This Might Hurt

This Might Hurt?  No.  Unfortunately, This Did Hurt.  

Natalie and Kit Collins are sisters who grew up with a deeply depressive mother and a sadistic, abusive father, Sir, who mentally manipulated and controlled them through daily tasks ranging from innocuous to cruel, supposedly designed to position them for success later in life. Nat and Kit couldn’t wait to get away from their father, and for 25% of the book while I debated whether to DNF, I couldn’t wait to get away from him too.  Parents being cruel to children … grrr.  I don’t want to read it, no matter how it serves the plot.

Adults now, successful businesswoman Natalie has received a menacing email saying that Kit is at an idyllic sounding self-improvement retreat called Wisewood on a little island off the coast of Maine and that this individual is aware of a secret Nat wouldn’t want Kit to discover.  In an effort to do damage control and protect her estranged sister, Nat visits the reclusive island, where it quickly becomes clear that all is not well in this place where the enigmatic leader and inner circle train participants to become their “Maximized Selves”. What becomes of these two sisters?  You’ll have to read and find out.

I’ll leave it at that and just get to what did and didn’t work for me.

What worked: 

• Wrobel writes decently and the characters were all interesting and well-portrayed, despite being unlikable.

• The idea was solid and the twists and reveals were clever.

• It has some decent nuggets of wisdom about fear and vulnerability.

What didn’t work:

• The cult plot just wasn’t doing it for me.  I can read about real-life cults all day long, but for whatever reasons, I don’t like it in fiction.

• The story is fairly slow and there’s no real sense of dread or menace.  At best I got the tiniest bit of creepy vibes, but nothing that had me on the edge of my seat.

• One of the characters is into magic and later, mentalism.  That’s not my jam, so the only magic trick I wanted to see is for that part of the story to disappear.

• The ending felt a bit rushed and anti-climactic, leaving me without a sense of resolution.

I have no doubt this was just a story with too many elements and triggers that I personally don’t enjoy and less about the author’s skill at writing, so I’ll still watch for more by Wrobel. Plenty of users have really enjoyed this, so please check out those reviews as well!

★★ ½

 

Thanks to Berkley Publishing, NetGalley and author Stephanie Wrobel for this digital ARC.  I’ve given my honest and unbiased thoughts.  This is due for publication on February 22, 2022.