Sleeping With A Psychopath – Carolyn Woods

Hello Loves!

Can you believe we are in June? I’m embracing the lighter days and the gloriously summery weather we have been having in the UK this week. It’s felt like a long time coming but gosh, isn’t it a breath of fresh air really? I hope you’re all okay and embracing the longer and brighter days. Would you believe me if I told you I had to put sun cream on his week?!

Anyway, we’ve celebrated my blogs birthday well. Thank you so much for all your lovely messages – I’ve loved reading them! I’ve got a couple of posts that are in the pipeline but I wanted to share with you today a book I’ve just finished. I love it when I finish something and want to write about it straight away! Anyway, prepare yourself for the thrilling real life story of Carolyn Woods. Her novel, Sleeping With a Psychopath reads like a work of fiction. However, I find it utterly terrifying that this is actually a true story. I hope you find it as compelling as I did!

What’s it all about?
The novel opens with a prologue where Woods reflects back over the past eighteen months of her life. Her journey is one of our own worst nightmares yet she has a story to tell, a cautionary tale of the modern day. Looking back, Woods sees herself as vibrant, positive, successful and happy. Following her divorce, she rented a beautiful cottage in a Cotswold town and got herself a little job in a shop which she thoroughly enjoyed. What could possibly go wrong? She was about to find out following a visit from a handsome stranger. Little does she know that this man is about to ruin her life, take away her independence and her reasons for living.

“He has isolated me and I have become frightened, depressed and introverted. I am very confused. It feels as though someone has opened the top of my head and put a blender into my brain.”

The novel then takes us back to the beginning, June 2012, when Woods was working in the little clothes shop. As the sun was setting on another day in the Cotswolds, the door announced a visitor: immaculately dressed, handsome in his features and incredibly attractive. His name was Mark and he certainly said all the right things. Woods admits she liked him instantly and felt that he liked her back. She guessed that he was a spy – there was something very James Bond about him after all. He did nothing to dissuade this, claiming he was a rich Swiss banker. She is captivated. After all, it’s not every day a handsome stranger walks into your life and likes you! Woods decides to do something she hasn’t done before. She gives him her phone number and the end of yet another working day has come. What follows next is text conversations where plans are made and the intimacy between the two increase. Upon reflection, Woods punctuates her narrative with comments showing how naive she has been and statements that were originally said showed no signs for concern, are obvious red flags now.

“Thinking back on those first early encounters, with the knowledge I have now, I can see exactly how Mark was operating. I believe him to be a psychopath.”

The pace of the narrative increases again. This time we see lavish gifts that Mark gave to Carolyn: the brand new Audi, the need to get away, the promise of luxury wherever they went. You can see how easy it was to be swept away by the magic and mystery of it all. They started to look for a house with a budget of 2-3 million pounds. Their whole future was planned out before them quite rapidly. However, Mark took control of her mobile phone, saying that all messages had to be deleted because of people watching. He also claimed to know a lot of wealthy, powerful people of status – Hilary Clinton and Vladimir Putin, to name two. He also asked her to marry him, something which she accepted and was excited to do. But, the lavish lifestyle, the new cars and the expensive budget for a house doesn’t match up to the day where Mark asks to borrow £26,000 due to a cash flow problem. She fell deeply and head first. She was in love with him so said yes.

“As I tell my story, I can understand how astonishing people find it that I should have been taken in so easily, and looking back, I cannot believe I behaved so recklessly. But Mark is a conjuror – I was spellbound…”

For a time, life continued. The wedding was being planned, the dress exquisite and Mark was here, there and everywhere: London, Bath, Spain, Italy and Syria. Woods became more and more isolated and was spending the vast amount of time alone. More time alone meant that frustrations and anxieties grew. Mark was around less and less. His narrative becomes more alarming the deeper we progress into the novel. He appears to get injured abroad, has a brain tumour and continues to blow hot and cold with Woods. More and more money was being transferred and Woods found herself in a desperate situation: alone, broke, fragile. Trips together turned into nightmares where Mark didn’t show. Hotels that were booked for her, weren’t paid for meaning she was stranded in a foreign country. Things finally came to an end when the truth about Mark was clear. He wasn’t Mark Conway. He was Mark Acklom, a known criminal from his childhood, forever taking money from different people for promises he could not keep. Eventually, his actions caught up with him and he was arrested and imprisoned.

“Before I met Acklom, I was a happy, sociable, positive person; by the time he was through with me, I could barely function and had become deeply suspicious of people.”

By the end of her story, Woods has lost £850,000 – her entire savings pot. Despite this, it is the love and strength of her daughters and the friends who stood by her that carried her through. Justice was eventually (and legally) served but that also wasn’t as simple or ‘black and white’ as it should have been. Woods now has the opportunity to tell her story, the set the world straight and to start and rebuild her life.

“Mum has lost everything: her money, her job, her home, her security… but the one thing he couldn’t take away from her was the love of her daughters.”

Final Thoughts
I was completely captivated by this book for so many reasons. Firstly, I think Woods really discusses and highlights the gender inequality in this book. As a divorced, middled aged female, her perception is that she was ‘stupid’ and she ‘should have seen it coming’. Yet, the male businessmen that were conned were ‘sensible’ and ‘right’. I also found it interest (and horrifying) that the police both here and abroad didn’t believe her. This story is years of fighting, years of a life taken away by one person. It is easy for us to sit here and judge today and see the warning signs for that they are. But, I can see how easy it would have been. This book shows us the art of manipulation. It didn’t read like it was a true story – it reads like a fictional thriller. Personally, I think it takes a lot of bravery from Woods to be as frank, honest and as reflective as she has been.

And that’s it! Definitely read this book, especially if you love thrillers as much as I do. I am off to read something lighter now so I don’t become completely paranoid.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Big love xx