Book Review: The Bestseller by Jenny Knightsby

Couples therapist Helena Salve knows that client confidentiality is the number one rule. But she’s grown particularly concerned about her client Belle’s controlling and coercive husband. Deeply affected by Belle’s personal situation, Helena vents to her best-friend, Tala. Over too many glasses of wine, Helena tells Tala everything about Belle’s bully of a husband, and Tala – a struggling novelist who is desperate for a lucky break – absorbs it all with open, eager ears.

Months later, Tala’s new novel becomes an instant bestseller, its cover plastered on posters on the Tube, its plot igniting public conversation on coercive control. But Helena can’t share in her friend’s excitement. All she feels every time she thinks about Tala’s book is horror, because the story is one she knows inside out. One that she should never have shared – Belle’s. With her career and reputation on the line, Helena knows it’s only a matter of time before her misconduct is discovered. But bigger than her fear for herself is her fear for Belle, and what Belle’s volatile husband will do when he finds out his relationship with his wife has been used as inspiration for a novel.

As a hospital doctor, Jenny Knightsby is well-versed in observing human behaviour and that fascination with how people think shines through in The Bestseller – a book about the stories and lies people tell themselves in order to survive, and the (often terrible) things people are willing to do for those they love. Told through dual timelines that jump between Helena’s fraught present situation and Tala’s life at university with Helena in the early noughties, this is a novel full of tension, with onion-like layers of secrets and deception. Knightsby builds the suspense with every chapter as the past sections reveal Helena and Tala’s close friendship, and how the early years of Helena’s relationship with her now-husband, Dylan, weaves into that.

There’s an insidious, oppressive feel to the story, a sense of Helena’s whole world closing in around her as the pressure – both professionally and personally – mounts. These walls that she’s unconsciously built to protect herself are crumbling brick by brick, and she’s so intensely focussed on the lives and happiness of those around her – on Belle and Tala and Dylan – that she doesn’t even realise what’s happening in her own life until it’s too late. Knightsby shines a bright spotlight on the darker side of relationships, and whilst the plot tips towards being a little unbelievable at times, that ever-constant feeling of anxiety really leaks off the page.

It’s impossible to read The Bestseller and not fear for its female characters, or cheer them on when they take steps towards regaining their autonomy. And that feels like the real triumph and takeaway of this novel: not the devastation of toxic relationships (though it’s certainly uncomfortable and impossible to ignore) but the strength and resilience of women and female friendships. It’s a twisty psychological thriller that introduces a new talent to the genre, and I can’t wait to see what Jenny Knightsby writes next.

★★★★

The Bestseller was published by Mountain Leopard Press on 10 September 2026