by Vi Keeland
First published 2025
Meredith McColl is a New York psychiatrist whose husband dies in a tragedy that also kills the wife and daughter of a man named Gabriel Wright. Grief pulls her away from her patients, her routines, and finally from reality itself. When she spots Gabriel living what looks like a normal, even contented life, she cannot let it go. She begins following him. How is he functioning when she is barely breathing? Then Gabriel walks into her office as a new patient, claiming not to know who she is. Meredith knows treating him violates every professional and ethical rule she has. She treats him anyway. The relationship tightens around her as her career and her sense of self begin to collapse. Nothing about Gabriel turns out to be what it appeared, and the truth is worse than her worst suspicion. Vi Keeland, a New York Times bestselling author, builds the novel as a romantic thriller. Publishers Weekly calls it a "shocking debut thriller" in which "few readers will be able to predict" where the story goes. The emotional core is a woman choosing obsession over survival, and paying for that choice.
Genres: fiction, adult, adult-fiction, thriller, psychological-thriller, mystery-thriller
Vibes: dark, emotionally-intense, obsessive, psychological, suspenseful, unreliable
Tropes: nothing-is-what-it-seems, obsession, psychological-manipulation, unreliable-narrator
Setting: New York
320 pages · Paperback · Atria/Emily Bestler Books
Content warnings: death, gaslighting, mental-illness