Author S. J. Watson has had a storied (ouch!) career in a relatively short period of time. After working in Great Britain’s National Health Service, Watson was admitted to participate in a prestigious writing course. His first published novel, BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP, was an international bestseller. His sophomore effort, SECOND LIFE, demonstrates that his initial success was no fluke; you will be up all night reading this one.

SECOND LIFE focuses on Julia Wilding, a London resident who is living an orderly life as the story begins. It wasn’t always that way. When her last name was Plummer, Julia was a fairly well-known photographer who was leading a wild bohemian existence. Then a family friend stepped in, literally rescuing her; Hugh Wilding is now her husband, and is a successful and respected surgeon. Their adopted son, Connor, rounds out the family. Connor’s birth mother is Julia’s sister, Kate, who gave birth to him when she was a teenager. Connor is now in the early throes of adolescence, and Kate, who is living in Paris, has been making noises about wanting him back, a situation that has led to some estrangement between the siblings.

"Things start exploding near the beginning of the final fourth of the book, and when they do, it is as if a rocket has been set off between the covers. Of the book, that is."

Julia’s life is upended when she is notified that Kate has been murdered in a Paris alley, the apparent victim of a mugging gone wrong. The grim tragedy causes Julia to bond with Anna, Kate’s roommate. As the two become friends, Anna confides to Julia that Kate had been active in online dating services, often meeting strangers in cyberspace and the real world for casual sex. Julia begins to wonder if Kate was murdered by someone she had encountered on one of those sites. Not satisfied with the pace of the police investigation, which seems to be going nowhere, Julia decides to go online herself, hoping to discover the truth.

Julia, though, has problems of her own. She is a recovering alcoholic whose fragile grip on sobriety has been further loosened by the unexpected and violent death of her sister. Her marriage to Hugh, who is loving and caring but occasionally distant, has also acquired a routineness. Her experience of meeting someone online, someone who finds her desirable, goes much farther than her initial motive to play detective. It doesn’t take long for Julia to get in way over her head. What she doesn’t realize, at least at first, is that she is putting much more than her marriage at risk. Before the book reaches its startling and explosive conclusion, Julia will find that she has been wrong, very wrong, about practically everything, and the revelations of the truth may come far too late.

Watson doesn’t rush the proceedings in SECOND LIFE. He spends a good deal of the first half of the book setting up his chess pieces, though he certainly permits them a dalliance or two while doing so. Things start exploding near the beginning of the final fourth of the book, and when they do, it is as if a rocket has been set off between the covers. Of the book, that is. Think FIFTY SHADES OF GREY meets Fatal Attraction, and you’ll get a very general idea of what you're in store for in SECOND LIFE. I can practically guarantee that you’ll see lots of copies of this book on the beach this summer, and not all of the red blotches on the readers will be from sunburn.