From the New York Times bestselling author of Luckiest Girl Alive and Bright Young Women comes a smoldering psychological thriller with a singular, mind-bending last page.

It’s been twelve years since Faye Heron broke Henry Spalding’s heart. Henry was her college boyfriend, her first intense love, but Faye was in danger of being subsumed by him.

Now, Faye is one half of a power-producing duo with her Hollywood husband. Henry is a married father running the family business. Both of their lives have essentially gone to plan.

When a former and beloved college professor suddenly passes away, Faye and Henry find themselves back on campus for the funeral, circling something old and dangerous. Something, if Faye is honest with herself, she has been trying to duplicate for years. But Henry is one of a kind.

The kind who delivers a hypnotic apology for the way things ended.
The kind who suggests they go back to the hotel for a drink.
The kind who drugs and kidnaps her.

When Faye comes to Henry’s remote mountain cabin, she’s beside herself. Has Henry brought her here to punish her? She did, after all, write and star in a lauded episode of television based on their indelicate appetites and vicious breakup. As her week of captivity unfolds, Henry’s wanton demands intensify, and a sprawling, years-old mystery begins to take shape—one that will rewrite history as Faye remembers it and reveal an astounding, cataclysmic truth.

I went into this one expecting a tight psychological thriller, and what I got was something in between that I’m still not totally sure how to feel about.

Faye and Henry dated in college. The relationship was intense and Faye eventually pulled away because she could feel herself disappearing into him. Twelve years later, Faye is one half of a high-profile Hollywood couple. Henry’s a married father running the family business. Neither has had any contact with the other but then their old professor from college dies, and the funeral pulls them both back to campus for the first time since everything ended. Henry apologizes for the way things went down and suggests they get a drink. And then Henry slips something into her drink, and by the time she comes around, she’s somewhere in the mountains, in a cabin, and she’s not going anywhere. But why? She did write and star in a thinly veiled TV episode about their relationship and its messy, ugly ending, and that episode got a lot of attention. Is this revenge or something else?

I can see exactly what Knoll was going for here, but it didn’t quite land for me the way I hoped it would. The concept sounds great and it could have been something really intense, but what it actually reads like is a thriller that got a second pass to add a bunch of horny sex scenes and fantasies, and the two things never quite fused in a way that was cohesive. The sex scenes kept stopping the momentum of the central mystery. They felt like interruptions more than texture, and I never got the sense that they were adding anything the story actually needed. The other problem is that the central question as to why Henry actually did any of this, is pretty bland and felt like it was recycled from several other thrillers. I had it pieced together pretty early. The book builds toward the reveal like it’s going to hit hard, but since it all played out as expected it had very little impact.

On the plus side, Faye is a solid protagonist. She’s sharp, self-aware, and not sitting around waiting to be rescued, which made her easy to stay with even when the plot was frustrating me. Henry is creepy and compelling at first but then he lost the menacing touch I was expecting based on the synopsis.

Overall, the bones are good, and the premise is strong, but the way it all played out was very frustrating. It felt scattered and not at all cohesive. Whether the “erotic thriller” label was a marketing decision or an authorial one, the two halves never felt like they belonged in the same book. As you can probably tell, I wanted to like this one a lot more than I actually did.