Read this when
Rebecca
You're not competing with his ex. You're competing with the version of her your anxiety invented. Rebecca has been explaining this since 1938.
Who it's for
The unnamed narrator spends much of the book convinced she can never measure up to Maxim's dead first wife, and the reader lives inside her spiralling comparisons and imagined conversations.
Feelings it meets
What it is
Rebecca is a 1938 novel by Daphne du Maurier. A timid young woman, never named, working as a companion to a wealthy American woman in Monte Carlo, meets the widower Maxim de Winter and marries him after a brief courtship.
Where to find it
In print; widely available from libraries (Libby/Hoopla) and as an audiobook. Not public domain in the US. Also the 1940 Hitchcock film.
Before you start
Heads up: A woman urged toward suicide.
Age: Ages 14+
O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-ey’d monster which doth mock The meat it feeds on.William Shakespeare, Othello, Act 3, Scene 3
