The Model Patient

Ashe (The Sleeping Beauties) draws readers in with this seductive story of obsession centered on a young wife and her enigmatic therapist in 1960s London. Evelyn Westbrook has felt lost ever since her marriage brought an abrupt end to her modeling career. She’s spent recent months plagued by vivid nightmares and locked in a fight with her husband and his family about her decision to take birth control pills. To cope, she begins secret weekly therapy sessions with Dr. Daley, a Freudian psychologist. As Daley solicits intimate revelations from Evelyn, including that she was sexually abused as a teen, she grows both desperately attracted to him and infuriated by his dispassionate neutrality. Soon, Evelyn starts to unravel, and Ashe keeps readers deliciously uncertain about who’s manipulating whom. By depicting the domestic and social pressures on Evelyn with meticulous realism, Ashe makes the character’s possible descent into madness equal parts plausible and chilling. Evocative, empathetic, and ultimately empowering, this coiled psychological thriller will be catnip for fans of Alex Michaelides. (Apr.)