Smashbomb

I love thrillers. I chose this one because I thought it would start out all light-hearted, heart-warming and fluffy. And it was a tale that included friendship, but the friendship the book is really about is not the one you’d expect.

After the prologue, Connie wakes up in a mental illness institution, and her dissociative amnesia means she has no idea why she has such deep cuts in her wrists, or why she has clumps of hair missing from her head. She is visited by only one family member and the reader is left wondering why.

As the book progresses, you learn about Connie’s friend Vanessa, and how she gently edged her way in to the life of Connie and her family. A friendship and closeness that led to Connie’s ruin.

Throughout the book, Connie is completely disinhibited. Connie’s therapist is Dr Emma Robinson, and Connie meets her with wise-cracking wit and banter. The press is against Connie, but Dr Robinson is quite taken with her, seeing her strength and her despair. A friendship forms.

There is an unexpected twist in the tale about the halfway mark, and another twist at about the three-quarter (no spoilers!)

By the end of the book, Dr Robinson uses hypnotherapy and Connie has a break-through. Dr Robinson succeeds in her work, and the events of that fateful night are unabashedly told.

Connie does not recover though, and in her letters to Dr Robinson, Connie reveals that the crux of the matter was never friendship after all, but something else entirely (no spoilers!)

I was very entertained by this book and found the ending thought provoking.