Review by Booklist Review
What if you're convinced that some of the other patients in your psychiatric-care facility didn't kill themselves but were murdered? Who will believe you? Can you even believe yourself? That dilemma faces Hannah, who can technically leave the new-agey, euphemism-loving clinic where she's been staying since both her marriage and her hopes of a baby dissolved, but she stays because the outside world is just too much. While readers try to discern whether there was even a crime here or not, various characters in Hannah's circle of dysfunction vie for the position of killer, and professionals at the clinic enact their own deadly dramas. Cohen's read-alike for The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl offers a more realistic look than those books into a disturbed mind's second-guessing and fear. Give this fast, absorbing read not only to fans of the ubiquitous Girl titles but also to A. J. Finn's superb The Woman in the Window (2018).--Verma, Henrietta Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this tense psychological thriller from British author Cohen (Dying for Christmas), Hannah, a young married woman living in London, did something bad that has led to her confinement at the Meadows, a private psychiatric clinic in the country. Hannah's psychiatrist, Dr. Oliver Roberts-to her "guru, Svengali, saint, sage, saviour"-is disturbed by her insistence that her fellow patients are being murdered. Despite efforts to persuade Hannah that the deaths were unfortunate suicides, neither the staff nor her family can get Hannah to drop the matter and focus on her recovery. Corrinne, Hannah's mother, hopes to assuage her daughter's fears by looking into Hannah's suspicions about Dr. Roberts and his past. As the evidence builds against the psychiatrist and those around him, Corinne must decide whom to trust: her daughter and her fragile sense of reality or the professionals at the Meadows. Cohen convincingly portrays Hannah's shaky belief in her own perceptions and Corinne's determination to risk all to help her child. Only the tangled ending disappoints. Agent: Felicity Blunt, Curtis Brown. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Hannah was a happy wife with a normal life. So how did she end up in a private high-risk psych ward, surrounded by her new friends, all of whom are battling their own demons? Hannah has been ensconced in this asylum long enough that she has developed some close friendships, and her tenuous grasp on sanity is blown away when one of these friends dies suddenly, a supposed suicide. But Hannah refuses to believe it, because she knew that Charlie was getting better, having just booked a trip to follow her release. Hannah is convinced a killer is loose in the institution, but she can't get anyone to believe her. The more Hannah insists, the crazier she looks. It seems that Hannah's mother, Corinne, is her only ally. Or is she? By adding in a secretive husband, allusions to a baby's death, a lurking filmmaker documenting the ward, and a superb twist ending, Cohen (Dying for Christmas) has managed to take a familiar plot and turn it into a satisfying psychological thriller. Verdict Purchase where B.A. Paris, S.J. Watson, and Paula Hawkins are popular.-Marianne Fitzgerald, Severna Park H.S., MD © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
