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I read Evidence of the Affair in one sitting at 8am, then stared at the ceiling like I’d been ghosted by someone from 1977. It's slim, epistolary, and incredibly emotionally economical no fluff, no filler, just two people writing to each other because everything else has broken around them.
Here’s the full review:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – “Letters Across a Ruin”
I love a novella that feels like it was written to be read in one sitting while emotionally dissociating on public transport and Evidence of the Affair delivers. It’s short, sharp, and emotionally slippery in a way that leaves a stain.
This is a story told entirely through letters between Carrie and David - two strangers connected by the fact that his wife is sleeping with her husband. What starts as shocked confession slowly becomes intimate, raw, and weirdly tender, as they find themselves confiding more and more in each other, circling heartbreak, resentment, and the deep ache of being lied to by the person you trusted most.
Taylor Jenkins Reid is so good at emotional claustrophobia. The whole story is just over 90 pages, but somehow it contains a full spectrum of grief and longing and moral ambiguity and how dare you make me feel seen by someone I shouldn’t even know.
It lost a star for me only because I wanted more - not in a bad way, just in the way that you want a song to have one more verse before it ends. The final twist is a little quiet, a little ambiguous, but it leaves you with that buzzy, unfinished ache. Which might be the point.
📖 One-liner summary: Two strangers write letters. Their spouses are having an affair. The letters might be the most honest connection they’ve ever had.
If you’ve read it, let’s cry about the final page together. Or do a dramatic reading in character. Or both.
