BOOK REVIEW: The Therapist by B.A. Paris #bookreview #thetherapist

A woman and her partner buy a home shadowed by the murder-suicide of the prior tenants. Delving into themes of trust and secrets can upend even the most polished of lives. Absolutely enthralling! B.A. Paris’s The Therapist is one of those unputdownable thrillers that will keep you flipping the pages late into the night (preferably with the lights on if you scare easily!).

About the Book

When Alice and Leo move into a newly renovated house in The Circle, a gated community of exclusive houses, it is everything they’ve dreamed of. But appearances can be deceptive…

As Alice is getting to know her neighbours, she discovers a devastating secret about her new home, and begins to feel a strong connection with Nina, the therapist who lived there before.

Alice becomes obsessed with trying to piece together what happened two years before. But no one wants to talk about it. Her neighbors are keeping secrets and things are not as perfect as they seem…

Setting and Plot

The book is primarily narrated by Alice in present day and “the therapist” in the past timeline. In the present timeline, Alice has recently left her cottage in Harlestone to move to London and live with her long-distance boyfriend Leo. This move required quite a bit more time together than previously, when they only connected on weekends.

Their house is in a neighborhood called The Circle—a cul-de-sac of 12 houses. I thought the neighborhood and the cast of characters was fascinating and well-developed. I always enjoy a book where the setting is a part of the plot and that is certainly how I’d describe The Circle. Even the house that they live in with the garden doors and the closets and back patio felt completely like a piece of the story. We also learn that Alice and Leo differ quite a bit on how they want to engage with the neighbors. Leo doesn’t want to make friends with the neighbors but Alice invites several couples over for drinks in the garden against Leo’s wishes.

When an uninvited guest Tim shows up, Alice gives him the tour. Only later, Alice discovers Tim has disappeared and no one at the party knows he who was. Maybe he isn’t a neighbor after all…

Meanwhile the prior occupant Nina was a therapist who saw patients in the home until she was murdered in the very house Alice and Leo now live in. Nina’s husband takes his own life in the wake of the crime when suspicion falls on him. Alice becomes fascinated by trying to understand what happened to the prior tenants. Was it really Oliver who murdered Nina, or was something even more sinister at play?

The Characters

The characters in The Therapist are classic B.A. Paris characters. Flawed, complex, and living through the stressful and suspenseful situations she throws them into. The majority of the story is told from Alice’s perspective and she is a largely likable character in my opinion. We learn more about Alice’s backstory, that her parents and sister (who is also named Nina) were killed in a car accident more than ten years ago and this adds complexity to her discovering that the prior resident was named Nina and was murdered in the home.

Her partner Leo is an interesting character, to say the least. I didn’t like him as much—I found him aloof and a bit shady—but it can be hard to get to know a character solely through the perspective of another character. Leo at times is dismissive of Alice’s cares and fears and motivations, which is harder to swallow when I felt that she really did move her life for him and not the other way around. Leo also didn’t tell Alice about the previous tenants before they move in and I felt it showed maybe a bit of selfishness at best that he didn’t consider how she might feel about it given the death of her own family.

The other characters from the neighborhood were fascinating. This isn’t the typical Stepford neighborhood we sometimes see in these books, the neighbors have their own unique situations and personalities and secrets to be revealed. Then there is the mysterious Tim who no one besides Alice saw. I wondered who Tim was and why he showed up to Alice’s party. There is also a private investigator that Alice works with after he is hired by the sister of the late Oliver. They have a shared mission of wanting to understand what happened and I enjoyed that character being part of the story.

Then of course we have Nina, the therapist. Her chapters aren’t as lengthy or frequent as Alice but I think she was important to include. We don’t get a great sense of the timing of Nina’s chapters relative to her death, but I enjoyed learning about her and her dynamics with her patients.

Overall Thoughts

This is a read-in-a-day sort of book which I find to be common for B.A. Paris. The Therapist was probably one of my favorites by this author, though I’ve loved most of them. I thought the plot was great and focused heavily on the characters while still moving forwards. I love a character-driven suspense novel so this delivered above and beyond. At times I get used to neighborhood books like this having a fairly shallow cast of neighbors, but that wasn’t the case in The Therapist. Every house in the cul-de-sac felt like it was part of a real neighborhood. The neighbors were at different ages, life stages, socioeconomic means (relative to them all owning a home in this nice neighborhood). And they all hold secrets. All of them.

The twists were a delight for me, a very few I sort of suspected and many others I had no idea they were coming. I felt the suspense was set to increase throughout the book which made it a lot of fun to read and ponder how it would all conclude.

A thrilling read for the thriller-lovers out there!