Secrets worth dying―and killing―for, in a novel of suspense inspired by a horrific true crime by Washington Post and Amazon Charts bestselling author Loreth Anne White.

When the battered body of a female jogger is found beneath the cliffs of an idyllic coastal community, these perfect neighbors suddenly don’t seem so perfect…

Lily Bradley is a respected psychotherapist married to a distinguished professor. They live in a dream house with their two children in close-knit Story Cove. Lily lives a well-ordered life. Or so it seems. As a therapist, she knows everyone keeps things hidden. Even her.

Then sensual and free-spirited Arwen Harper rolls into town in her hand-painted VW van, her sixteen-year-old son riding shotgun. Overnight, Story Cove’s secrets are no longer safe. Because Arwen might know her new neighbors better than they know themselves.

Now someone is dead, and it looks like murder. Brutal and personal. The death invites the shrewd eye of Detective Rue Duval. Rue’s job is to expose secrets. But she’s also an expert at keeping them.

As the lives of three women become inexorably entwined, one thing is clear: when it comes to survival, ordinary people can do the most terrible things.

Review:

Unsettling, twisty, and intricate!

The Patient’s Secret is a tortuous, disturbing mystery that takes you into the lives of a handful of people, including the successful psychotherapist Lily Bradley, whose worlds get turned upside down when the bloodied body of a new arrival to the community is found shattered at the bottom of the cliffs leaving some residents devastated by loss, some overwhelmingly consumed with fear, some extremely worried the past will finally collide with the present, and all of them scrambling to keep their darkest secrets hidden and buried for good.

The writing is brisk and sharp. The characters are tormented, scarred, and vulnerable. And the plot, told from alternating POVs and using a back-and-forth style, is an eerie whodunit full of twists, turns, lies, deception, familial drama, mental illness, adultery, depravity, violence, and murder.

Overall, The Patient’s Secret is another fast-paced, gripping, sophisticated tale by White that kept me guessing from the very first page and left me chilled, satisfied, and curious to see what her devious mind could possibly come up with next.

This novel is available now.

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