Roberta Green, a graduate student on the master of fine arts programme at the fictitious Edward University in upstate New York is presenting a searing thesis project about two married professors tiptoeing towards infidelity, as their transgressions are brought to light in Seduction Theory by Emily Adrian. The facts she is presenting pertain to the romantic lives of two of her tutors: a married couple named Simone and Ethan both in their early forties.

Simone is the star of Edwards University’s creative writing department renowned Woolf scholar, grief memoirist, and campus sex icon. Her less glamorous and ostensibly devoted husband, Ethan, is a forgotten novelist and lecturer in the same department. According to Simone and Ethan, and everyone in the campus, their marriage is perfect. That is, until Ethan sleeps with the department administrative assistant, Abigail (39), single mother with knees that are looking “like the rumpled faces of newborns”, and the couple’s faith in their flawless relationship is rattled.

Simone, meanwhile, has secrets of her own. While Ethan’s away for the summer, she grows inordinately close with her advisee, graduate student Roberta “Robbie” Green. They go on long runs together, also a confidante and disciple. Behind Simone’s back, Robbie fictionalizes her mentor’s marriage in a breathtakingly invasive MFA thesis. Determined to tell her version of the story, Robbie paints a revealing portrait of Simone, Ethan, Abigail, and even herself, scratching at the very surface of what may or not may not be the truth.

Simultaneously provocative and tender, Seduction Theory exposes the intoxicating nature of power and attraction and is a masterful demonstration of how love and betrayal can coexist.

Seduction Theory is a campus novel with a twist, with compelling narrative of infidelity and obsession, and a engaging puzzle that is embedded into the mysteries of both love and fiction.

Seduction Theory by Emily Adrian, Weidenfeld and Nicolson £18.99/ Little Brown $28, 224 pages.