Please Tell Me – Mike Omer

A child therapist, a formerly missing nine-year-old girl and a possible serial killer on the loose.

Kathy’s parents couldn’t be happier when they get the news that she has been found after 15 months of being missing, but their relief is cut short when they find out their little girl is completely different than what they remember. She can’t speak.

Robin, a child therapist with issues of her own, is contacted by the Stone’s to help Kathy with her trauma and hopefully, get her to speak again and find out what really happened during those missing months.

Review

First of all, the cover is AMAZING, the book follows a theme of mum issues, dollhouses and control, control, control!

Great pacing and chapter lengths, if I hadn’t had work to do I would have read this in one sitting, definitely. It’s one of those books that makes you go just one chapter more… wait, just another one, I swear!

Aside from normal ARC issues like misused commas and some sentences that felt disjointed, my main criticism towards this book is the obsessive use of the COVID pandemic. I get it, (imho) the first times that the pandemic and quarantines are addressed, I feel they are rightly justified so the reader gets the atmosphere and understands the time and context in which the book is set, however, after the first couple times I did find it a bit annoying and not contributing positively anymore.

I really appreciated the explaining behind some of the mechanics in child therapy sessions, for example when we get to the description of Robin’s playroom:

“The room’s walls were cream coloured, the wall-to-wall carpet a very light blue…… All this was meant to soften the room as much as possible”

Although I’m not an expert by any means, I found the therapy sessions and its explanations quite well researched. Props to the author.

There are themes of family trauma, semiotic use of dolls and although I didn’t mind it, there IS a romance subplot (just fyi), if you don’t really care about the romance, I think you can skim through those parts, you won’t be missing too much.