The Golden Rule

Critics Review

• A highly enjoyable story about female resilience and finding fulfilment on your own terms, with a twist that is all the more compelling for its unexpectedness

  Sunday Times

• An irresistible summer read: a rollicking plot, a heroine who is more than a match for anything the author throws at her and meaty social issues

  Guardian Book of the Day

• The plot becomes so gripping – the sort of story where you want to pull the heroine out of the pages away from danger

  The Times

• A typically sharp and hugely satisfying page-turner about two women who decide to murder each other’s husbands

  Daily Mail

• Such an interesting read! . . . A story of lies – and learning that people aren’t always who they appear to be

  Prima

• A pacy state-of-the-nation drama that tackles issues from domestic abuse to workplace harassment, gentrification to the gig economy

  Mail on Sunday

• Clever and compelling, The Golden Rule is a modern mash-up of Rebecca and Strangers on a Train

  Red

• The Golden Rule does what her novels do best, wrapping the reader in a tight, lean narrative, showing the strangeness that lies at the heart of normal-seeming lives

  Observer

• An acute and passionate observer of society in both town and country, and among rich and poor. She is harrowingly good at portraying the corrosive effects of poverty, particularly on vulnerable women with children to protect. Her prose is a delight…Best of all, Craig has the knack of creating interesting characters and of making one care about what lies in store for them. If you can do that, nothing else really matters

  Spectator

• Perceptive and wise, particularly on the ever-growing gap between the rich and the poor

  Independent

• She’s such a skilful storyteller who vividly dramatises our lives with wit, wisdom and compassion

• Strangers on a Train meets #MeToo

  Sunday Times

• Craig’s ninth novel is one of her best. A clever take on Beauty and the Beast and Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, it is also an astute commentary on life in Cornwall and the widening gap between the city rich and rural poor

  The i

• Addictive . . . a wide-ranging, incisive portrait of contemporary Britain

  Independent

• We reckon this cracker of a novel about the “haves” and the “have-nots” will whip you into a page-turning frenzy

  Sunday Post

• If you like your novels wide-ranging, ambitious, socially panoramic, and engaged in the most important issues of the day, Amanda Craig is the writer for you. For more than twenty years now she has been anatomising the state of the British nation with wit and empathy

• I just wanted to say how much I have enjoyed The Golden Rule – evening reading that I looked forward to for days. Such a strong narrative, constantly taking you by surprise, persuasive setting, Hannah a sympathetic central figure – and the clash between different lifestyles. Very much a novel of our times

  Penelope Lively

• I really enjoyed The Golden Rule. I still love novels that have proper, well-constructed plots and Amanda Craig is a delicious storyteller

  Rose Tremain

• A tight, lean thriller about two women who decide to murder each other’s husbands. Dotted throughout are Craig’s acute observations of society, in particular the corrosive effects of poverty. Yet this skilful storyteller is never preachy. We are swept along because of her knack of creating characters we care about. Only on closing the book do we realise we’ve not just been entertained but made to think too

  The Tablet