Easily the most fascinating book I have read in years, utterly gripping and unputdownable! Likeable characters, fantastic suspense-filled plot, beautiful descriptions of locations and ambiences - what a gem. I can‘t wait for Jane Shemilt‘s next book!

The reviews on this are mixed, and I am kind of on the fence... It was a slow starter, numerous characters who really didn’t fit together well, but yet making towards a better ending than I anticipated... The difficulty with a book that starts slow is that it doesn’t always keep the reader with the book and anything else can so easily distract.....it would be a book that some might happily put on their ‘did not finish’ pile... A book I enjoyed overall but not one I’ll be raving about...sorry
Many thanks to NetGalley for my ARC, this is my unbiased opinion.

The Patient is a psychological thriller that drew me in slowly, ramped up the tension and had me intrigued - it is certainly one of those books where there is much more to the story than at first appears, combining intrigue with interesting explorations of mental health, middle age and relationships.

Rachel Goodchild is a 49 year old GP who has hit a point where she is feeling a bit “invisible” - her relationship with her husband has got a little stale, and her daughter doesn’t seem to have much time for her. An encounter with a new patient and a seemingly instant attraction proves to have devastating consequences for both of them.

Shemilt’s skill lies in crafting well-developed characters, not all of them likeable, and ensuring that the setting, be it in Salisbury, where the descriptions of the cathedral city are used to great effect, or in Provence, leaps off the page. A feeling of unease pervades the book as it flips between Rachel being interviewed by police and the events leading up to that. Secrets are revealed and the twists kept me on my toes as it headed to a dramatic conclusion.

I did really enjoy this book. I found it was more a mystery than a thriller due to the pace of the book. There was some psychological suspense to the plot as well.

I thought this plot was gripping, I was eager to know more about what was going to happen. I did find there was a lot of build up to the actual event and I found this book was a slow burner. I initially thought it was going to be a fast paced read but the book being slow fit with the characters. I did think there could have been a bit more suspense throughout the book and maybe even some twists.

The characters were good. Rachel, the main character, was very secretive and snuck around her family. I thought she was a very strange in the way she acted throughout the book, although I thought she was vulnerable. The book was from the point of view of Rachel and the way she spoke about the other characters made me unsure of who to trust. They all said or done something which made them seem suspicious. The ending was good, I did feel we were left hanging a bit with the characters but I suppose the reader is to make up their own mind to what happened with them.

I enjoyed the writing style the author had. I am eager to see what this author has written before. I liked how the writing was easy to understand and was a quick read. The author made you want to finish the book because of the writing style. I did like this book and I would recommend it to those who enjoy a slow paced book!

Firstly thank you to the publishers for my copy to review on netgalley. I have enjoyed her previous books.

I whizzed through this.

There’s a heavy sense of foreboding as the story unfolds.

Suspense,tension and packed with twists and turns.

Who is telling the truth and who can be trusted?

Published 28th April

I can’t wait to read more by Jane. This was intriguing, engaging and thrilling. The plot was cleverly unravelled as the story progressed.

I was really intrigued by the premise of The Patient but unfortunately it just wasn't a book for me. It was waaaayyyyy too slow burn and I just didn't connect with Rachel, the main character. Rachel has a seemingly great life on the outside, a loving Husband, a wonderful Daughter, and a fantastic career as a GP. But when she meets Luc in her GP surgery she feels an instant attraction. Will Luc be the key her downfall or will he rescue her from her mundane life?
It took me a while to read the book as other books kept grabbing my attention more. In the end I had to just make a conscious decision to finish the book so that I could get it done and stop having it nagging in the back of my mind. It wasn't that I hated it at all, just that it wasn't particularly interesting. I did like how the timeline jumps to present time would appear every so often to give us little teasers as to how things end up towards the end.

This is an easy read and maybe one for the holidays when you don't want anything too taxing. It starts with pace but peters out towards the middle and while the ending has lots of twists and turns, it does make become incredulous

I think I would have categorised this book as a romance with a touch of thriller. The way the main character behaved was so unprofessional it put me off her completely. The start was definitely the best bit and I thought the rest of the book was a bit hard to be interested in.

Having glanced at a few other reviews for this title I can see what some (but not all) other reviewers have picked up about this novel. My initial impression was fairly neutral, possibly even somewhat negative, and I wondered where the plot was taking the reader. In part, this may have reflected a plot device which interrupted the narrative chronology, but this is far from a unique feature in modern crime and/or thriller writing.

However, over time, the unusual features began to fall into place, whilst the last third or so of the book saw a surge of new momentum with plot twists that had not been significantly signalled earlier in the book. By the end, the various clues, twists and red herrings had been neatly tied up such that the reader was left with few, if any, irritating loose ends.

Eventually, I saw this as an entertaining and enjoyable read - my advice to prospective readers would be to suspend judgment and have confidence that it will both make sense by the end of the book and offer a satisfying denouement.
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Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book. I have chosen to write this honest review voluntarily.
This book centres around the relationship between Rachel, a GP and Luc, who requests an emergency appointment. I thought the instant attraction was believable but Rachel's behaviour was completely unprofessional, even disappearing for half of a medical conference. We are given to understand that Rachel is suffering from side-effects of the menopause which is then blamed for all her unreasonable behaviour until I felt sorry for her husband, Nathan, and daughter, Lizzie. The story alternated between Rachel's time in the police investigation and the events leading up to it. I thought it dragged and felt no thrilling suspense so that by the the time I'd read 37% I was completely uninterested and gave up.

I devoured this novel in just a couple of sittings! The Patient follows Rachel, a GP, who one day has a new patient, Luc, who is very depressed and needs a refill of his medication. Rachel gives it to him and goes on with her evening but she can’t stop thinking about him, and what she doesn’t know is that not everything is as it seemed to her. There is an attraction there and when she later meets him at a house party the infatuation grows. Then a colleague of hers is found murdered and life begins to unravel for Rachel. This is a novel that went places I wasn’t expecting it to but I was absolutely hooked and so keen to find out what was going to happen next and how Rachel was going to get out of the situations she found herself in. I really enjoyed this novel and definitely recommend it.

I enjoyed this book, I found it well written and liked the way the tension was built up throughout the book. There were plenty of twists, a couple I anticipated but some came out of the blue.
The characters were well drawn and believable, the descriptions of places made the reader feel they were there too. The author clearly knows her art.
My only negative is that I was left with a couple of questions unanswered at the end.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The Patient struck the right balance between being a slow burner and being extremely tense. Sometimes in a story when there is a lot of detail provided before things start happening, it can be overdone but this wasn’t the case with this book - all of the information drip-fed to the reader was relevant and pertinent to the story.

The settings and the characters felt really vivid to me which is testament to Jane Shemilt’s skilled way with words. This story was unique for me - part thriller, part romance, part mystery - and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

My thanks to HarperCollins U.K. for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘The Patient’ by Jane Shemilt in exchange for an honest review.

Like many domestic dramas/psychological thrillers I feel that it’s always best to read with minimal plot information. So just a brief overview:

The novel’s narrator, Rachel Goodchild is a doctor and when she meets her new patient, Luc Lefevre, she feels an instant attraction. She prescribes him medication though also gives him her number which she realises was crossing a boundary.

Being in her late 40s and married with a grown daughter, she immediately starts berating herself. Still, as this was just an emergency consultation she doesn’t expect to ever see him again. …well that would make for a short, not very thrilling drama.

Two months pass she and her husband Nathan are invited to a party thrown by the new family that has moved into a newly renovated house in the neighbourhood. Oh didn’t Luc mention that he was renovating a house in Wiltshire? Add to this rather awkward situation suspenseful things are happening in the neighbourhood, including a murder in the same area where Rachel was followed!

I felt that Jane Shemilt did well in hooking her readers from the opening pages. The Prologue gives a tense account of Rachel being followed and in the opening chapter Rachel is writing from a custody cell: “My lawyer advised me to write everything down from the beginning, but it didn’t have a beginning, not like that.”

So even before Rachel met the oh so tempting Luc, I certainly was intrigued and zoomed through it. As expected in this type of novel there were plenty of twists and turns though I found them organic rather than twists for twists sake.

I also felt that both the setting of the cathedral town of Salisbury and Arles in Provence, where some of the novel takes place, were well realised that included an appreciation for the history of the areas including the architecture.

Overall, I found this a compelling domestic noir/psychological thriller. It has inspired me to seek out the author’s other novels.

Local GP, Rachel Goodchild, meets a distraught Luc late one night at her surgery. She treats him but they immediately discover a serious attraction. Risking everything, including Rachel's career, they embark on an affair. So far, so straight forward but there is much more to this novel.

This is a well written and entertaining thriller with a tension which builds nicely to a clever ending. The characters are complex with plenty of secrets and lies. Genuinely good.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Harper Collins for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A great read, with plenty of suspense and intrigue with a tale of obsession and betrayl. Great characters, good plot. A recommended read.

An intriguing read!

I’m slightly on the fence with this book, it interested me enough to finish reading it, but it didn’t quite grab me enough to want to pick the book up every chance I got. It was a bit of a slow burner and I did find myself wondering where it was going at times, but I did like the ending as there were a few unexpected twists and turns. So many of the characters are unreliable, which made it hard to know who to trust and helped keep me guessing throughout.

Rachel lives a pretty average life, the spark in her marriage has been gone for some time and her grown-up daughter always seems annoyed at her. Then one evening she goes to drop something at the surgery she works at as a GP and she meets a patient called Luc, he seems troubled, so she helps him with an emergency prescription. They talk for a while and Rachel feels an immediate connection, knowing it is wrong to think that way about a patient she thinks it is just as well she won’t see him again. That is until she does….

Love affairs, stalking, murders and more. This story certainly has everything a good thriller should have, but something is missing for me and I can’t quite put my finger on what it is. I think some of it seemed a bit far-fetched and unlikely and I didn’t warm to some of the characters, but the descriptive writing was brilliant, and I could really imagine everything, especially the parts set in France. There is also a part where Rachel is unwell and another character is having a breakdown, these bits were portrayed incredibly well, and I really felt like I was inside the character’s heads at that time.

I think the blurb for this book makes you think the story is going to go a certain way when it doesn’t, so I like that it wasn’t what I expected at all. Whilst it wasn’t quite the compulsive read, I was hoping for, I did enjoy it and I am glad I read to the end. I’d like to read more from this author to see if her writing style is similar to her other books.

Thank you to Jane Shemilt, Harper Collins and NetGalley for my copy of this book in exchange for an open and honest review.

Rachel meets Luc when he needs medical help. A relationship develops but who is keeping secrets and what can these secrets lead to? Danger, excitement, love and death. What more can you ask for in a novel?

Doctors and patients have a unique relationship, intimate but lacking in emotion until it isn't. Rachel is a GP, her encounter with Luc seems serendipitous, but fate isn't always kind. Rachel and Luc are complex, flawed and relatable. Each character in this psychological fiction is believable and purposeful, many are unlikeable, but they have a part to play in this poignant and twisty story.

Every event told from Rachel's viewpoint adds to the intensity and suspense. The reader knows there is something profoundly wrong, and this sense of apprehension magnifies and develops into something dark and dangerous.

The pacing reflects the twists, and these are surprisingly shocking. Themes of marital relationships, mental health and life changes define this memorable story.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher.