Karen is a psychotherapist, and she’s newly back on the job after a long sabbatical, following the death of her husband. Her own demons and grief haunt her even as she tries to help her patients.
Josh and Lydia are a struggling couple who arrive for their first therapy session, bringing numerous red flags with them. There’s something dangerous going on in their marriage and maybe something else lurking in the fog of this relationship. Can Karen help them? Or are they holding something back that threatens all of them? (Dun dun dunnn!)
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I read through this one quick! It was fun.
I love psychological thrillers and was immediately drawn in by the fresh feeling of the therapist’s point of view. Hasn’t everyone always wondered what’s going on in a therapists brain during sessions? I do! The choice to use the therapy sessions as a framework for chapters provided a steady pace of balance information and anticipation and was honestly just interesting as hell to me. It also formed this meandering but somehow hypnotic rhythm that kept me reading even when it wasn’t a fast-paced moment. Definitely a successful creative choice.
Another benefit of the uses of sessions spaced out in time and multiple points of view, is that I never knew exactly what was going on in The Divorce. Which I enjoyed very much, to be honest. I didn’t see the end coming in this book and, while I personally felt that the drama could have been amped up even more in the big twist, I enjoyed how well telegraphed and organized the end really was, when it’s revealed.
I’ve seen some less stellar reviews of this one floating around, but I enjoyed it! It’s certainly a freshman novel, in that its the author’s first foray into the genre of a psychological thriller, but overall I found many more positives than not. Its pacing could’ve been tightened up, some unnecessary inner monologue taken out or moved around, I could nitpick more if I wanted to. But it was also so creative in its use of many points of view, it was hypnotic and able to keep me guessing. I didn’t feel that this book’s fumbles over-balanced the rest.
I would recommend this to people who like this genre or haven’t read much in this genre, and especially those who enjoy or don’t mind watching an author develop through their writing. This was great for a first debut into psychological thrillers for Jenkins. I enjoyed this book a lot and will definitely be looking forward to this author’s next foray into the dark and twisty.
Story-eyed Reviews 