The Bleeding Heart

I’ll admit, I went into *The Bleeding Heart* expecting a period-piece feminist rant—something earnest but dated. Instead, I got a psychological gut-punch that feels alarmingly current. French’s protagonist, Dolley, is a woman whose intelligence and ambition are systematically eroded by her marriage to Victor, a man whose charm is as calculated as his cruelty. What makes this audiobook so devastating isn’t the overt abuse (though there’s plenty) but the insidiousness of it: the gaslighting wrapped in poetry, the isolation dressed as devotion. Reay Kaplan’s performance is masterful in its restraint; she never overplays the drama, letting French’s words do the heavy lifting. Her Dolley starts bright, hopeful, then gradually flattens into something hollow—you *hear* the defeat in her voice long before the character admits it. That said, this isn’t an easy listen. The pacing drags in the middle, where French indulges in long, philosophical tangents about gender and power. Some might call it profound; I found myself zoning out during a 20-minute monologue on patriarchal economics. And while Kaplan’s narration is mostly stellar, her male voices (particularly Victor’s) occasionally tip into caricature, undercutting the novel’s nuance. Still, the final act is worth the slog—a climax so quietly vicious it left me staring at my headphones in disbelief. This isn’t a book for romance optimists or fans of tidy endings. But if you’ve ever wondered how a woman could *stay* in a destructive relationship, French—and Kaplan—will show you, in agonizing detail, how the cage is built one golden bar at a time.