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.
