Jenna, who runs a successful private therapy practice, still struggles with trust issues of her own. She’s made a promise to stop snooping in her husband Colten’s phone, but sometimes she can’t help herself. One night, she discovers a troubling exchange between him and his cousin Bodie, who’s one of his closest friends. A dancer from a bachelor party they both recently attended is threatening Bodie, claiming they crossed a line sexually and that she’ll expose the truth to his family if she doesn’t get what she wants. They don’t know much about this woman, or how far she’s willing to go. But Jenna might.
Lexus Chardonnay, the stage name of the dancer from the party, is one you don’t forget. And Jenna’s heard it before—from one of her clients.
Kaitlyn is a medical school student who dances on weekends to put herself through school. Jenna’s been her therapist for years, except she hasn’t seen her for three months. Not since Kaitlyn stopped showing up for treatment, without explanation. As Jenna begins to listen back to their past sessions, desperate for answers, a more complicated picture emerges, and she must decide who to trust as her career and her family hang in the balance.
Jenna’s dad walked out on her and her mom when she was a kid, and when as a teen she befriended his new stepdaughter, got a restraining order on her (it’s honestly not super clear why). Now she’s a therapist who is so insecure that she cyberstalks her own husband, obsessed that he’s cheating, to the point where he has threatened to leave her multiple times. Honestly, on his side there.
Then she snoops in his phone, finds a potential controversy with a stripper and her brother in law, realizes the stripper is one of her patients, and it all goes downhill from there. Lots of twists, lots of back and forth on who the real baddie is amongst the men, all the usual thriller twists.
The book is okay. But I really had trouble getting past the level of surveillance this woman put her husband under when she had no hints of wrongdoing at the time. She tracked his movements, accused him of sleeping with female colleagues, went through his phone, monitored his emails. I would have left her ages ago. And if the genders were reversed, it would read as a LOT more abusive. Kind of soured the entire book for me.
