BOOK REVIEW: The Patient by Steena Holmes @steenaholmes @LUauthors @amazonpub #thepatient #bookreview #kindleunlimited

A town plagued by brutal murders… Parents found bludgeoned to death with their young children at home left untouched. A therapist who gets a note that one of her patients is behind the murders… This book was really fascinating! A lot of clues sprinkled through the book and I had about a dozen theories of who was behind the murders. The list of suspects is a long one and I loved the way the book came together!

About the Book

Danielle Rycroft suspects someone close to her has a dark secret. In the confidential setting of therapy, her patients share their anxieties and fears. Now, with a string of murders in town putting her on edge, Danielle’s own worries come close to eclipsing her patients’. In each case, the pattern is the same: parents killed while their children sleep blissfully unaware in their beds. Her best friend, Detective Tami Sloan, is the only person she has confided in.

Danielle believes that there’s still a secret one patient has yet to share. But which one? Behind a familiar face is a stranger who’ll do anything to hide their worst compulsions. The anxiety brings Danielle to her own therapist’s office, seeking counsel and comfort. But what is she willing to risk, and how much closer must she get, to stop them?

Reflection

The setting for this book is a town that is full of references to Alice in Wonderland. Fitting, because Alice in Wonderland is Danielle’s favorite book since she was a child. I loved the town setting—coffee shops based on the Cheshire Cat and town green spaces based on the queen’s gardens. I did a study of Alice in Wonderland during one of my literature courses in undergraduate and I thought the parallels in the book were a lot of fun!

Daniellle—Dani—lives a solitary life and it suits her. She has two close friends who don’t get along with each other. She has a small practice that allows her to really dig into things with her three patients. But as the murders in the town continue, Dani becomes aware that one of her three patients may be behind the murders. But which one? They all have a link to the murders in their own way, and they all have something to hide from her.

As things heat up with the case, Dani’s life feels like it is unraveling. She is having trouble sleeping, and she feels the burden of the murders on her as she tries to uncover which of her patients may be behind it. I’m a big fan of this genre and I felt that there was something off about her patients from the beginning. Not to mention several other characters in the town!

I had one theory in particular that I felt stronger about as the book went on, but I was completely wrong! I loved the way this one worked out. It had a lot of elements of psychological suspense that kept the pace moving and my mind engaged as I tried to put the clues together.

Thank you to Lake Union Publishing for my copy. Opinions are my own.

About the Author

NY Times & USA Today Bestselling Author – Steena is the author of the heart wrenching Finding Emma series.

The Word Game was included in the Top 20 Novels to be Written by Women in 2015 by Good Housekeeping.

Her latest novel – The Word Game won the 2015 USA Books Award for Best Fiction and her novel, The Memory Child was a finalist in the same category.

Steena Holmes grew up in a small town in Canada and holds a Bachelors degree in Theology.

In 2012 she received the Indie Excellence Award. Holmes was inspired to write Finding Emma after experiencing a brief moment of horror when she’d thought her youngest daughter was missing.

She currently lives in Calgary with her husband and three daughters and loves to wake up to the Rocky Mountains each morning.