Translated from the Norwegian, this is a tightly written, tensely plotted novel that will have you double checking the locks. Sara receives a voicemail from her husband to let her know he’s arrived at the holiday cabin safely. But then a friend calls to confirm he never did. Sara hopes it’s a misunderstanding, that her husband will turn up and it’s all something of nothing but where is Sigurd? And why are things not quite the same in their home? Initially the police do not take an interest but eventually begin to investigate his disappearance but Sara has become increasingly frantic, wanting to know the truth. Just who is responsible for objects moving around their home? I enjoyed this read and felt it had been translated well – it certainly left me feeling on edge.

I really thought I would enjoy this book but unfortunately I found the story didn’t keep my interest. Thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for letting me review this book.

The book narrates Sara and her husband who disappears which is a complete mystery. This book was slow to get started and sadly never got off the ground. The story was not my style and I gave up half way through as it was going nowhere. Thanks however for the chance to sample a new author.

This was a good debut novel with an interesting premise and the hallmarks of a Scandi Noir Thriller.

The book follows Sara whose husband has gone missing and is told in the present and through flashbacks. There’s a lot of suspense at the beginning where Sara's character and decisions are called into question.

The book was incredibly slow and the main reveal happened very late into the novel - with a bit of a twist.

Sadly, this wasn't for me.

Thank you to NetGalley & Quercus Books – MacLehose Press for the ARC.

The blurb for this book sounded really like my kind of thing and was looking forward to reading it, but I have to say I was a little disappointed . For me it was a slow burner there was a lot of back history and I’m not sure actually how much of it was supporting the storyline, I just didn’t really get a feel the story. It’s not that it was badly written and the storyline was ok but for me that was it, it was just ok.

Ok, so I had to read this book if only because of the name of the main character! I knew very little else about the book but the blurb sounded so intriguing… I was totally hooked from the very beginning and wasn’t able to put it down until I had finished!

Set in Norway the landscape and atmosphere seems so bleak and cold. Sara works from home and has very few friends, she seems lonely and unhappy in her work. I was intrigued by the description of sessions with her clients and her own reflections on the therapeutic relationships. When her husband sets off for a weekend with his friends but they call to say he hasn’t turned up, I couldn’t wait to read to the end to find out what was happening!

This is a really fantastic Nordic-noir and I loved it! Dark, mysterious and atmospheric, this book created feelings of tension and paranoia as I was reading it. It’s beautifully written and well paced. I definitely recommend this one to fans of moody thrillers!!

I really loved reading this book.

The story begins with a missing husband and his therapist wife beggining her journey of discovery about him.

Really enjoyed the pace it was set, and felt connected to the characters too.

Well done

Thank you netgally and publisher for the ARC copy

The Therapist by Helene Flood is a domestic thriller. Although at times it is dramatic and tense, I didn’t engage entirely with the storyline. I find it’s slow paced especially at the beginning and struggled not to just give it up.

My thanks to NetGalley and Quercia publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

A Scandinavian domestic thriller set in Oslo. Slow paced, the story did not grip me and the protagonist not very empathetic, ironic as her job as psychologist should have had more warmth and energy. A decent read but it did not grip me.

This Scandi Fiction is set in Norway.

Sara’s husband goes to their holiday cabin, only Sara receives a phone call from his friend to say he never arrived.

Sara is desperate to know what has happened to her husband Sigurd.

Sara is the therapist she works from a home office mainly dealing with young adults and the trauma or difficult times they’ve experienced or are experiencing.

The novel is predominately told from the point of view of Sara, where we are also given insight into the therapy sessions with her patients.

It is really hard to give a detailed review of this book without giving too much of the plot away.

I originally felt that this book was going to be slow and almost bore men. However it didn’t, as there were unexpected plot twists and turns to keep the story moving along.

A little tip unless your familiar with this type of fiction, Norway or speak Norwegian, keep a search engine to hand as she talks about where she is or what she’s doing using the Norwegian terminology. Example I didn’t know that “T-banner” is the Oslo Metro.

This was my first experience of any kind of “Scandi -drama/thriller” but based on this book it won’t be my last.

So, this one is hard to review. On one hand, it was a really slow going pace of unhappenings and on the other (which is to say the last 20% or so...) really gripped me and couldn't put down.

I liked how the writing was leaning into the therapist being the one to be under the scope so to speak. Her career has her prying into the lives of her clients in order to help them. When the tables are turned and the prying is happening TO her the feelings begin to shift.

Overall, the ending was a bit shocking though it was the very last second we found out. I would have liked to know a tiny bit more beyond our ending.

Thank you to Netgalley and Quercus books for supplying me an ARC.

A voicemail from her husband tells Sara he's arrived at the holiday cabin. Then a call from his friend confirms he never did.
To get to the root of Sigurd's disappearance, Sara must question everything she knows about her relationship.
—————————
The author hooked me into The Therapist straight away, and then slowly built the tension from there.
I loved the fact that the main character Sara, a therapist, constantly second guesses her thoughts, memories and relationships throughout, it makes you wonder whether the narrator can be fully trusted. The fact that she is quite isolated also adds to this suspicion.

I found there were so many possibilities of suspects and Sara seemed to feel the same way, always questioning people’s intentions.
I feel like the relationships are the most complicated yet important part of this story and Sara’s past relationships impact her just as much as her present.

If your somebody that needs a fast pace to keep an interest then maybe this wouldn’t be for you but if not, then this is a slow building domestic thriller I highly recommend.

Although I enjoyed the plot and characterisation of The Therapist, I found it to be more of a literary thriller than I had expected, which lowered my overall rating. I'm not a fan of having to get through pages of description, backstory and tiny unimportant details which are there only for the sake of worldbuilding, just to search out what's relevant. Because of this, I skim-read a large chunk of the middle section, but was still able to follow and enjoy the book despite this. I figured out who the killer was and why they did it a while before it was revealed, so the final twist was lost on me but the reveal was still well done.
Aside from the extraneous information, I found it to be a pretty solid thriller with realistic motives and a satisfying conclusion.

Thank you to Netgally and the publisher for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review.

The Therapist by Helene Flood is an unassuming domestic thriller, subtlety telling the tale of the Therapist, Sara.
Sara, is a psychologist who works with a few young adults in her home office, she is married to Sigurd who goes missing, the mystery of his disappearance is loosely weaved into the narrative of Sara's life.
I found this novel to be lullaby-like in its writing, a particularly soft tone and slow pace allowed Sara's personality to be at the forefront of the narrative. All told from Sara's perspective, we follow her through the day of and days after Sigurd's disappearance, with flashbacks of recent history adding to the bizarre occurrence. Sara is isolated from her past life and relies upon her patients to help her through the issues she is having with her marriage. When Sigurd sends a message to say he's somewhere she knows he's not she has to actively seek her sister to help her understand what's happening.
Although there is a mystery at the heart of this book, I think it's more about relationships and how although you may be the answer to many peoples problems when you have your own, isolation can be very lonely.
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, it's a pleasantly different approach to the domestic thriller market without forgetting the twist.4*
Thanks to Quercus and NetGalley for the ARC.

The Therapist was a bit of an odd one for me.
I thought the plot was good but I struggled at times as it felt like a slow burner and I wasn’t particularly gripped by it initially.

The pace does pick up a little and as the story progresses you get to see glimpses into Sigurd & Sara’s relationship and why they are where they are today. Sara finds herself questioning everything about her relationship.

I didn’t quite click with this one but its got lots of potential and it’s definitely one that I’m willing to re-read in the future as I feel like I missed certain bits because life/work has been so unexpectedly busy.

The Therapist is a domestic thriller with an interesting ending and definitely worth a read.

Whilst I'm not a fan of the Noir genre as a whole I did actually find myself invested in this one.

The plot follows a police investigation which opens after the disappearance of Sigurd (the main characters husband). The main character Sara (the therapist)then becomes overly paranoid and feels her life is crumbling around her.

Under suspicion herself, Sara starts questioning absolutely everything,  including her own sanity and mental state whilst trying to live her without her husband.

A therapist is the one expected to listen without judgement, help others overcome issues and deal with what is going on inside their own heads BUT who listens to a therapist?

This novel definitely played on my mind and left ,e second guessing the whole way through. Even though I didnt overly connect with the characters at all I could not put it down long enough for that to bother me.

The tension and build up is palpable the whole way through which just adds that extra darkness to an already eerie feel.

I actually really enjoyed the small minor clues weaved within the storyline throughout the whole tale, they all come together brilliantly at the end, even if you have part guessed at all it doesn't retract from a brilliant ending.

Overall a fantastically sinister thriller that plays on your mind.

Huge thanks to netgalley and Quercus Books for the ARC.

My thanks to Milly Reid from Quercus Books, for asking if I would join the blogtour for the rather excellent, and creepy, 'The Therapist',which is published by Maclehose on 8th July in hardcover.

''The most important thing you can do for your neurotic patients is this:help them to see the world as it is .Not the way they want it to be, or the way they fear it will be. Not the way the conclusions they have drawn tell them it is. As it is.''


Having moved, with her husband Sigurd into his grandfather's house, and simultaneously establishing a practice from the flat above her garage, Sara is suddenly left alone and quite unmoored.

Their house is being renovated, a state reflected in the current state of their marriage. Sigurd, an architect, takes on more work as Sara's is much more unreliable than they anticipated. A regular flow of patients to her psychologist couch is yet to appear, for the moment, she has 3 regulars and a fourth semi-regular clients. These are Vera, Christoffer, and Trygve, with appearances by Sasha. They are, respectively, a young woman who feels alienated, a young boy whose mother is overly concerned that he is a goth/emo follower, and a man with a gambling addiction. Sasha is a 16 year old male to female transwoman who visits Sara to, as she puts it, 'clear her head'.

Against this background, their house remains in a semi-permanent state of stasis, not unlike their marriage, as Sigurd works too much to renovate and Sara too little to pay for any changes. It is a neat reflection on their fragile relationship-whilst they appear deeply committed to their future together, there are reasons why one has cause to mistrust the other.

Having planned a weekend with his friends, Sigurd leaves to go camping, leaving Sara a voicemail which claims he is there, at the meeting point with his friend, Jan. Not particularly worrying about this, Sara carries on with her day, treating her patients and filling in their backstory for us, the readers. When Jan rings to see why Sigurd never arrived at the meeting point, prickles of worry begin to traverse their way up Sara's spine...

The police, initially seeming disinterested in a grown man who has been missing for a relatively short period of time, begin to look more closely at Sara as her behaviour becomes more erratic. Things in the house are moved around, items disappear and others reappear, and then there is the night after the police call, when Sara is convinced that someone has broken into her home..

As the tension mounts, you, the reader, have to decide whether or not you buy into her reliability as a narrator. Sara's constant need to clarify and count in order to control the narratives around her are reflected by the devastating death of her mother from early onset Alzheimers. It could be fear of the same thing happening to her that creates these control mechanisms, or, simply, a trauma response to this loss, it is for each individual to start working through what Sara's memories represent, and , what is the truth about Sigurd's mountain trip.

It is a very clever, entwining novel which I found difficult to stop reading once I had started. I wanted to know the secrets of this tightly wound woman, gain resolution in the way that she is treating her patients, and, most of all, find out what happened to Sigurd. The masterful translation creates a real sense of place and character, you feel as if you are inside Sara's head, analysing her as she analyses the others in her life. Highly recommended.

I received a free copy of this e-book in return for an honest review from the publisher and the author via NetGalley.


Sara's husband has lied to her, but why would he need to have done this?

We start off this story with Sara's husband leaving early in the morning to go with his friends to a cabin for the weekend. Sara carries on with her day seeing her patients in her therapy office above the garage. Starting off with Vera. Once her morning appointments are done, Sara gets a voicemail from her husband advising that he has arrived at the cabin and that he is with his friends. Everything is as normal, until later on that evening, his friends call to ask where he is?

From this point it is a complete roller-coaster of emotions, what if's, whodunnit's and worries...I have to admit once I got 20% of the way in I was hooked and wanted to how what had happened. I completely related to the loneliness that Sara felt even when her husband was around. The over critical and in depth thinking that comes from Sara I am sure that many will understand.

Did I think I knew who had done it close to the end....yup....was I completely wrong......also yup.

A book of many twists and turns and a great read for those that want more of a psychological mystery.

Sara is a psychologist who is struggling with her career choice and also having some marital issues. When her husband is going away for a weekend with friends, she has plans to go to the gym, watch what she wants to and eat what she wants. She meets her clients and gets a message saying he has arrived safely, but later his friends ring saying he never arrived. So what is going on? This thriller kept me guessing as to where her husband was and who was involved. The twist at the end was great!

I read this only a few weeks ago and already I can't remember a lot of details. The book didn't make as much as an impression on me as I had hoped, being a fan of Nordic Noir. It wasn't very 'noir', to be honest. It was, in the end, just a story about a man and a wife and how things can go wrong in a relationship. The title is 'The Therapist' but it could just as well have been 'The Architect'.
I finished the book because I wanted to give it a chance and I had enough time on my hands. I can honestly say I would like to read another book by this author to see whether she can bring some real thrill in her stories.
Thanks to Netgalley for the digital edition of this review title.