BookBrowse Reviews This Might Hurt by Stephanie Wrobel

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Following the death of her mother, Natalie Collins has kept a painful, dark secret from her sister, Kit.

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This Might Hurt by Stephanie Wrobel is a contemporary psychological thriller packed with unexpected twists and turns that connect from one mini-cliffhanger to the next. With an astute intuition of human nature, Wrobel paints the plot with engaging scenes of loose, snarky banter and tense confrontations between characters, often evoking the tone of a personal memoir rather than a work of fiction. The inhabitants of this world feel viscerally real, but this atmosphere of realism is punctured throughout the story with mesmeric scenes of unreality.

The book introduces Natalie Collins, a pragmatic marketing manager in Boston who excels in her career despite the incompetence and chauvinist attitudes she must deal with from certain clientele and peers. The set-up gives off a distinct "lady in a power suit" vibe à la the collected and competent Darcy Maguire in What Women Want facing down the frat-boy Nick Marshall-types who hound her from across the corporate ladder. However, far from being a self-empowering romantic comedy in the big city, the novel suddenly changes tone when Natalie receives a mysterious email during her lunch break. Menacing and to the point, the anonymous message threatens to expose an agonizing secret Natalie has been keeping from her younger sister, Kit, since their mother's death over a year ago. After an abruptly terminated phone call with a man who may or may not be behind the email, Natalie is left with one option. She must go and confront her sister directly at Wisewood, an obscure self-improvement retreat held on a small island off the coast of Maine where Kit has been for the past half-year.

The chain of events is linear but alternates rhythmically between the past and present. Chilling scenes of former childhood trauma and parental manipulation intermix with suspense in the present as Natalie first steps onto the frozen grounds of Wisewood in the dead of winter. During her search for her sister, she encounters an eclectic range of personalities among the island's shaved-headed staff, whose artificial smiles thinly mask their mistrust of outsiders. She hears conversations of the great "Teacher" who founded and leads the Wisewood program, yet the Teacher herself is nowhere to be found. Only after stumbling upon a truth she was never meant to find does Natalie learn that she is not the only person there with a secret she would rather keep buried.

The essence of the world brought to life through Wrobel's characters in This Might Hurt is one bereft of affection and compassion. Prior to the events of Wisewood, Natalie and Kit's lives are revealed to be automated, among other things, by a myriad of empty repetitive work tasks, smartphone notifications and single-serve microwave dinners. This might call to mind the lyrics of the Nine Inch Nails song "Every Day Is Exactly the Same": "Every day is exactly the same / There is no love here and there is no pain." While Natalie has embraced the rat race, Kit has instead chosen to throw away her job security because it means nothing if she cannot escape the guilt and fear that hold her hostage to the death of her mother.

Wisewood's alluring promise of achieving the "Maximized Self" on a private island at first comes across no differently than the tagline of any exorbitantly priced wellness meditation retreat (see Beyond the Book). However, the validating tactics used by the staff and the enigmatic Teacher in their interactions with Kit offer a firsthand look into the inner workings of modern cults and how they will oftentimes use the truth to deceive, isolate and emotionally manipulate their members. The question remains of whether Natalie, who has herself lied to keep Kit from a life-altering secret, will succeed in freeing her sister from the idea that she will never have value or acceptance outside the walled perimeters of Wisewood.

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in March 2022, and has been updated for the January 2023 edition. Click here to go to this issue.