The House on the Cliff by Charlotte Williams 338 pages

The House on the Cliff is a perfect example of the characters getting in the way of a good story. Jessica Mayhew is a practicing therapist with a cheating husband, a wayward teenage daughter, and with  a new  young client who is causing her to experience some very inappropriate thoughts. And if that’s not enough there’s also a spooky house on a cliff, a young woman who falls to her death, a famous, womanizing possible suspect, his son who experiences nightmares that put him in a depressive, perhaps suicidal state, and a long suffering wife and mother who has her own set of problems. Add to this mix, the therapist Maggie who spills info from her clients confidential sessions to both her husband and best friend, who involves herself in her clients business (the one she has inappropriate thoughts for) including flying off to Sweden on a whim to interview the victim’s mother—again over something that is none of her business, who allows her teenage daughter outrageous freedoms for no reason other than, well, who knows, and makes one sentence disclaimers like I probably shouldn’t have done that or perhaps my husband’s one night stand hit me worst that I thought as if that made all her ridiculous choices okay.

An excerpt from the book: This comes after the mother (sharp therapist) who followed her sixteen year old daughter after she told her she was going to a friend’s house but was seen with a man instead. A man who turned out to be a previous client who was fired from his job as a teacher for inappropriately touching a young female student.

Daughter: You can stop spying on me.

Mother: I’m not spying on you.

Daughter: Calm down. She spoke as if reassuring a lunatic. “Don’t call me again.”

Mother: OK. But whose house is it?

Daughter: It’s Emyr’s house. (Emyr being the previous client)

When the therapist asks her daughter when she will be back the daughter tells her she’ll keep her informed and then hangs up on her.

Really??????

Just out of curiosity. Do the people who contribute to the blurbs on the back of books actually read the books? Don’t think I’ll waste my time with the second in the series. When it comes out that is.