Psychologist Laina Landers has a successful practice. She’s wanting to expand it with her partner Dr. Harley Weida. She has dreams of helping teenage girls with their issues in their new practice A Better Life. But until they get the new practice off the ground, Laina is working mostly with adults and with a few couples.
It’s one of the couples that puts her on the news. When Congressional candidate Peter Hutchinson is on television threatening to shoot his wife in the head, Dr. Landers shows up at their house and begs the police for a chance to talk to him. They allow it, and she is able to talk him into letting his wife go. But not before he turns the gun on her.
Meanwhile, new-to-town reporter Cal Murray goes to the house to get the story of the couple. and finds out that the real story is the psychologist who saves the day. He talks her into an extra interview, offering her the platform to talk about mental health and her new clinic. But he can’t deny that he’s also just attracted to her.
But Laina is distressed. Did she miss something with the Hutchinsons that she should have caught? And when another patient has a mysterious gift left at her front door, with a note attached that says, “Watching You,” she wonders if there is someone targeting her patients. And then it happens again, with a young woman whose father is caught in a financial fraud scandal. All with the same note: “Watching you.”
Laina tries to figure out who would do such a thing to her patients. Could it be the receptionist they’d had to fire? Some disgruntled patient? Or could it be Harley, trying to edge her out of the practice so he can set up Better Life himself? As Cal finds himself more and more pulled to Laina, he offers to use his reporting skills to try to find out who might be behind these strange notes. But if he finds out the truth, will he be able to live with the truths he uncovers?
Privacy is a wild ride of a thriller, following the secrets a therapist is privy to and how they can potentially destroy someone’s life. Nina Sadowsky’s newest novel takes a deep dive into modern privacy, how much of our lives are vulnerable to the eyes of others and what we keep only to ourselves.
I liked Privacy a lot. I thought it was a wild ride through the different potential suspects. I went back and forth on who I thought was the mind behind the watcher, so when that finally came out, I wasn’t completely surprised. But I didn’t think it was obvious either. And the motive behind it all was bananas. That I definitely couldn’t see coming. But I really enjoyed this ride. It’s fun, and for fans of psychological thrillers, it’s worth checking out.
Egalleys for Privacy were provided by Bantam Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.
