by Jan Carson
First published 2020
Dr. Eleanor Reid runs a small counseling practice in North Belfast, specializing in trauma recovery. When a new patient stops speaking midway through their first session, Reid becomes obsessed with uncovering the source of his sudden withdrawal. As the patient's silence grows more complex, Reid begins to recognize unsettling parallels with her own fragmented memories of Belfast's violent past. Her professional boundaries start to dissolve, and she finds herself blurring the lines between therapeutic intervention and personal investigation. Something in this patient's story threatens to expose a history she has carefully compartmentalized—and the secrets might destroy more than her professional reputation. Precise and psychologically taut, "Sessions" explores the razor's edge between professional empathy and dangerous proximity.
Genres: fiction, mystery, contemporary, psychological-thriller
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: blurred-boundaries, unreliable-narrator
Setting: North Belfast
Period: contemporary
309 pages · Paperback · Independently published
Content warnings: mental-illness