User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
All righty! Definitely gripping domestic thriller picked my interest as soon as I read the blurb!
Slow burn high tension psychological thriller with lost husband theme and twisty ending is a great formula for my lazy grey cells who need a fun escape to solve a quick mystery!
Pros: therapist wife- missing husband- secrets- great conjunction between now and then always attract my attention.
Cons: twist was too foreseeable, pacing was too slow.
Summary of plot: Sara stay at home therapist ( it’s not a term, I made it up) specializing to cure the young adults. When her husband Sigurd decides to have a weekend getaway at his buddy Thomas’ cabin, she fully approves. Sigurd leaves a voice mail message to inform her, he reached his destination safe and sound. But… when Sara talks with Thomas and Jan Erik who declares Sigurd never made it to the cabin, it rings a lot of alarm bells. Ding ding! Husband on the run!
Unfortunately this is not the only mysterious thing Sara has to deal. Things start getting missing in the house. She finds the front door open that she can swear she didn’t leave it that way!
You keep reading to learn more about husband and wife’s past to solve the mystery. I wish I didn’t solve it too early so I would enjoy it more!
It was still well written, interesting, slow burn psychological/ domestic thriller I can recommend to the genre lovers.
Special thanks to NetGalley and Mobius Books for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts.
Rating: really liked it
Rounded up from around 3.5 stars ⭐️
The therapist tells the story of Sara, who’s life is turned upside-down when her husband Sigurd goes missing.
I absolutely loved the beginning chapters of this book. I could not stop myself reading them and felt a deep tension as I desperately tried to read as quickly as possible. I really enjoyed the sections involving therapy from the therapists perspective. Additionally, Sara’s sanity seemed to be spiralling and I found this both exciting and wonderfully written. The gothic noir and thrilling nature slightly petered out for me later on in the book.
The biggest downside for me was the length of the chapters in this novel. I love short chapters but the ones in this book were pretty long, which sometimes made it feel like it was dragging. I would also warn those with chronic health issues or disabilities to read this with a little caution. There was a small section of this book that I found very tough to read as someone with health issues/disabilities. Although Helene Flood made it very obvious that the opinion expressed by the character wasn’t acceptable, it didn’t make it easier to read. That being said, I found the ending of this book satisfying even if I wasn’t shocked by the twist.
I would recommend this novel to anyone that likes thrillers, especially if you like them to have a noir feel. I would like to thank Netgalley, Quercus Books and Helene Flood for allowing me to read this and give my personal thoughts.
Rating: really liked it
I wish to thank NetGalley and The House of Ansai Press for an early copy of The Therapist by Helene Flood in return for an honest review. This domestic psychological thriller was originally written in Norwegian by a psychologist and has been translated into English. There are preparations for a movie version. Its title may cause some confusion, as both this book and The Therapist by B.A. Paris are due to be published in July. I chose to read this one as I usually enjoy Nordic Noir.
The premise was clever and suspenseful, with some surprising twists and a satisfactory conclusion. I did find the story overly long and drawn out, with some unnecessary fillers and repetitions.
Sara, a psychologist, was an unreliable narrator. I found her an unstable woman with emotional problems. I should have been more engaged and sympathetic but thought she was an unlikeable protagonist. I wondered how effective her therapy sessions were with her young clients and all her sadness. She and her husband, Sigurd, have inherited an old home. Sigurd, an architect, drew up plans to renovate it. The couple has drifted apart, and he has become cold and detached from her. He is frequently away from home on business. When he returns, he lacks the interest or energy to devote to house repairs. He is unhappy to settle for employment that was less than he expected. He urges Sara to take on more clients in her therapy sessions as they require extra income. She has no inclination to do so.
She nags Sigurd about starting the much-needed renovations and about his frequent absences from home. There are descriptions of her profound loneliness and her misery during evenings spent crying, drinking, and watching TV. She often complains about taking showers in the cold, unfinished bathroom and feeling tired. She desperately wants people she can confide in and depend on but has drifted away from her former friends. Sara describes herself as socially awkward.
One morning, her husband says he is heading to a wilderness cabin to spend time with two male friends. Later in the day, she learns he never showed up. When she tries to report him missing to the police, they say it is too early to begin an investigation. Sara begging to feel uneasy alone in the house. Random objects have mysteriously disappeared or have been moved from their places at night. She feels she is being watched.
After several days, Sigurd's body is found. He was shot to death in an area different from his stated destination. The police are now actively involved in the murder case. The terrified Sara hears an intruder wandering inside the home at night, and more objects have been rearranged. The police regard her fears as being the result of a disturbed and confused mind following the murder of her husband. Sara admits she is unsure of what she remembers or has seen.
Increasingly frantic in her desire to learn the truth about her marriage and her sanity, Sara is confronted at gunpoint. The solution to the mystery is more elusive than first believed but is resolved satisfactorily.
Rating: really liked it
Devoured it in less than 24 hours. Although it does take a slight nosedive at the end, overall very exciting and impressive for a debut in this genre. Really enjoyed the writing as well.
Rating: really liked it
As a hardcore fan of the Nordic noir genre I thought this book would be a sure winner and oh boy, was I wrong!
There are two main problems with it, in my opinion:
1. It’s boring.
2. Did I say it’s VERY boring?
PLAIN AND SIMPLY BORING! I listened to the audiobook and two hours in nothing relevant to the plot had happened. Instead I listened to almost two hours of Sara’s therapy sessions with three different patients. This had all the thrills of watching grass grow! 😒
We assist to drawn-out therapy scenes and Sara’s inner thoughts in a loop, making this a pretty hard read for me. And it was not helped by the fact that Sara was such an unfriendly character. Her actions were so out of tune with her current situation that I found it most distracting.
Being told in the first person we don’t get any details into the police investigation so, when the ending is revealed, there’s no sense of surprise at all as we had no facts available to reach that conclusion. It’s only after the fact that we’re told along Sara how the investigation developed. There was no tension at all in the 8 hours that took me to listen to this!
The final twist felt like it was added just for shock value, as that character’s actions went against the way it was presented throughout the story.
This book will be published in English next July but I couldn’t honestly recommend it to my English speaking friends. 🤷🏻♂️
Rating: really liked it
I really enjoyed this thriller! The author is a psychologist herself and she skillfully created many situations which played with character’s mind. I was so creeped out myself by the things that were going on in the main character’s home. The plot twist was predictable and the ending was a little odd but overall pretty good read.
Sara is a psychologist and runs a small practice out of her house. She specializes in troubled kids and currently has three unique patients.
She receives a voicemail from her husband Sigurd that he has arrived at the cabin for a weekend away with his good friends, Thomas and Jan Erik. She returns her husband’s phone call only, he doesn’t answer. Thinking nothing of it, she goes about her day. Later on in the evening Sara receives another phone call, this time from Jan Erik saying that Sigurd never made it to the cabin.
At first Sara is angry. Why would they play this cruel joke on her? However, as the hours pass, she begins to worry that she hasn’t heard from her husband.
The events that follow lead Sara to question everything she has known about the people in her life as well as her own sanity.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Rating: really liked it
Sara and her husband Sigurd are living in a house they are renovating at the same time. It's a mess and the work in progress has stagnated because they have neither time nor money to continue. Sigurd disappears and Sara notices that things are being moved around in the house.
After all the hype and the fact that this book is sold to 23 countries before release, I am quite disappointed. The story dragged at times, I didn't like or connect with Sara. The ending wasn't quite as super-obvious as I had feared, but still, it couldn't save the book for me.
Rating: really liked it
I enjoyed this book eventually but it really is a slow sort of noir novel, not a fast paced thriller. The premise appealed to me as it's about a psychologist. My mother was a psychologist so I really grew up in that world. It takes place in Norway and sort of follows two timelines, the present where the main character's husband has gone missing and seems to have lied to her, and flashbacks and dreams about their lives until now.
I did not guess all of the "whodunnit," though towards the end I guessed the twists and part of it. I liked that the author gave you pieces to figure it out on purpose for part of it. It's billed as a psychologist who begins to doubt her own sanity, but I don't know that it really entails that. She more seems to be spooked by what starts going on (rightly so) and bothered that the police doubt her sanity and/or honesty.
This book was translated from the original and the translation seems to have been well done. It's apparently being turned into a movie and I think it would suck as a movie to be honest. It would be way too easy to figure out everything that happened, because you really need the long and boring bits about everything in her life to get what happened but not figure it out right away. Movies have to be too fast and edited, and there's no way you wouldn't guess it all if they focused on the bits that lead to what ultimately happened. Perhaps if it were turned into one of those Netflix limited series with 8 parts... but two hours? No way. It only works with the minutia.
I read a digital ARC of this book via Net Galley.
Rating: really liked it
Sara, a thirty-year-old psychologist, runs a private studio for problematic young people in the new big house that she is renovating together with her husband Sigurd, an ambitious architect who is always overworked. One day, after leaving his wife a phone message in which she says she joined a couple of friends for a short vacation, Sigurd disappears into thin air. Friends confirm that they were waiting for him but that he never made it to his destination. Where did it go? Why did he lie? Sara has no idea what happened and, as the hours go by, anger begins to turn into fear. When the police finally take an interest in her disappearance, she becomes one of her prime suspects because she deleted her husband's voicemail too quickly. Sara, therefore, finds herself alone in the dream house that has remained unfinished, where every room becomes less and less hospitable and more and more disturbing, even the study where she receives patients. But is she really alone?
In fact, she cannot shake off the sensation of being observed, she is convinced that the objects disappear and mysteriously reappear and that she hears footsteps in the attic during the night. Is this really so or is she losing her mind? As terrible truths come to light, Sara finds it increasingly difficult to manage her life and thoughts. Can she trust her memory of her? Will she, an expert in interpreting the emotions and intentions of others, be able to really look inside herself? And where can she consider herself truly safe? A compulsive and intelligent piece of crime fiction, The Therapist is an effective and unpredictable thriller about restraint, wrong choices and destructive self-esteem. A story where nothing is what it seems. It combines a frankly contemporary and realistic environment with haunting suspense and a disturbing view of our innermost facets, both in family life and in relationships.
This a chilling psychological thriller that dissects a young couple's relationship, in which emotions play the main role. Nominated for the Norwegian Bookseller's Prize in 2019, it features a cast of all-female protagonists and takes place in the city of Oslo. In an approach totally different from that of her Nordic counterparts, but equally brilliant, the young author shows great talent for managing both the plot and the quality of the writing. It is a deeply incised account of the fragility of the human mind in times of need, and of all that we are prepared to do to protect our loved ones. Helene Flood, a Norwegian psychologist who specialises in shame, violence and guilt, has written a poignant thriller about the destructive emotions in a relationship and the impact of family heritage on the choices we make as adults. Highly recommended.
Rating: really liked it
I really don't understand how this book got so much praise and attention. Absolutely nothing happened for the first 100(!) pages. No action before page 150. We spend 90% of the book observing her take a shower, walk around, drink tea/coffee and do a lot of inconsistent, random things that even the other characters in the book keep questioning; what the heck were you thinking?
With so much time spent observing Sara do all these mundane things day in and day out, we get a lot of backstory, and yet Sara never becomes a believable, interesting or even breathing person. She makes no sense. The only way it would make sense to depict her like this were if she herself was seriously mentally ill. Now that would have been an interesting twist, if not all the original.
When we finally see some REAL hands on thrill (page 350-ish), the author cuts the scene abruptly, jumps ahead in time and retells all of it passively in past tense. WHAT?!
This book was a decent debut novel, I am not saying that it isn't. The story just made no sense to me. It was far from a page turner, not even half a thriller. The story could easily have been told in less than 100 pages instead of 400. I am not sure that all the hype this book has gotten pre-release will help it in any way, or just bury it deeper because - in my opinion - it did not deliver.
Edit: After reading "En slags fred" (2009) by authors Grebe and Träff, I feel like this was a less well written copy of that story? Even the character's name were very similar (Siri/Sara). It just strikes me as odd.
Rating: really liked it
The Therapist by Helene Flood is Nordic noir at its very best. I was immediately pulled into the dark, internal monologue of a narrator whose reliability becomes questionable from the very outset as she struggles to find the truth behind the disappearance of her missing husband.
Sara is a psychologist who, we quickly establish, spends a great deal of time in her own head. When her husband Sigurd plans a weekend away with a few friends but fails to turn up, Sara's world is turned inside out. Mysterious happenings add to the inexplicability of Sigurd's disappearance and Sara, whose perspective is our only insight into what is transpiring, begins to question her own history with Sigurd, and wonders if events have become distorted within her own mind.
This is a compulsive read that held me captive from the very start. I can highly recommend it, and look forward to reading much more from this author. 4.5 stars
Many thanks to NetGalley and House of Anansi Press Inc. for an ARC.
Rating: really liked it
A solid psychological thriller in my opinion, and the ending was truly unexpected!
Rating: really liked it
I love this book.I read it in one sitting.
Rating: really liked it
Reading this book clearly wasn't a life-changing experience, but it was still a great experience for me.
I have lived in Norway for 6 months. I know Bergen back and forth, although I haven't been to Oslo. Reading this book made me feel like I was at home - Norwegian people, Norwegian atmosphere, Norwegian lifestyle and way of thinking.
I wouldn't say I particularly bonded with any of the characters, although I liked Sara and Gundersen. The story itself was interesting, but there were definitely some scenes where I felt like I was reading about nothing. Some pages were boring and others were spectacular. Overall, I would say it was definitely more interesting than boring.
The twist/reveal at the end... Well, I don't want to say it was predictable, but I guessed it pretty early on and then it became fully clear to me during the scene in the office (no spoilers). The writer didn't tell us exactly, but pretty much pointed out what happened and made it obvious. At least, for me it was obvious. I had another theory I would have enjoyed better, but I wasn't disappointed in the ending.
Overall, I would say it's a good book. I enjoyed the writing and most of the story. I also think this murder mystery + psychology topic is very interesting.
Rating: really liked it
I had been looking forward to reading this book for a while and it was almost worth the wait.
What did I enjoy about this book? I liked the lead character Sara and the story did engage me and I felt like I wanted to keep reading it as it slowly pulled me in.
What I didn't like was the pacing, as I felt it was a bit slow and could have been a bit more exciting.
Also a word of warning: there are no chapters! Just gaps in between paragraphs.
I usually don't like this but once I was into the story I didn't seem to notice.
