Caroline Strange is a successful Brooklyn psychiatrist and will be the first to tell you she is very good at what she does. She is married to an artist and has two sons and they all call her "Doctor". Don't ask. She also has her patients call her Dr. Caroline. This works, usually. She'll also be the first to tell you she and her family have a good life, one that she pays for. She is well-coiffed, beautifully dressed and well-toned. It costs money and takes effort to look like this, but she doesn't mind. Always in control and intuitive, her life runs smoothly until a new patient tells her he is going to kill someone and that he knows who she is. Caroline does have a tragedy in her past, but it is not a secret. What does this man think he knows and who is he going to kill? Circumstances quickly develop that cast Caroline into the role of a suspect in a kidnapping case. Of course, she feels she is the only one competent enough to find the true culprit. This is exactly what she sets off to do and she finds her control of her life only goes so far.
TELL ME WHO YOU ARE, by Louisa Luna, is told mainly in Caroline's voice and her tone is conversational. She is a confident and competent person who is certain she can help you and she tells you this. Is she arrogant? Oh, yes. She is witty and her mind is razor-sharp. She is a woman with a past that was once publicized. Even though the tragedy occurred years ago, there are things that no one knows about. No one but Caroline. Carefully intertwined with the present is the past. During this time we meet Caroline as a thirteen-year-old, along with her troubled neighbors.
The author has skillfully crafted a propulsive psychological thriller with a truly unique protagonist. There is certainly nothing predictable about the well-plotted narrative. I found TELL ME WHO YOU ARE to be exciting and immersive. Highly recommended.
The Silent Patient meets Gone Girl in this sharp psychological thriller about a psychiatrist with a shocking past and her dangerous new patient.
Brooklyn psychiatrist Dr. Caroline Strange is certain she knows what's best for her patients, her family, and pretty much everyone else, but that all changes when a troubled young man arrives for his appointment and makes a pair of alarming confessions: I am going to kill someone, and I know who you really are.
Dr. Caroline is accustomed to hearing her patients’ deepest, darkest secrets, but it seems Nelson Schack may be one step ahead when detectives show up later that day, inquiring about a missing woman. It looks like Nelson has made good on his threat—yet somehow it’s Dr. Caroline who becomes the prime suspect.
Convinced the police are incompetent, Dr. Caroline takes matters into her own hands, chasing down the elusive Nelson and running headlong into a past she has spent her entire life trying to forget. As she closes in on her target, all the polished pieces of her manicured life splinter when people begin to question who she really is.
Harrowing, unpredictable, and compulsively readable, the award-winning author Louisa Luna’s Tell Me Who You Are is an utterly gripping psychological thriller that begs the question: Can a person ever really outrun their past?