Privacy
A Novel
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
You never know who’s watching. . . .
A successful therapist’s world is upended when her patients are targeted by a campaign of twisted psychological harassment in this propulsive novel from the author of Convince Me.
Dr. Laina Landers is good at her job. She’s an accomplished therapist, dedicated and compassionate. When she is summoned by a panicked patient who is being held hostage by her husband, she intervenes and dissuades him. Laina becomes a media sensation. But as her star rises, a target is placed on her back.
Not everyone is impressed by Laina’s achievements. Someone has it in for her and is targeting what matters to her most: her patients. One by one, Laina’s patients spiral after they receive unsettling gifts that mock their deepest fears and hidden traumas. Liana’s own home is targeted, in a mysterious break-in where nothing is taken, but left behind is the same message sent to her patients: Watching you.
Enlisting Cal Murray, an ambitious and charismatic investigative journalist to whom she has an explosive attraction, Laina must examine her patients’ lives and her own to identify the culprit. All she knows for sure? It’s someone with access to her records. Someone who wants to destroy her stellar reputation, shatter her newfound success, and even, perhaps, end her life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Therapist Laina Landers, the protagonist of this gripping if flawed romance-laden thriller from Sadowsky (Convince Me), is leaving her office in San Diego, Calif., when she receives a call from a patient, congressional candidate Peter Hutchinson, who has been in couples therapy with his wife for several months. When Hutchinson screams a threat into the phone ("I'm going to kill her! I swear I'm going to pull the trigger!"), Laina rushes to the Hutchinsons' home, where police and journalists are already at the scene, and talks her hysterical patient into giving up his gun and releasing his wife. Her brave actions, broadcast live, make Laina an instant media star and attract the attention of ambitious reporter Cal Murray. Then the lives of other patients in Laina's care begin spinning off in unexpected directions after they receive "gifts" that hint at their darkest secrets—embezzlement, adultery, spousal abuse—along with notes reading "Watching You." Is the ultimate target Laina herself? Chapters revealing a masterful manipulator's thoughts help build suspense, though a few meandering false leads undercut it, and some readers may feel betrayed by the final surprise twist. Sadowsky has done better. Agents: Claudia Cross and Jeff Kleinman, Folio Literary Management.
