5th May 2026

This Immaculate Body by
Emma Van Straaten 

This book contains stalker behaviour, mental illness, potential eating disorders and self-harm.
If you like a character-driven book where the main character is extremely unlikable and certainly suffering from a multitude of mental health issues, this might be the one for you. Our protagonist is Alice, a young woman who briefly worked as a cleaner and became suddenly and terrifyingly obsessed with one of her clients, Tom, whom she has never met in person. Even though she now has an office job, she takes Wednesday mornings off to clean Tom’s flat (and read his emails, curl up in his bed and occasionally steal his things), fantasising about the life they will have together when they finally meet.

It is clear that Alice has an extremely low opinion of herself, making choice to title the book ‘This Immaculate Body’ very interesting; she hates how she looks and has a very unhealthy relationship with food; she is very judgemental of others and believes that they are all judging her in return; and she is constantly comparing herself to other women, particularly her sister.

Alice reads like a teenager who binge-watched rom-coms and never grew up, trying to make her life into a movie and ignoring the world that she actually lives in. She never tries to see things from real Tom’s point of view, instead creating an alternate reality where he leaves her messages in his handprints, feels the same connection that she does, knows her immediately and loves her intensely. It’s a nice dream, but as you can probably guess, it doesn’t go the way she plans.

This book was a fascinating read for me, and in some ways it hit close to home. Alice felt like a harsh light shining on the uglier parts of my own personality in a way that made me somewhat sympathetic towards her even as her behaviour becomes increasingly unjustifiable. I too have turned to food for comfort, I too have felt lonely and deeply insecure, I too have fantasised about constructing a situation so that everything falls into place, acted out conversations with people, and tried to shift the facts in my mind to paint myself in the best light. Of course, to nowhere near the extent that Alice does, but there were parts of her that I recognised in myself.

Not being a psychologist or medical professional in any capacity, I cannot diagnose any of the conditions Alice might have, but I had fun trying anyway. This was a book that despite the heavy topics it deals with, still makes for an entertaining story. The extreme viewpoint Alice has leaves a lot of room to read between the lines to see the reality, and although it made me cringe with second-hand embarrassment in some places with the way she twists the truth, I was kept hooked, wanting to see what happened next and hoping that I will never be the target of that kind of ‘love’.