A brilliant, sexy, gripping thriller that is part sociology study of a woman scorned and part murder mystery involving an unlikely affair. Once started, it is hard to put down. The various narrative strains of the wife, the husband, and the daughter are skillfully woven together along with excerpts from fictional police reports that serve to further peel back the layers of this wonderful slim novel. ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed Claudia Piñeiro’s tale of Argentinian affluence gone awry so I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to get around to reading her second book. Perhaps my subconscious somehow knew that it wouldn’t, for me, be the same kind of reading experience.

It is a deliciously short book which once again takes us into the world of the wealthier inhabitants of Buenos Aries. It is told mostly from the point of view of Inés whose persona is derived from her status as the long-term wife of a successful businessman. When her marriage, and by extension her entire life, looks to be under threat from Ernesto’s behaviour she becomes a woman of action: attempting to put to rights what has gone wrong in her world in a most unconventional way.

Though I could see some humour in Inés’ logical but flawed thinking I didn’t really find ALL YOURS terribly funny. I agree with another crime reading buddy’s assessment of this book as much less perceptive and thought-provoking than its predecessor. I admit that all three of the characters – Inés, Ernesto and their teenage daughter Lali whose own trauma is relayed via short chapters of dialogue – are beautifully crafted which is a credit to the author given how little of them there actually is in this novella length story. But their level of narcissism and shallowness did not make them the kind of people I want to spend time with.

The structure of the book is interesting and mostly successful though I’m not convinced of the need for the few chapters which purported to be extracts from forensic texts discovered in Inés’ custody. But the narration by Inés, displaying her increasingly bizarre thought processes and behaviour is well done and the chapters of dialogue that Lali has with her best friend and others manage to say a lot with very few words.

I’m now at the end of the review and realise I’ve described more good things than bad about the book yet still I feel as if I didn’t really like it. At least not as much as I expected I would. Perhaps in the end I’ve not been able to separate my intense dislike for the two main characters and their shallow existence from my feelings about the book as a whole. Which is a little troubling because I often claim not to need to like characters in order to like a book.

Set in Buenos Aires, this novel has an interesting structure: mostly the voice that we hear is Ines herself; but often there are phone conversations between Lali and her friend Paula which is how we know that Lali is in trouble; sometimes we are provided with material photocopied from a Spanish book on forensic practice found in Ines' bedside table. Most incidents are provided without author intervention or description.

Ines has nothing much to do all day except her housework so she keeps her house spic and span. It also means that she hasn't got much else to focus on apart from herself and Ernesto, providing of course you discount their daughter Lali, who is 17, finishing school, and in all sorts of trouble, but neither of her parents are aware of that.

Ines thinks she has now got Ernesto where she wants him, but then she discovers he is still leading a double life, and from that point on she can only see one way out.

Although I've read ALL YOURS for the South American category of the 2012 Global Reading Challenge it doesn't seem to me that I've learnt much about life in Buenos Aires. Having read this and THURSDAY NIGHT WIDOWS I can now see why Claudia Pineiro is such a popular Argentinian crime fiction writer. Her novels are unusual to say the least. ( )

La infidelidad es el nucleo central de esta novela, que es narrada por la esposa del marido infiel, que esta dispuesta a todo por salvar su matrimonio. Un libro entretenido. ( )

I think I've seen this movie before. Early to mid 60's, starring Sophia Loren (not Gina L) and Marcello Mastroianni. Takes place in Rome though, not Buenos Aires. And it has a happy ending (the girl friend is arrested, not the wife). And nobody gets pregnant. "All Yours" is crime fiction lite, I guess. Cute, not my cup of tea. A man has an affair with......I'm not sure who all his conquests were, doesn't really matter. Book switches POV rather oddly from chapter to chapter, but hey this is diet crime fiction. There's an affair, a dead body, hubby implicates wife, wife eliminates competition, meanwhile the daughter has her own problems.... Won't read Pineiro again. Ciao ! ( )