The story: Dr. Caroline Strange is a psychiatrist in Brooklyn. She has a very inflated sense of self-worth, believing she knows what’s best for everyone, and gives all of her patients cutesy, cringy, cruel nicknames like Tawdry Twyla and Weepy Jasmine. One morning a new patient arrives, tells her, “I’m going to kill someone, and I know who you really are,” and walks out. This sets off twin storylines, narrated by three different characters–1) Caroline in the present, trying to figure out who this guy is and whether he’s actually going kill someone, 2) another character in the present whose identity and experiences are more slowly revealed, and 3) Gordon in the past, Caroline’s neighbor when she was a child, who has just been laid off from his job at a brewery and is struggling to find work. Eventually Gordon’s story reveals Caroline’s sinister, traumatic past, which is then loosely tied into what’s currently happening.
Why I read it: Louisa Luna wrote a detective series (Alice Vega) that I enjoyed enough to give anything else she writes a chance.
How I felt about it: I did not care for this book. I know Luna can write compelling, complex, likable characters, because the twin protagonists of the Alice Vega series are all of these things. Caroline is certainly complex, but I didn’t find her compelling or at all likable. I found her repugnant–although I think this is what Luna intended, so there’s that. I think we could have done without Gordon’s storyline altogether–Caroline’s past could have been slowly revealed in another way, and it wouldn’t have invited the same kind of skepticism I felt about Gordon’s actions, which escalate far too quickly because there just isn’t enough time for Luna to fully flesh him out. The story felt a bit rushed, which I think happened because Luna was just trying to squeeze way too much in. I read it quickly, because like most twisty mysteries it’s fast-paced and keeps you wondering about what’s next. While I didn’t particularly care for it, it wasn’t bad enough to turn me off of Luna’s works altogether. Hopefully I’ll enjoy her next book more than this one.