoint, Imogen manages to contact Lyra in Greece in the apparent belief that Lyra would confirm shagging her husband if that actually happened. Lyra’s function in the rest of the novel is to go missing, joining Sierra as a missing woman who is somehow tied to Imogen and Lev.

Joe Hart conceals the novel’s key surprise until the final chapters. Since I only figured it out when Hart planted the final clue, I rate the surprise as a success. Less successful is Hart’s attempt to make Imogen sympathetic. He can only accomplish that by making her nemesis a monster. That’s common in the subgenre, but my sympathy was dampened by Imogen’s disagreeable personality.

The ending is exciting despite its predictable nature. Ambiguity surrounding Lev’s character gives the reader something to chew upon for part of the novel, but once clarity emerges, the plot loses most of its interest. Subgenre fans will likely rate the novel a winner, but my recommendation is tepid.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS