Story for the Week
Corinne first started in weekly therapy sessions after her dad passed away—sometimes twice weekly at the beginning. She spent quite a while in the anger stage of grief (The Subtleties Between Love and Grief), and at the time she didn’t want to go to therapy. She was a lot like her father in that respect (Are We Really That Difficult to Understand?).
In the last three and a half years, however, she learned to embrace her sessions. Her therapist Erin also works as a school counselor, so she deals specifically with kids and young adults. A lot of times, Corinne talks about what’s going on at school. There’s a lot of drama in high school, so it’s no surprise she asks for help navigating all the chaos, especially as she closes out her senior year.
Erin participated in speech and theater in high school like Corinne, and she attended one of Corinne’s rival schools, so they have a nice personal rivalry of their own. Erin’s alma mater happens to be pretty competitive in performance as well, so they have a lot to talk about and there’s some friendly trash talk during competition season.
There are also times that Corinne talks about me and things that might be going on at home. We have a great relationship, but we still have our moments, so Erin is a good sounding board and an excellent voice of reason. Sometimes she agrees with Corinne’s perspective and sometimes she agrees with mine. They’ve developed a nice relationship to say the least.
Sometimes I forget to ask Corinne how her session was, but I have always told her she has the choice not to tell me anything. These are her sessions with her therapist. There’s a reason she has them alone. Just recently, Corinne had a pretty good laugh with Erin that really demonstrated how much therapy has helped her.
I mentioned last week (When Your Message from the Universe Smacks You in the Face) that Corinne’s spring theater show was about a girl whose mother has terminal cancer. Knowing that she had gone through that experience with her dad, when the director added labored breathing as one of the effects in the show, he warned Corinne because she wasn’t there when they added it in. Watching them rehearse it over and over triggered her…a lot…and pushed Corinne into a little bit of a panic attack and really amped up her anxiety.
After I saw the performance myself, I realized how well the cast nailed the breathing and the emotions of that experience. It’s hard for me to watch, and it hasn’t gotten easier. After the State competition, Corinne and I started talking about how difficult that time was, and she mentioned her current anxiety levels and asked how she dealt with it every day in the weeks and months after her dad died. I chuckled and just responded, “Not well.” She laughed.
When she talked with Erin that week, she mentioned the conversation because she knows how her anxiety is now and can’t even comprehend how bad it had been. Erin’s response was, “Yeah, you were on the struggle bus there.” That also made Corinne laugh.
Therapy isn’t for everyone. I talked with my therapist every couple of weeks after Dennis and then my mom passed. We eventually extended those sessions to monthly, and eventually we stopped. I have her number if I ever feel like I need them again.
Corinne chooses to still talk with Erin weekly. She feels more centered when she does. And even when Erin tells her the same things I’ve said, she views Erin as more objective. Erin’s only investment in the situation is getting Corinne through it. And I am so grateful for that.
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐
3 Stars for Please Tell Me by Mike Omer
377 pages
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Publication Date: December 1, 2023
This title was an Amazon First Reads selection.
Publisher’s Description
When eight-year-old Kathy Stone turns up on the side of the road a year after her abduction, the world awaits her harrowing story. But Kathy doesn’t say a word. Traumatized by her ordeal, she doesn’t speak at all, not even to her own parents.
Child therapist Robin Hart is the only one who’s had success connecting with the girl. Robin has been using play therapy to help Kathy process her memories. But as their work continues, Kathy’s playtime takes a grim turn: a doll stabs another doll, a tiny figurine is chained to a plastic toy couch. All of these horrifying moments, enacted within a Victorian doll house. Every session, another toy dies.
But the most disturbing detail? Kathy seems to be playacting real unsolved murders.
Soon Robin wonders if Kathy not only holds the key to the murders of the past but if she knows something about the murders of the future. Can Robin unlock the secrets in Kathy’s brain and stop a serial killer before he strikes again? Or is Robin’s work with Kathy putting her in the killer’s sights?
************
Main Characters:
- Robin Hart – a child psychologist in the small town of Bethelville in Indiana, has spent the last year treating several children after the disappearance of Kathy Stone, divorced from Evan who is a photographer
- Kathy Stone – nine-year-old who was abducted 15 months prior and was found by the side of the road a year later barefoot with scratches on her back and unwilling to speak
- Pete and Claire Stone – Kathy’s parents, divorced after Kathy’s disappearance because Pete was convinced Kathy had been killed and Claire would not give up hope that she was alive, Pete is good friends with both Evan and Fred
- Nathaniel King – detective in Indianapolis investigating the case of a murdered prostitute who gets pulled into Kathy’s case with the discovery that other cases might be connected
- Melody and Fred – Robin’s older sister and brother-in-law, parents to four kids, their daughter Amy was Kathy’s best friend
- Frank and Diana Hart – Robin and Melody’s parents, Diana used to have a radio show and is prone to manipulating Robin using guilt, Melody refuses to visit her
Please Tell Me begins with nine-year-old Kathy Stone’s discovery by a stranger on the side of the road—a doll in her hand, scratches on her back, and no shoes on her feet. The story progresses through Kathy’s therapy with Robin Hart trying to discover who took her and what happened in the 15 months she was missing. One of the biggest challenges is that Kathy is easily startled and refuses to speak.
As Kathy’s treatment continues and Robin can’t talk about the case, some of the townspeople start criticizing Robin on social media, saying that Kathy is being forced to relive her trauma. Even Robin’s ex-husband Evan believes that Kathy would be better served by going back to school and getting back to a normal routine.
Robin uses a a combination of play therapy and verbal reflection. Kathy plays with toys to show whatever she needs to express, and Robin basically narrates what Kathy does.
“You are drawing a man…. He is smiling. He looks happy.”
“It looks like the man hurt his hand.”
“Now he hurt his other hand.”
“Now he hurt one leg. And the other leg.”
I have to admit, I looked up whether this is a real therapy technique (it is). It may work in therapy, but as dialog in a book, it became boring pretty quickly. Once it’s discovered that Kathy is playacting what seem to be real murders, we are forced to sit through session after session after session of dry narration of Kathy’s play.
To heighten the drama, Robin’s spare time is spent dealing with the animosity between her sister and her mother. Melody refuses to visit their mom, and Robin’s relationship with their mom is codependent in its best moments. Over the course of the book, the dirty underbelly of their relationship comes to light, but it makes me wonder how Robin can be an effective therapist without being in therapy herself. She almost reverts to childhood around her mom, stooping at one point to stealing her mom’s prized Victorian dollhouse that she and Melody were never allowed to play with as children.
Eventually, Robin connects with Detective Nathaniel King, and they start to figure out what Kathy is actually showing them. The author does a great job of making the reader suspect a lot of different characters up until the very end. But I feel like one of the characters is included only to be a potential suspect because he seems to have no other purpose in the plot.
Of course they solve the case and catch the bad guy, but I found the ending to be too convenient the way the abduction and the murders get tied together. I’m also not crazy about thrillers that have the main character and the law enforcement person develop feelings for one another as a way to heighten the suspense when one of them gets put in harm’s way.
A few other things knocked the rating down. I’m not sure when the author started writing, but the story takes place in 2022, yet there are so many references to the pandemic, masking, and “the new world” of social distancing. Most mask mandates lifted by early 2022, and this book released at the end of 2023. The only way the pandemic even played a role in the story line is that Melody had originally refused to vaccinate her kids, and then continued to let her mother think they were unvaccinated so she wouldn’t have to see her. In total, there are 35 references to the pandemic, COVID, and masks, and they’re not relevant to the story at all.
And I can’t help but feel the author is a bit of a misogynist. When Nathaniel investigates the murder of a prostitute, his lieutenant wants him to work other cases. “People were dying every day in the great city of Indianapolis, and if Nathaniel wanted to spend long hours investigating this one woman who had been asking for it, he could do it on his own damn time.” Asking for it? Asking for it! If you want to show your readers that a character thinks some cases are less important, this is not the way to do it.
Then in a section describing what’s running through Frank’s mind about his sons-in-law: “Frank preferred Robin’s husband, Evan, but you couldn’t pick and choose for your daughters, right? Well, at least not anymore. Fathers had it much better a few hundred years ago in that regard.” WHAT?!?!
So…decent story if you don’t care about those things. 🫢 That said, I probably won’t read this author again.
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