I was pretty psyched to read Liane Moriarty’s new novel, The Hypnotist’s Love Story, because I loved the last two books I read by her (Big Little Lies and What Alice Forgot). Both had twisty plot lines full of mysteries and last minute reveals. I could not put either one of them down because I felt so desperate to find out how they ended! In contrast, if The Hypnotist’s Love Story hadn’t been a Moriarty book, I would have dropped it about 100 pages in. My belief in her as a writer made me keep going, and ultimately, I was really disappointed.
“Ellen had always assumed she would marry young and have a relationship like theirs. She thought she was that sort of person. Traditional. Nice. As if nice girls always found nice boys. As if “niceness” was all that was necessary to maintain a relationship.”
Ellen, in her early thirties, has a fairly successful practice as a hypnotherapist, and a rather unsuccessful love life. Then she meets widowed, single father Patrick, who seems perfect — until he reveals that his last girlfriend, Saskia (god I hated reading that name over and over, it’s so stupid) has been stalking him for about 3 years. At first, this fascinates Ellen. Then Saskia starts stalking her, too.
The novel alternates between Saskia’s first person perspective, and a third person perspective focusing on Ellen. The way it changes back and forth, and Patrick’s unwillingness to discuss why he’s never really taken steps to stop Saskia, intrigued me at first. Combined with my experiences with other Moriarty books, I was convinced that Patrick had some evil secret that created all this. Saskia is actually his kid’s mom! He’s actually stalking her! He killed his wife! Something!
Instead, we get a lot of musings about Ellen about her love for Patrick, and how her insecurity about how she compares to his dead wife, and his relationship with his dead wife’s family (he still sees them for lunch once a month, and visits the wife’s grave). Ellen also has some crises concerning her practice and patients. Oh, and her wackjob mother has suddenly brought Ellen’s father back into the picture. But still — all (fairly) normal stuff, which made it just so dull. I think if I hadn’t gone in with expectations for subterfuge and conspiracy, I would have enjoyed it more — or I would have put the damn thing down when I realized that nothing was ever really going to happen here.
