This might hurt

Stephanie Wrobel

Book - 2022

"From the USA Today bestselling and Edgar-nominated author of Darling Rose Gold comes a dark, thrilling novel about two sisters-one trapped in the clutches of a cult, the other in a web of her own lies-and the lengths they will go to save each other. Welcome to Wisewood. We'll keep your secrets if you keep ours. Natalie Collins hasn't heard from her sister in more than half a year. The last time they spoke, Kit was slogging from mundane workdays to obligatory happy hours to crying in the shower about their dead mother. She told Natalie she was sure there was something more out there. And then she found Wisewood. On a private island off the coast of Maine, Wisewood's guests commit to six-month stays. During this time, the...y're prohibited from contact with the rest of the world-no Internet, no phones, no exceptions. But the rules are for a good reason: to keep guests focused on achieving true fearlessness so they can become their Maximized Selves. Natalie thinks it's a bad idea, but Kit has had enough of her sister's cynicism and voluntarily disappears off the grid. Six months later Natalie receives from a Wisewood account a menacing e-mail threatening to reveal the secret she's been keeping from Kit. Panicked, Natalie hurries north to come clean to her sister and bring her home. But she's about to learn that Wisewood won't let either of them go without a fight"--

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Subjects
Genres
Thrillers (Fiction)
Novels
Published
New York : Berkley [2022]
Language
English
Main Author
Stephanie Wrobel (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
323 pages : illustrations, map ; 23 cm
ISBN
9780593100080
9780593100103
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

Kit struggled to find herself following the tragic death of her mother, until she discovered a self-help utopia off the coast of Maine, called Wisewood. Now, nearly six months after Kit left for Wisewood, her older sister, Natalie, hasn't heard a word from her, and is determined to find Kit and bring her home. Wisewood and its teacher, Rebecca, are not willing to easily give up their latest star pupil, and Natalie discovers that not everything is quite what it seems on the weather-beaten island. The story is told through each woman's varying perspective and at different points in time, giving readers only glimpses of the truth, but at a pace that keeps them wondering what will happen next. Wrobel has honed her writing style even more sharply since her strong debut novel Darling Rose Gold (2020), and is again delivering her readers a "ripped from the headlines" story. This Might Hurt contains moments and characters recognizable to those familiar with the NXVIM cult and its downfall, although the twists and turns are all Wrobel's own, and will leave readers guessing until the very end.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This outstanding psychological thriller from Wrobel (Darling Rose Gold) centers on two estranged sisters. Natalie Collins, an executive at a Boston branding agency, and Kit Collins, a receptionist at a Brooklyn accounting firm, are both wrestling with guilt, anger, fear, and the horrible "barnacle" of loneliness after their mother's death. Each is keeping secrets from the other. Six months after Natalie last had any word from Kit, she suddenly receives an anonymous threatening email from the Wisewood Wellness & Therapy Center in Rockland, Maine. Kit has retreated there to "inward focus" through a self-improvement program to realize a "maximized self." When Natalie races to the isolated island compound, she discovers a life-sucking cult guided by a guy his acolytes call the Teacher. Atmospheric details include the January wind that "shrieks like a woman being stabbed," an abandoned schoolhouse in a forest, and a haunting initiation sequence. Some of Houdini's mentalist feats play a significant role as the action builds to final bombshell revelations. Fans of Liane Moriarty's Nine Perfect Strangers will want to check this out. Agent: Madeleine Milburn, Madeleine Milburn Literary (U.K.). (Feb.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Free will and self-discipline come to a head in Wrobel's (Darling Rose Gold) chilling novel. Sisters Natalie and Kit have become estranged following the death of their mother. Natalie is logical and driven; Kit is sensitive and directionless. Seeking an end to her unhappiness, Kit joins Wisewood, a commune and retreat on a private island off the coast of Maine that teaches fearlessness and self-actualization. The residents sever all ties with the outside world. It's been six months since the sisters have spoken when Natalie receives a cryptic email from someone at Wisewood threatening to expose a secret she's been keeping from Kit. Driven by guilt and fear, Natalie heads to Wisewood in hopes of bringing Kit back with her, but Wisewood and its charismatic leader known as Teacher have a few lessons to teach Natalie first. VERDICT It's hard not to fall under the spell of Wisewood, or Wrobel's mesmerizing, edge-of-your-seat storytelling. A deep dive into psychological abuse and manipulation and their long-lasting emotional and mental tolls; will certainly leave a mark.--Alana Quarles, Fairfax County P.L., Alexandria, VA

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

With her second novel, the author of Darling Rose Gold (2020) brings more multi-point-of-view fun to thriller fans. When a mysterious emailer threatens to reveal her darkest secret, Natalie Collins journeys from Boston to an isolated island off the Maine coast to confess the truth to her flighty younger sister, Kit. Kit has spent the last six months at Wisewood, a self-improvement retreat that requires attendees to give up all connections, including contact with friends and family and all forms of physical affection. When Nat shows up, the other residents of Wisewood refuse to give Nat any information about Kit, citing rules which prevent friends or family members from attending together. While her sister turns out to be an elusive presence on the island, Nat can't shake the feeling that someone is tailing her. With a blizzard coming in to prevent all travel back to the mainland and Wisewood staff growing increasingly hostile toward her, Nat's racing against a ticking clock to accomplish her mission and get back to her normal life. Although the genre-savvy will see the twists coming from miles away, Wrobel manages to keep the lines of her narrative pulled taut here. The narrator's torch passes among Natalie, Kit, and a third woman who goes unidentified until the novel's midpoint. Through flashbacks to a childhood and adolescence spent trapped in her abusive father's unhinged training regimen--one designed to purge fear and self-doubt from the girl and her sister--this third narrator's story quickly proves to be the novel's most captivating thread. Unfortunately, because neither Nat nor Kit shares her story with the same immediacy or intimacy as this counterpart, readers will inevitably feel a deeper connection to the long-unnamed woman. Once her identity is revealed, however, they'll be left to wonder if that wasn't the point all along. A taut thriller that examines the twin legacies of trauma and grief. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

1 Natalie January 6, 2020 I stand at the head of the conference table. The chairs around me are filled with men: short, tall, fat, bald, polite, skeptical. I direct the close of my pitch to the CEO, who has spent fifty minutes of my sixty-minute presentation playing with his phone and the other ten frowning at me. He is past his prime, trying to disguise the fact with hair plugs and a bottled tan. "Using this new strategy," I say, "we're confident we will make your brand the number one beer with men twenty-one to thirty-four years old." The CEO leans forward, mouth slightly ajar as if a cigar is usually perched there. He oversees a household-name beer that's been losing market share to craft breweries for years. As sales have slipped, my new agency has found itself on thinner and thinner ice with this client. He looks me up and down, sneers a little. "With all due respect, what makes you think you"-he spits the word like it's a shit sandwich-"can get inside the mind of our man?" I glance out the conference room window, squint at the Charles River in the distance, and count to three. My team warned me about this guy, a dinosaur of corporate America who still believes business belongs on the golf course. What I want to say: Yes, however will I peel back the layers of such complicated minds? Can a simpleton ever truly understand the genius of the noble frat star? For now they crush empties against their foreheads, but someday they will command boardrooms. Someday they will be you and insist they got to where they are through nothing but sheer hard work. By then they'll have traded the watery swill you call beer for three-hundred-dollar bottles of pinot noir. They'll still spend their weekends falling down and throwing up, only now they'll do it in hotel rooms with their best friends' wives. When Monday rolls around, they'll slump at this table and wonder why I don't smile more often. They will root for me to break the glass ceiling as long as none of the shards nick them. They will lament the fact they can no longer say these things aloud, except on golf courses. What I actually say: "To get up to speed on your business, I've spent the past two months conducting focus groups with six hundred men who fit your target demo." I scroll to the appendix of my PowerPoint deck, containing forty slides of detailed tables and graphs. "I've spent my weeknights collating the data and my weekends analyzing what all of it means. I know these men's occupations and income. I know their levels of education, their religion, their race. I know where your guys live, their lifestyles and personal values, their attitudes toward your brand as well as toward all of your competitors' brands. I know their usage frequency, their buyer readiness, and the occasions when they buy your beer. I know their degree of loyalty to you. When I get on the train to go to work or am lying in bed at night, I relisten to my interviews, searching for any insight I might've missed. I can say with confidence, I know your guy as well as I know my own father." I wince involuntarily. "Which means I know him as well as you do. I don't think I can get inside the mind of your customer. I know I can. Because I already have. With all due respect." I grin so the jab sounds playful instead of aggressive. Everyone else in the room appears impressed. My assistant, Tyler, forgets himself and claps. I shift my eyes in his direction, and that's enough to make him stop, but by then the others have joined in, both the clients and my account team. The CEO watches me, amused but undecided. It was a risk, publicly challenging him in order to galvanize the rest, but I'll rarely interact with him; I'm told he shows up to advertising meetings only when he has no one else to antagonize. The marketing team members are the ones I need on my side. The CEO sits back and lets his underlings finish the session. He leaves halfway through the Q&A. Five minutes later the clients have signed off on our strategy brief for the year. Handshakes and back pats are exchanged. Invitations to lunch are extended for the first time in months. The account team stays with the clients but I bow out. My lunch hour is for catching up on e-mail. If my inbox is empty, I spend the hour at the gym. Tyler and I take the elevator forty floors down to the lobby of the Prudential Tower. I smirk while he raves about how awesome the presentation was. I didn't choose him as my assistant; he was assigned to me. What he lacks in ambition (or any set of demonstrable skills, really) he tries to make up for with personality. On Boylston Street I shiver in the cold while Tyler books an Uber. Once we're nestled in the car, I turn toward him. "I want you to buy a box of Cohibas from the cigar parlor on Hanover. Wrap the box in navy blue paper. Send it with a note on the back of one of my business cards. Not the shitty agency-issued ones but the thick card stock I had made with the nice embossing. Do you have a pen? Then get your phone out. I want the note to say this exactly: 'To a productive partnership.' End that sentence with a period, not an exclamation point. Then, under that line, a dash followed by 'Natalie.' Got it? No 'Yours truly' or 'All my best' or 'Cheers.' Just a dash with my name. Send it to the CEO." Tyler gapes at me. "But he was so rude to you. In front of all those people." I tap a list of post-meeting to-dos on my phone. Without glancing up, I say, "When I was coming up in this industry, you know what I spent most of my time doing? Listening. And taking notes." Out of the corner of my eye I see his expression sour slightly. He's only three years younger than I am. "I want the minutes of today's meeting on my desk within the hour. Please." "In my two years at DCV no one has ever done meeting minutes," he mumbles. "Maybe that's why you almost lost the client that pays all of our salaries." I wait for a snappy comeback. When I don't get one, I pull a folder from my bag. "I glanced through your Starburst brief. It's riddled with typos." I find the marked-up pages and hand them to him. "It reflects poorly on both of us when the work is subpar. More careful proofreading next time, okay?" His jaw tightens. "And I told you: section headings in all caps and bolded. Not one or the other. Both. You'd be surprised how far attention to detail will take you." The car pulls up to our office building. We ride another elevator together, this time in silence. On the sixth floor we get off. As we're about to part ways, Tyler sniffs. "If you've never met the CEO before today, how can we be sure he smokes cigars?" "I know my target." I head into the women's bathroom. A minute later I walk down the hallway, scrolling through my calendar (three more meetings this afternoon). I'm about to round the corner to my office when hushed voices in a nearby cubicle catch my ear. I recognize the first as that of one of the assistants, a woman who doesn't know she's being considered for a promotion. "I would love to work for her. She's such a boss bitch." "Or your run-of-the-mill bitch." That one is Tyler. The other assistants titter. "She treats me like a child," he says, gaining steam from his friends' reactions. He affects a shrill voice. "Tyler, I want you to go to the bathroom. When you wipe your ass, use four squares of toilet paper, but make sure it's three-ply, not two. If it's two, you're fired." They all giggle, these people who are almost my age but make a third of what I do. I straighten, pull back my shoulders, and stride past the cubicle. Without slowing down I say, "I don't think my voice is that high-pitched." Someone gasps. The last thing I hear before closing my office door is total silence. At my desk I remove the lid of my scratched-up Tupperware and stare at my lunch, the same one IÕve eaten every day for years: a cup of kale, two slices of bacon, toasted walnuts, chickpeas, and Parmesan cheese, tossed in a shallot vinaigrette. I eagerly await the day scientists discover kaleÕs worse for your health than nicotine; for now, a superfoodÕs a superfood. I sigh and dig in. I had a lot of time to think through my New Year's resolutions over Christmas break. Last year I put an additional two and a half percent of my pay into savings. The year before that, I started washing my bed linens twice a month instead of once. Every January (except this one) Kit tells me I should resolve to have more fun. Every January (except this one) I want to snap at her that resolutions have to be measurable or you can't tell whether you've achieved them, but that would do little to disprove her point. On New Year's Eve, as I sat alone in my apartment, staring at the needles falling off my three-foot Fraser fir while snow pelted my window, I was loath to admit my sister might be onto something. I don't know a soul in my new city other than my coworkers. How does a thirty-one-year-old make friends if not through her job? I'd rather be eaten by a bear than go to one of those Meetups, standing around with a bunch of strangers, trying to figure out who's least likely to make a skin suit out of me. I'd resolved to try harder my first day back at work, focus less on the job, more on the people. Three hours in, I veto the resolution. Why waste my time with dolts like Tyler? I allow myself a moment to wish Kit were here, then brush the weakness away. I check the time back home (nine a.m.) and text my best friend, Jamie: Still not making any progress with work people. No response; must be busy with the baby. I stab a chickpea with my fork and jiggle my finger across my laptop's track pad. Once I've cleared my work inbox, I move on to my personal account. I scan the subject lines: a few newsletters, a grocery coupon, spam from someone named Merlin Magic Booty. Plus a message from info@wisewood.com. I pause. Kit went to Wisewood six months ago. My sister didn't tell me much before she left, just called last July to explain she'd found this self-improvement program on an island in Maine. The courses are six months. During that time you aren't supposed to contact family or friends because inward focus is the goal, and oh, by the way, she had already signed up and was leaving for Maine the following week, so she wouldn't be able to call or text me for a while. I had balked. She couldn't afford to go half a year without income. What about health insurance? How was she okay with cutting off everyone she knew for such a long time? I pictured her shrugging on the other end of the line. If I had a dollar for every time Kit answered me with a shrug, I could pay for her to live at Wisewood forever. "What are you thinking?" I'd asked. "You finally have a dependable job, benefits, an apartment, and you're going to throw it all away on a whim?" Her tone cooled. "I'm not saying Wisewood is the answer to all my problems, but at least I'm trying to figure it out." "Your job is the answer." I was incredulous that she didn't get it. "How much is this program? How are you going to afford it with that student loan?" "Why don't you worry about yourself for once, Natalie?" She never calls me that, so I knew she was furious. "Why can't you be happy for me?" I couldn't be happy for her because I knew exactly how this would end: Kit disillusioned with Wisewood and stranded on the island, begging me to save her. My sister needs rescuing more often than most people. Last year she called me sobbing over a scarf she'd misplaced. (I found it an hour later in her closet.) On the other hand, she's known to get in hot water on occasion. She once found herself stuck in the desert after her loser guitarist boyfriend dumped her in the middle of his tour, which she had dropped out of college to follow him on. Another time a misunderstanding with her best friend ended with me picking both of them up from a police station. My sister doesn't want me to hover until the exact moment she needs me, and then she expects me to drop everything to save her. We ended the call still snapping at each other. I haven't heard from her since. She doesn't even know I moved across the country to Boston, taking a page out of her playbook that mandates when the going gets tough, the tough flee the situation. Back when I started toying with the idea of moving, I had pictured more frequent sisterly get-togethers; I would be only a train ride away now. She left New York before I got the chance. On my more honest days, I can admit her absence is a relief. The less often I talk to her, the less guilty I feel. The e-mail has no subject line. I open it. Would you like to come tell your sister what you did-or should we? Hairs rise on the back of my neck. On the track pad my hand trembles. The note is unsigned but has a phone number at the bottom. Attached are two pdfs. The first lists directions to the island: various routes involving buses, trains, and planes, all leading to a harbor in Rockland, Maine. From there I'd have to take a ferry. The next one leaves Wednesday at noon. I click on the second attachment and frown at the heading in bold letters. As I scan the typed words I start to feel sick. Halfway down the page a handwritten note in blue ink catches my eye. The blood drains from my face. I push my chair away from the computer. Who could've sent this? How would they know? What if they've already told her? I shove the heels of my palms into my eye sockets, wait for my body to still. Excerpted from This Might Hurt by Stephanie Wrobel All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.