I really enjoyed this book. Rachel is a 50 something year old GP in Salisbury. One evening a man turns up at her surgery with an emergency mental health issue. She talks to him and helps him out and there is clearly an attraction between them. It then transpires that he has moved in to Rachel's neighbourhood with his beautiful wife and young stepson. He and Rachel embark on an affair, but things go dramatically wrong when Luc is charged with a serious crime. This is a real page turner with some good twists, and will keep you guessing to the end. Thanks to NetGalley for a preview copy.
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I really enjoyed this, the story arc was great and very unexpected.

The characters were likable and the story was well paced.

Enjoyable thriller/mystery although I struggled to like or care about the main character.

Mix of murder mystery and romance, I really wanted to know what happened but mainly for the surrounding characters as I didn’t find Rachel relatable-which is fine, I just want to cate a bit more about main characters. I’m not sure what it is about her.

Still a good read and did keep me wanting more.

Very descriptive, we meet Rachel as she starts going back over a series of events to work out what happened and why. Her job as a doctor is central to events and we have a few suspects to choose from as events unfold. Slowly, with her we, piece together what has happened and her part in it. Some very dysfunctional people and relationships come together. I was very surprised by the ending.

Wow what a gripping read!!
So many questions you start off with and then slowly peeling back the layers, i was pulled into this book i really wanted to know why Alicia killed her husband and what emotions run deep that she has been keeping.

A very well written book with a intriguing storyline. The characters are all interesting and I think that the author did a overall good job with the book. However it was all a little bit too unbelievable to me. But I'm sure others will love it.

Three stars from me means I believe the author has achieved all they set out to, but that I personally didn’t fall in love with the book.

One thing I did really appreciate was that, for me, this book encapsulates perfectly the warning we are always given about writing in first person - it has the advantage of letting the reader directly into the mind of the protagonist which allows us to examine thoughts, feelings and motives more specifically, but it means if a reader dislikes the character there’s a danger they’ll lose interest.

And, oh, my, did I find the protagonist, Rachel Goodchild, tedious. At first I was engaged by her off-kilter observations. For the first third of the book I assumed she was going to be an unreliable narrator who was justifying nefarious deeds to herself and, therefore, to us as readers. But, no. She turned out really to be trying to justify what she told us she was at the start - her distant relationship from her daughter, Lizzie.

And, unfortunately, I found Lizzie even more tedious. As a librarian myself, I initially thought I would be drawn into her world at the library more, but, no. Partly because we only see Lizzie through her mother’s self-obsessed eyes, the library, Lizzie’s flat, her friends, and her budding new romance are glimpsed very opaquely. Her distance is put down by Rachel to feeling her mother was more interested in her than in her career. Well ... I’m not convinced. The world is peopled by busy professionals and their children who grow up to understand their parents were just ordinary humans doing the best they could. Is Lizzie then just particularly childish and unaccepting? Is she a bit rude and odd? Or is it because we can only see her through Rachel’s eyes? Maybe Lizzie is distant because her mother is so self-obsessed she needs to protect herself? I don’t know. What I do know is we are treated to a portrait of a very rude, disobliging woman whom I find it impossible to believe would be employed by any library.

Ditto Rachel’s husband. Are we supposed to see him as controlling? All that wrist-holding and the marital rape scene. I mean, I know what I feel about it, but I’m not sure what I was meant by the author to feel?

And then the patient himself. Again, is it Rachel’s self-obsession or is he really the shallow stereotype he seems?

All in all, it’s clear to me that this is a good book if, unlike me, you can get along with or at least not object to Rachel’s thought processes. It’s very well-written, and despite the odd backstory of two of the main characters, very believable. I just wish I had found Rachel, her viewpoint, and, because we only have her viewpoint, therefore all the other characters, less tedious. Mea culpa, perhaps. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

Thank you to Netgalley, Harper Collins UK and Jane Shemilt for an ARC in return for an honest review.

This is a great book which will keep you guessing to the very end. It was a bit of a slow starter for me but thoroughly enjoyed it.

Fantastic read. Had me hooked from the start. So many twists and turns kept me guessing throughout. Couldn’t put it down

I am sad to say that I didn't enjoy reading this book. I found it too slow, and the characters were dull. I didn't really care what was going on, so just not a good read for me, sorry.

A very slow burner which doesn`t flow easily for me, sometimes I didn`t know whether I was reading the past or the present and a bit repetitive.
The good bit is the twist at the end but it is definitely not a tense thriller.
None of the characters are likeable apart from one Victoria.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

The Patient was a good thriller. Although it started a little slowly the pace soon picked up, switching from present day to past events, all within a couple of months of themselves. This didn’t take long to read and I never guessed the plot twist towards the end!
Thank you Netgalley for the ARC, a good 3.5 stars.

I really enjoyed this tense psychological drama/thriller. Well written and kept my interest throughout. Recommended.
Thanks to the author, publisher and netgalley for providing me with this advance digital copy in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

Enjoyed this book, not the route I thougjt it would take but it was a surprising ending! Well worth picking up!

Helen Goodchild is a middle aged, respected doctor. On the surface she has it all, but really her marriage is in trouble and her daughter doesn’t want to know her.
So when she is attracted to a patient in her surgery, her decision to act on this has more of an impact than she could have imagined.

This is thankfully a short read and it isn’t a particularly difficult read either.

I couldn’t connect to the characters at all and the only one I really warmed to was Victoria, who is a relatively minor character.
For being a doctor, Helen appears to be hopeless at making basic decisions and comes across spineless at times. Her husband is odd and seems unconcerned about the terrible relationship between his wife and daughter. The daughter is obnoxious and unpleasant.

The blurb implies that Rachel gives the patient pills and this is a major factor in the story.
I thought this was misleading as the pills are only really mentioned again in the latter part of the book and don’t have much bearing on the goings on.
The cover also features pills which I think gives the wrong impression about the plot.

The story was quite slow for me, particularly at the start. It’s billed as a tense thriller but I didn’t think it was at all.
There seemed to be a mish mash of characters and possibilities thrown in about halfway through and then everything happened towards the end.

Unfortunately this book just wasn’t for me. I wasn’t gripped at any point and didn’t care about the characters. The ending was boring and underwhelming.

I wouldn’t recommend this book.

Thanks to Harper Collins and NetGalley for a copy to review.

Rachel is a local GP, Luc her patient. On their first meeting Rachel is astonished by the instant attraction. Her relationship with her husband and grown-up daughter has hit the rocks and Luc provides a welcome but dangerous distraction. Little does she know from that first meeting the impact Luc will come to have on her life. The location of Salisbury, around the cathedral provides a brilliantly atmospheric and tense setting. This is a taut, intelligent and unputdownable thriller.

I enjoyed this clever, tense and twist-packed psychological / medical thriller. The plot and characters were beautifully drawn; I loved the sense of place, especially in the south of France.
A great book and I will be reading more of the author's work.
With grateful thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins UK for my copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was a quick read with quite a few twists that kept me guessing but somehow it didn’t capture me as much as I was expecting it to. The story was interesting but I thought it was more about relationships than the mystery I was expecting. The writing was good and I did enjoy the the read but I think it was just stretching the imagination a little too far but then perhaps that is just me and I’m sure others may enjoy it more. So overall a 3 star read that kept me occupied.
My thanks to NetGalley and Harper Collins UK , Harper Fiction for giving me the chance to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Love every part of this book it kept me on my toes also made me think that do other therapist go through this.

Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book. It had a good start but it then slowly declined. It wasn't as exciting as her previous books and I didn't really like the character of Rachel. It was a bit too slow paced and predictable. Overall it was a good book but not as exciting as Schemilts other novels.