she's come undone

Meredith McCall is getting ready to see patients again. After serving a one-year suspension, she is getting ready to get back to work. She is still grieving the loss of her husband and the family they had always talked about. As a psychiatrist, she understands that grief has its own timeline. As a woman, she understands that it’s time to move on. But she just can’t. And then she catches a glimpse of Gabriel. And he was laughing. He looked like he was happy, that he had moved on. But how could he?

Meredith’s husband was a professional hockey player. He’d been driving that night, alone in the car, when he hit the wife and young daughter of Gabriel Wright. And he looked happy. How could he be happy so soon after the accident that killed his family, when Meredith couldn’t find any joy herself? She had lost her husband, but he had been the one responsible for the accident. Meredith feels responsible for it too, with her negligence. She had stopped paying attention to what was going on, and three people died.

But Gabriel seemed to be moving on, and Meredith wanted to know how that was possible. So she starts to follow him. She watches him as he goes to a storage unit every day, and then to his job teaching at a college. She sees him eating with young blonde women and wonders if he’s dating them. Meredith hadn’t been able to think about dating yet, hadn’t even tried downloading a dating app.

Meredith’s psychiatrist convinces her to give up her stalking, and it gets easier when she can finally see patients again. She had someone filling in for her while she was suspended, and now she has fewer patients to go back to. But her assistant has been advertising for new clients, so Meredith has some new patients along with some of her previous ones. But nothing could prepare her for when the new patient who walked into her office was Gabriel himself.

Bestselling romance author V.I. Keeland has taken a chance on a thriller, and she has come out swinging. with The Unraveling. With layers of secrets and lies. Readers don’t know who to trust, especially Meredith, since she can’t tell if she’s being followed or not. The tension ramps up slowly, the danger getting closer, until the truth finally comes out and you can breathe. For a minute.

I got swept up in The Unraveling and had to read all the way to the end. It was a crazy ride, with a couple of very spicy scenes (ghost pepper level, in my opinion), but it was the psychological tension that really drew me in. That and the mystery of what really happened to these characters. And then there was that ending that changed the whole story, so be sure to stay until the very last word.

Egalleys for The Unraveling were provided by Atria Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.