Catherine (alternativelytitledbooks) - back but so behind's Reviews > The Unraveling

**Many thanks to NetGalley, Atria, and Vi Keeland for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review! Now available as of 7.9!**

In writing, much like in life, just because you CAN?

Doesn't mean you SHOULD.

Vi Keeland's first journey from the world of romance writing into the somewhat over saturated thriller genre unfortunately served to remind me of this adage over and over...and OVER again.

Meredith McCall is in desperate need of a Mc(Wakeup) Call. Years ago, she was living the dream with her hunky hockey playing beau, Connor, when a horrifying injury took him out of the game, and led him down a dangerous road...quite literally. When he ends up at the helm of a dangerous accident, his erratic behavior affects more than his wife...and the lives of another family are forever changed. Meredith can't quite let the devastation go and her guilty and curious conscience leads her to a familiar place, looking for a familiar person: Gabriel Wright. He's the one who has truly been destroyed by Connor's behavior and Meredith can't help but wonder what he's up to...so one day she decides to go to a place he will be and to follow him...you know, just for a WHILE.

But when Meredith's compulsion becomes a bit of a habit, she finds herself unable to get enough...and her behavior starts to resemble obsession. And as she attempts to dive back into her psychiatry practice, imagine her surprise when a very familiar face shows up at her door wanting therapy: none other than Gabriel himself. Meredith panics, thinking Gabriel HAS to know everything and that's why he's here...but why does he have to be SO attractive? Could she be imagining it...or is there CHEMISTRY between them? What exactly is Gabriel's agenda anyway...and does he KNOW who she is? Can she really turn down an opportunity to treat him and assuage her guilty conscience AND feed into her unbridled curiosity? Or is there a more intricate web of deception being spun...and a ploy for revenge that could turn her 'harmless' crush into a permanent nightmare?

First off, hearing such rave early reviews for this book MAY have set the bar unreasonably high for me. Although I was a bit wary going in, I couldn't help but be thrilled to read a stalker narrative which promised twists and turns AND a bit of spicy romance, and I was hoping this would go the way of say, an A.R. Torre tale.

Instead, this book, which promises to be 'chilling, exciting, and addictive' is a narrative tinged with the promise of exciting 'obsession' that ends up falling into the same well-worn patterns of many before it...but with cringe-worthy dialogue, a messy narrator, and too much needless spice to meet ANY of the aforementioned criteria.

Meredith is supposed to be QUITE the stalker, at least according to the premise...but to be honest, she seemed more like someone who just was looking for a roll in the hay with someone attractive...and Gabriel just sort of became that 'lucky' guy. Keeland tries to make her seem obsessive, but I felt like Meredith spent plenty of time doing other things, and was pretty harmless overall anyway. There are mentions made of Joe Goldberg and YOU, but again, I feel like this was just to push the narrative that she was a stalker rather than SHOWING her doing anything I'd deem dangerous. Granted, nobody should follow someone around in general, but when I read a thriller who wants to paint itself in this light, there's a certain LEVEL of creepiness needed in the narration to truly make that pop, and I felt that element was missing here.

What we got instead was PLENTY of stereotypical booze-fueled behavior, and a long drawn out plot to boot. (Yawn.) I think Meredith spent more time bopping over to the liquor store than she EVER spent hunting down Gabriel....especially because eventually, he ends up coming RIGHT TO HER for sessions. (Convenient much?) For someone who casts a side-eye at others' addictive behavior, Meredith could take a bit of her own advice. The number of times she rattled on about how it was her FOURTH glass, or the ever popular 'Might as well finish the bottle!" made me feel a lot better about an occasional second glass, I'll tell you that much! The only time I DON'T mind this device in thrillers is it rings of realism, or if the alcohol/drugs aren't a defining characteristic...but in this one, they took up FAR too much time...so for those who despise it, be warned. (Not to mention why on EARTH anyone thought Meredith was in a place to be practicing therapy again...but that's an entirely different tangent!)

And then there's Gabriel, the object of Meredith's 'obsession'. It's sad to say this, but Keeland leaned HEAVILY on her habits from romance writing when it came to this pair and their lusty interactions, and after a while, I just grew tired of it. At times it almost seemed like we were supposed to root for them as a couple (!?) which in a thriller like this one, just seemed WEIRD. I wanted more tension, more adversity, more blurring of the lines between patient and therapist...NOT for them to wax poetic about how much one character wanted to bend the other over a desk. 😳 I'm fine with a romance with a bit of suspense in it, but this was not even that...the tone was all over the place at times and I just couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be thinking OR feeling at any given moment.

But the number one issue that kept me from enjoying this one, however, was the dialogue. It was that sort of dialogue that makes you stop, pause, roll your eyes a bit, make faces, and most importantly, makes you think "NOBODY actually talks this way." If we can put aside all of the back and forth between Gabriel and Meredith throughout, Meredith's interactions with her OTHER patients (as well as her own therapist!) felt just ridiculous. I'm not sure if Keeland had anyone in the profession read this after the fact, but I'm pretty sure if therapists talked this way regularly they wouldn't have any patients. (And I didn't have any PATIENCE for it! 😄) I'll give you just one example along the way where Meredith is listening to Rebecca (I mean, sort of):

"Him? You mean Steve? The man you just broke up with?" I'm getting lost in all of these unnamed men.
Rebecca rolls her eyes. "Who else would it be?"

Honestly, Rebecca...tell me you and your therapist don't actually CARE about your therapy without actually telling me. Completely brutal.

When the twists were revealed, I didn't find them that exciting (and one in particular was very predictable) so it felt even more like I was perhaps supposed to be waiting for a big romantic reveal rather than a terrifying one. (Aside from the last chapter, which was BETTER...if the whole book had utilized this format along the way, I have no doubt it could have been more intriguing!) This book's one redeeming quality is that is fairly readable (or at least, it doesn't get TOO bogged down in detail) so I was able to end my 'visit' to Meredith's office eventually. If I can stumble through a book like this in a few days, I can only imagine how I would have felt if I was TRULY invested in Meredith's stalking aspirations. (If that's an okay thing to say...maybe *I* need some therapy to recover from this crew!)

...And the only thing truly 'unraveled' by the time I finished this one was the ball of yarn better known as my sanity. 🧶

3 stars, rounded up from 2.5