Devotion

Madeline Stevens is a writer from Boring, Oregon, currently based in Los Angeles. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and her work has been published in a variety of literary magazines. She spent seven years working as a nanny in New York City. Devotion is her first novel.A captivating debut novel about a woman who falls into an overwhelming mutual obsession with the Upper East Side mother who hires her as a nanny.Edgy voyeurism sets the tone for this sexy-but-literary take on the lifestyle-envy psychological thriller.Complex and psychologically taut.Dark and sexy... like a Leonard Cohen song in a second-hand designer dress.'A well-written debut [with] the pulse of a slow burning thriller. a claustrophobic character study in class and inequality.'Sensual and unsettling. a sense of unease persists throughout, as though at any moment tragedy might strike.A creepy, suspenseful and thoroughly absorbing read. Following a nanny mesmerised by her employer, this is a tale about resentment, obsession and the dark, destructive side of desire. This is one slow burner that will hook you in from the very beginning and refuse to let you go.A creepy version of the 'single white female' trope with a remote touch of Patricia Highsmith.A meandering tour of toxic female friendship. There's more than a hint of Single Whote Female in the relationship between Ella - cash-strapped and alone - and Lonnie - rich and beautiful, with the perfect young family.[A] literary psychological smoulderer.Devotion is a dangerous novel - sharp, glittering, and sexy - and Madeline Stevens is a significant new talent. I read this story of obsession, friendship, and betrayal with my heart in my throat, captivated by Ella's increasing absorption into the privileged lives of the couple who hires her.Madeline Stevens' tale of jealousy and obsession is the next big psychological thriller debut, featuring two women who become dangerously entangled. One has everything, and the other wants everything - and will do anything to get what the other has.Devotion is frighteningly perceptive about the ways women see each other, use each other, hurt each other. Madeline Stevens' debut novel dares to let jealousy and obsession lead its characters to the places we fear most.'Madeline Stevens' tale of jealousy and obsession is the next big psychological thriller debut, featuring two women who become dangerously entangled. One has everything, and the other wants everything - and will do anything to get what the other has.Devotion is a romance and a horror story, a tale of obsession and betrayal, revolving around two women divided by the chasm of class. In breathtaking prose, Stevens illuminates the ugly, stunning danger of love. This novel gripped me gorgeously and still won't let me go.Stevens' debut novel shimmers with tension ... A darkly glittering jewel from a promising new voice.'Sexy-but-literary' Sunday Times
'Complex and psychologically taut' Observer
'Sensual and unsettling' The Scotsman
'[A] literary psychological smoulderer' Metro

Desire. Deception. Destruction. Devotion.

Ella is 26, lonely, hungry and far from home. Lonnie is also 26, but rich, talented and beautiful - with a husband and son to match.

Their fates intertwine the day Ella is hired as the family's nanny. She finds herself mesmerised by Lonnie's girlish affection and disregard for the normal boundaries of friendship and marriage, but soon resentment grows too.

Crackling with sensuality and suspense, Madeline Stevens's debut novel is a dizzying thriller in which roles are confused and reversed and nothing is ever quite as it seems.