This domestic thriller follows ex-therapist Avery and her newest clients Marissa and Matthew Bishop. Avery has developed a 10 session therapy technique that is as successful as it is controversial. Marissa contacts Avery in an attempt to save her marriage after cheating on her husband. From the first visit, Avery is intrigued by the Instagram-perfect couple that she suspects has more secrets under the surface than just the infidelity. As the group starts to work through Avery's 10 steps, those secrets begin to be revealed and soon it becomes obvious that there's more in danger than just the Bishop's marriage.
TW/CW: infidelity, suicide, stalking
The premise of this story did exactly what it should - draw me in from the very beginning. We jump right into the book as Avery is meeting the Bishops for the first time so when Marissa drops the cheating bombshell the reader is just as surprised as the characters. I pretty much always prefer my thrillers to get to the juicy details quickly, but even more so with domestic thrillers. Domestic thrillers aren't my go-to subgenre so anytime they can immediately grab my interest, I really take notice. I also loved the way we quickly got the rough sketch of the characters during this visit to give the reader some foundation and then the characters get built up from there. The main 'thriller' aspect of the book isn't introduced until later, but this juicy hook of a cheating wife and the 'maverick therapist' was a much more enticing beginning to the story.
I absolutely loved the characters of Avery and Marissa because I love a good unlikable protagonist. I also loved how these characters were unlikable in very different ways. Avery is very blunt in typical therapist fashion but she also has such an air of superiority that she can be a bit off-putting. Her 10 step method is very invasive to her client's lives and she doesn't tell them upfront about this so she's constantly pushing boundaries but then saying it is part of the process. Marissa, on the other hand, is more of your typical PTA mom type who seems to be all smiles and polish on the outside but who has thinly-veiled rivalries with the other PTA moms. She is sickly sweet to the point of being annoying and sometimes all you want to do is shake her and tell her to just say what she really wants to say. On the surface, it may seem like the two women are like water and oil, but they work really well together in this story. Their character conflicts do drive some of the tension and momentum in the story, but their differences also give the story some really good balance and texture. I'm not sure how Hendricks and Pekkanen divide up their novels, but the two characters do have distinct voices which I always appreciate in a dual POV story.
The dual POV choice worked really well in this story to give us both sides of the therapy. We see Avery researching and digging into the Bishop's lives but we also see how the Bishops are living their lives and trying to follow Avery's guidance. I also think the POV choices made this domestic thriller feel a little less domestic-y. The whole point of domestic thrillers is that the thrilling aspects are, usually, coming from inside the house. There's some sort of betrayal or crime or secret that amps up the tension in the existing relationship (usually husband/wife dynamic). In this case, we do have that betrayal that causes tension in the relationship but instead of just following Marissa as she tries to save her marriage, we have the extra POV of Avery who gives us some interesting insights into the Bishops. Avery's POV is a nice mix of being an outsider to the relationship but also a bit of an insider since she is actively working with the Bishops and, at times, knows something that one of the Bishops don't. Avery does have some interesting things going on in her own life that add to the overall tension and some thrilling moments in the story, but I really felt like her character was more of a way to give the reader some extra insight into what would have been a pretty ordinary domestic thriller plot.
I did find the tension to be a bit uneven. There were so many moving parts and different plot threads and I could tell Hendricks/Pekkanen wanted to amp up the tension in X plot or Y plot. But when there are so many plot threads, it is hard to make each of them feel that gentle ramp up of tension. Instead, what we got was a lot of stair-step feeling tension where we got a significant jump in tension but then it would plateau while we followed other plot threads. There were times where I would forget about whole plot threads or threats simply because they hadn't been addressed in a while (and even the characters felt like they forgot about them).
This is the first book by Hendricks and Pekkanen that I've read mostly because I don't reach for a lot of domestic thrillers but also because I've heard that the books by this author duo have a hard time sticking the landing. The ending, in this book, worked okay but I did feel like it ended up being a bit more simplistic and boring than I was expecting. There was some really great tension building in this story from a number of different plot threads that we know will converge at some point. And, granted, these plot threads to converge but just in the most lackluster way possible. For me, the majority of the book was a little over the top in the best way. A maverick therapist who lost her license due to this 10 step process she developed? Sounds great. A plot thread about a corporate whistle-blower complete with the corporation hiring goons to stalk the character involved? Fantastic. So I was expecting some sort of bigger, more surprising ending that maybe took those elements and heightened them all. But, instead, I felt that the ending took a few steps back into 'safe' territory. It almost felt like those other, more exciting plot threads were a smoke screen for the very normal domestic thriller core of the story. And I wanted those other threads to be used to elevate the domestic thriller elements, not just act as a smoke screen for them.
Overall, I really enjoyed the premise and characters. I was fully engaged and interested in the story up until the ending, which I found pretty lackluster. That being said, I do think Avery's 10 session program has excellent series potential.
Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC
Expected publication date is March 8, 2022
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