The saying goes that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Dennis had a lot of things he considered treasure, as I described in The Therapy of Throwing Things Away (or Not). I wouldn’t necessarily describe them as trash (unless you’re talking about the 24 hard drives I found after he died, taking up space in his desk and a closet), but I certainly didn’t consider them treasure.

Dennis was a collector…a packrat…not quite to the extent of hoarding, but he definitely liked to buy things just because. My first experience with Dennis’s packrat-iness likely came when we were expecting Corinne. We didn’t know she was a girl, but he decided one day that he just had to buy a teacher Barbie. I asked him what would happen if we didn’t have a girl. Despite the fact that he was confident Corinne was a girl, he said we would find someone to give it to.

A few days before I went to the hospital to be induced, we were walking through the store, and he saw a Libra Barbie. Knowing that the baby was going to be a Libra, he wanted to buy that one as well. I told him no even though it was the only one, so he used what he called the Dennis layaway plan. He took the Barbie off the shelf and hid it behind several other items on the very top shelf. The day after Corinne was born, he went back to the store to buy it. 😄

Our attic now contains several boxes of “collectible” Barbies, and Corinne’s closet has every holiday Barbie since the year she was born. When our niece was born a year after Corinne, she started receiving the holiday Barbies as well. Our nephews (and Corinne) also get the holiday Hess Trucks every year…because they’re “collectible.” After Dennis died, I asked the kids if they still wanted those gifts from Dennis, and they said yes…so I still buy them and mark the tags from Dad or Uncle Dennis.

The most over-the-top example of Dennis’s packrat-iness was a shirt. Yes, you read that right…a shirt. He saw a stunning red button-down shirt in a catalog. Dennis was a sucker for embroidered patches, and this one had Ford patches over the front pocket and down one sleeve. It was $60. He loved that shirt.

One afternoon, he was looking for something to wear out, and I suggested that shirt. Now this was probably only about five years into our marriage, so I was pretty shocked when he said, “I didn’t buy that shirt to wear it.” (Excuse me?!?!) “I bought it just to have it.” I told him that would be the last time we would be doing that. 😏

But what I realized is that we all have a little bit of packrat in us.

After Dennis passed and I cleaned out the home office, I decided to put up a bookcase and take my Stephen King books out of boxes. I’ve always loved Stephen King, and I have wanted for a long time to have all of his books. I had a lot of them, and I had read even more. But I wanted to have all of them.

So one day I printed out a list of all of his works. I marked which ones I owned in hard copy and which I had on my Kindle. I marked which ones I hadn’t read. Once I made it through the list, over time, I ordered in hard copy all of the ones I didn’t own yet. I also ordered the Kindle versions for the ones I haven’t read.

My one hesitation was The Dark Tower series. I’ve read the whole series. I owned four of them in hard copy, but I didn’t like the last four of the eight books…at all. So I had a decision to make. Did I want my Stephen King collection to be complete, or did I want to leave out the books I didn’t enjoy?

I’m pretty sure you see where I’m going with this. I bought the books. Of course I bought the books. Because Stephen King wrote them, and no matter what I like or don’t like or what the reviews say about one of his books, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Because he’s Stephen King, and I don’t think I’ll ever not like him. And I wanted all the books…just to have them.🤷🏻‍♀️

There are a few other authors that I’ll always give the benefit of the doubt to. One of them is Sandie Jones, who has a new book coming out this week. I thought it was ok compared to the others by her that I’ve read. If you’ve read her other books, take a look at the review and decide whether this one is for you. No spoilers…there were plenty of people who loved this. You might too.

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Book Review

⭐⭐⭐
3 Stars for The Blame Game by Sandie Jones

256 pages
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publication Date: August 16, 2022
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press in exchange for an honest review.

Publisher’s Description

Games can be dangerous. But blame can be deadly.

As a psychologist specializing in domestic abuse, Naomi has found it hard to avoid becoming overly invested in her clients’ lives. But after helping Jacob make the decision to leave his wife, Naomi worries that she’s taken things too far. Then Jacob goes missing, and her files on him vanish….

But as the police start asking questions about Jacob, Naomi’s own dark past emerges. And as the truth comes to light, it seems that it’s not just her clients who are in danger.

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Main Characters:

• Naomi Chandler – psychologist specializing in treating victims of domestic violence after her father killed her mother when she was a child, late 30s/early 40s, moved to England from New York to be with Leon, works out of a garden office in the yard of their home
• Leon Chandler – Naomi’s husband, works as an events organizer for the estate in Whitstable where they live
• Jacob Mackenzie – became one of Naomi’s patients three months prior, has been abused by his wife of 10 years but is hoping to repair their relationship
• Anna – another of Naomi’s patients, also a transplant from New York, she started having problems with an abusive husband after one of their young sons died a year before

Let me start by saying that I have loved Sandie Jones since receiving an ARC of her debut thriller The Other Woman. I introduced my mother to her books, and the only one I haven’t read is The Half Sister, which currently resides on my Kindle TBR list.

Because of my experience with Jones, I’m giving this book 3 stars and the benefit of the doubt because the other three I’ve read were 5-, 5-, and 4-star reads for me. If it were an unknown (to me) author, I would probably be rating it lower and passing on any other future books. 🤷🏻‍♀️

The story of The Blame Game centers around Naomi and her treatment of two specific patients, both victims of domestic violence. Jacob is a victim of his wife’s abuse, and after 10 years, he wants to save their marriage. Anna and her husband lost a young son a year ago, which is when his abuse of her started, and she is increasingly concerned that he’s going to start to abuse their other two boys. But she is terrified of trying to escape him. She bonds with Naomi over their shared past living in New York.

Muddled in with the present-day story and the driving force behind Naomi’s career choice is her past experience. When she and her sister Jennifer were young, their mother was killed by their father, and it was Naomi’s testimony in court that sent him to prison. Naomi and Jennifer went into foster care, Jennifer was adopted, and they were separated because Naomi was a teenager at the time.

When Naomi met Leon while studying to get her license as a psychologist, her move to England was a chance to start over and remake herself as an advocate for victims of domestic violence. Jennifer, on the other hand, became a drug addict and showed up at an aunt’s house when she turned 18 looking for Naomi and became newly resentful of the fact that Naomi left her again.

Seventeen years later, when we come into the present day, Jennifer has gotten her life together, has a home on Long Island, and reached out to the same aunt for Naomi’s contact information. And their father has been released from prison.

That’s the backstory behind this twisty thriller, and it’s definitely twisty. A completely unreliable narrator, Naomi avoids and conceals the truth from everyone…her husband, the police, her patients, and even herself. She has zero objectivity and continually blurs the lines between therapist and patient—meeting patients outside of her office, offering them refuge in her private home. It’s no wonder that Leon gets angry and suspicious.

Everyone is suspect here…even Naomi herself. I mean, if she lies so easily to the police, why can’t she be lying to us? The key thing that knocked the rating down for me was Naomi’s inability to set boundaries. She is seriously her own worst enemy, but we’re supposed to believe that she’s this well-known and successful psychologist, paving the way for people to escape their abusers. She makes wrong decision after wrong decision after wrong decision. When she recognizes that she should just finally come clean and tell the truth, she makes yet another wrong decision. I had a really hard time buying that.

And when everything finally comes to a head, the book is over with no real conclusion. There’s an epilogue, and we know that the police know who the real criminal is. But there are still a lot of questions that were key to muddying up the story and weren’t resolved. At the end of a thriller, I want to know who was the villain and who was the victim. I want the villain to either get cleanly away (those cases where you close a book and gasp “NOOOOOO”) or get their comeuppance. Holes in the story, though? Not so much.

I won’t give anything away. There were plenty of reviewers who loved this one. Because I have rated this author highly in the past, if you have enjoyed her books, I suggest you go ahead and give this one a read. If you haven’t read Jones before, start with something else so that you, too, can give this one the benefit of the doubt.

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