The Therapist - B A Paris

About the book… 

When Alice and Leo move into a newly renovated house in The Circle, a gated community of exclusive houses, it is everything they’ve dreamed of. But appearances can be deceptive…

As Alice is getting to know her neighbours, she discovers a devastating, grisly secret about her new home, and begins to feel a strong connection with Nina, the therapist who lived there before.

Alice becomes obsessed with trying to piece together what happened two years before. But no one wants to talk about it. Her neighbours are keeping secrets and things are not as perfect as they seem…

The million-copy Sunday Times bestselling author B A Paris returns to her heartland of gripping psychological suspense in this powerful tale of a house that holds a shocking secret.

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About the author… 

B A Paris is the internationally bestselling author of Behind Closed Doors and The Breakdown and Bring Me Back. Having sold over one million copies in the UK alone, she is a New York Times bestseller as well as a number one bestseller on Amazon and iBooks. Her books have sold in 37 territories around the world. Having lived in France for many years, she recently moved back to the UK. She has five daughters.

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Twitter - @BAParisAuthor

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My thoughts…

B A Paris writes books that within pages consume you and The Therapist is on another level all together. The ball has been knocked right out of the park with this one, it lived up to all the hype and then some. It gripped, it enthralled, it captured my imagination and played with my sanity. As I read I questioned myself and was consumed with self doubt, I frightened myself half to death on more than one occasion, my heart beating inside my mouth, I couldn’t breathe with fear. Reading The Therapist with the lights off, curled up in bed perhaps wasn’t my best idea, it certainly helped to ramp up the tension - I really should have known better!

Oh my goodness, imagine you’ve been conducting a long distance relationship only able to see your partner on the weekend because of work arrangements and then deciding to take the plunge, to make a commitment, move your life, lock stock and barrel from the countryside to London to move in with your partner - that’s what Alice did! She and Leo move into a house he had bought after selling his London flat. The house is in The Circle. It’s a gated street, secured with pin code entry, with each of the exclusive houses circled around pretty, communal gardens. Perfection, Alice couldn’t be happier and is so excited. She can’t wait to make friends with all the neighbours and make a home with Leo.

Alice works from home as a translator and is going to be home alone during the week for the first few weeks as Leo is working away. As she tries to settle down to work, she finds herself distracted, glimpsing various neighbours throughout the week as they go about their business. She’s desperate to make friends whereas Leo wants to take things slower, settle in first and get used to living together. But, against Leo’s wishes she organises a house warming for when he’s due home at the weekend and has invited all the neighbours, not telling him til the invitations are issued. Most of which accept straightaway - at this point alarm bells were ringing for me, why was Leo so reticent?

Following what was a very enjoyable evening, with the house teeming with neighbours Alice gets a visitor - it’s the second time she’s met him, he was at their house-warming. She’s surprised to find out he’s not who she thought he was - that fact and what he tells her totally floors her. She’s seriously rattled. Her new home, relationship and life is shook to its very foundations. She doesn’t know what to think, nor who to trust and what secrets does her new home hold?

I had that sick nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach which intensified the more I read. B A Paris completely messed with my mind in the same way she did with that of Alice. Imagine being told something so awful that centred around the previous occupant of your new home and to find out your partner knew and hadn’t told you why? The whole book felt like a game of cat and mouse throughout, and I was seriously rattled. The author used all of the senses to heighten the intensity of the narrative - she really did play with my mind way beyond the written word or any imagined situation making it incredibly difficult to think clearly.

As Alice started to obsessively research the previous occupants of the house I found my my anxiety levels rising. A shocking discovery had sent Alice into sleuth mode. With every page I turned I found myself absorbed further into Alices life and those of her fledgling new friendships. At times I lost complete sight of reality, I was anxious and afraid, there was a visceral reality of the words I read - I trusted no-one and constantly sat back to try and take stock, there were so many questions rattling round my brain, so many things that didn’t quite stack up - who should Alice trust, what secrets were being kept? What did the neighbours know that they weren’t telling? There were so many secrets. The Therapist is totally engaging the clues led me on a merry dance, it was difficult to differentiate between real and imagined occurrences. I never even came close to fully unravelling the plot - and even now it has ended the story is still spinning around inside my head, I’m shocked, shook to the core.

This was a totally outstanding read, the intensity was almost too much to bear - culminating in an ending that was incredibly difficult to read. I was in that macabre situation where you’re desperate to read on because you know it’ll be over and your heart rate can slow, yet at the same time wanting to close the book and not read the words that couldn’t then be un-read. Another outstanding read, B A Paris gets better and better with every book.

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