Fascinating and totally unpredictable! I absolutely loved this book, couldn’t put it down. One of my favorite books of the year.

Okay, Sandie Jones, you got me. I spent the whole book thinking are you kidding me. This is not even going to be a real twist, but then there was a real twist! Great work! It wasn't the most amazing book I've ever read because I spent the majority of it wondering how in the world a therapist could be so manipulated by every person surrounding her. Didn't she study psychology to make a living? That aside, this was an entertaining book that I obviously didn't predict.

Thank you so much to @netgalley for this advanced reader's copy for an honest review.

A psychologist, Naomi, has a patient, Jacob, who has been abused by his wife. Naomi's specialty is abuse. The book has a lot of twists and turns and winds up with a murder in its pages. Naomi's career is at risk as she is being investigated for many things. A lot of characters in the book. An interesting read.

This book just didn’t grab me. It was slow to start for me and I did not feel connected to the characters

Naomi is an American living in the London area. She is a psychologist who specializes in domestic abuse clients. She sometimes has a hard time separating her personal feelings from her work, thus becoming too involved in some of her clients lives. She has been working with Jacob, an abused man who finally get the courage to leave his wife. But when Jacob disappears, not everything is as it seems. Naomi must figure out the truth, all while not being dragged into a messy situation. All the while she is still seeing her other clients who also need her help. Can Naomi continue to help her clients without her own secrets being discovered?

I thought the idea of this book was great, I was not wild about the execution. The ending left me with more questions than answers in my opinion. I found Naomi to be completely unprofessional and in the real world her license would be revoked. Her husband was unlikable in that he really only cared about himself and his feelings. I did like the reveal towards the end. I would have rated this higher if the ending was more concrete. But of course, that could be what the author intended.

Overall I give this book a 2.5 (rounded up to 3) stars. I would like to thank NetGalley, the publishing company, and the author for access to this book in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed "The Other Woman" by Sandie Jones, so I was thrilled when I got approved for this advanced copy on NetGalley! Unfortunately, this book falls victim to what so many books do - authors writing a book with a psychologist main character and having there be SO many issues with the psychologist. I wish authors would stop including psychologists in their books and portraying them unethically.

Thank you NetGalley, St Martins Press and Sandie Jones
I enjoyed this novel from the author, quick read.
3 stars

🌟REVIEW 🌟

The Blame Game by Sandie Jones

Naomi Chandler is a therapist with a soft.spot for her patients. But when is it helping and when is it crossing the line?
This tense thriller moved through layered storylines with ease. While initially I wasn't very engaged, by about a third of the way in I was devouring it.
This book explores love, marriage, friendship, and when a professional relationship crosses the line.
Definitely recommend as we move into Fall. Perfect book for cuddling up hh a fire and reading the night away.

I was really looking forward to this book, but it ended up being a bit of a let down. I enjoyed some of it, and the premise of the book was great, but the execution wasn’t there for me

(I was requested to review an ARC as provided by NetGalley and Minotaur Books. This is my unbiased review)

Sometimes there are books that come out from the thriller genre that leave you with the expectation of the typical. From the beginning I wasn't sure what to make of The Blame Game. The psychotherapist and her overzealous willingness to help her clients by any means necessary, the strange and quite damaged clients, and the fragile bond between a husband a wife.

Of course that all leads up to the 'who did it?' and 'what will happen next?' expectation. The reader automatically presumes this is going to be your run of the mill thriller. In some ways it very much is but in other ways it is not. The book left me guessing who was the culprit and who was telling the truth.

To start off with there is the plot and the characters. The story focuses on the psychotherapist Naomi Chandler and what happens when someone willing to help maybe gives too much of herself. One of her clients ends up being not who she suspected and another one of her clients even more so.

The novel is not without its loose ends. However, the questionable loose ends and random splattering of Naomi's fractured past and childhood do not damage the fact the book is a decent read. The guessing game of what is going on when Naomi is accused of having an affair with her client is accelerated when the client goes missing. This all seems the typical story but Jones adds to the story with bits and pieces of things not to be expected.

The Blame Game is a book worth checking out. It is a thriller that meets a thrill readers expectations and then goes to the next step taking the reader to the next level. Does the book leave me asking questions? Sure it does but sometimes that is the best relationship between an author and the reader, when the author leaves more to the reader's imagination. Until next time, happy reading!

So, I have read all of Sandie Jones' past 4 books. The Blame Game is probably the one I was on the fence about the most. The entire book I was SCREAMING at Naomi, the psychtherapist protagonist. She repeatedly made bizarre decisions toward her patients that would have likely caused her to lose her license if she were not a fictional character. In the course of this short-ish novel, we only meet two of her patients, but she oversteps her professional role with each of them. One she offers to let rent a vacant apartment she and her husband own and the other she actually offers to let stay in her house! The author's offered explanation for Naomi's behavior is that because of her background where her father beat her mother to death when she was a teen, she over-empathizes with victims of domestic abuse. Of course her husband of 17 years doesn't appreciate it, but does that matter? Not to Naomi. So one of her clients goes missing and suddenly Naomi is in the hot seat for likely being one of the last people the missing person saw. Does she do the rational thing and come clean and explain what happened the last time she saw her client? Nope. She decides she will spin a ridiculous web of lies to cover her tracks. No big deal since she's innocent, right? (Eyeroll) Even when every lie she tells is easily disproven, Naomi digs in. No one believes her. So as the reader, I could not figure how in the world this book was going to turn out. All said, while I was addicted to the pace of the story, I was THIS CLOSE to giving it two or three stars. But honestly the very very very end of the book is what saved it for me. The epilogue was good enough to pull it up to 4 stars for me.

I never thought I could love a book more than Sandie Jones’ The Other Woman, but this one…. Gosh it may have claimed the top spot!

The absolute whiplash that comes with this books is SO worth the ride. Her characters are flawless as always and the plot building is superb. It’s the make of a great story for me when I just am blindsided by the events that unfold and feel utterly betrayed by the fictional characters and not many books do that to me.

Sandie Jones will forever be at the top of my list of authors and continues to put out thriller after thriller keeping me on the edge of my seat.

I didn’t enjoy this thriller for a couple of reasons. The main one being that Naomi’s balance (or lack thereof) of helping her patients was extremely frustrating to read and crossed so many doctor-patient lines getting overly invested into their lives. In that regard, it was really hard to root for and like Naomi and the positions she put herself in, the lies in which she stupidly told, and ways in which she kept digging herself further and further into trouble.
There were a couple things in the story I thought had a fair amount of emphasis put on them that could’ve lead to a more interesting plot direction and then fell short (ie. the estate and recluse of an owner, Naomi’s backstory, etc).
Honestly this book really felt rushed and was all over the place in terms of potential and execution. I also didn’t think the title fit the book at all, and was poorly chosen. Super disappointing as I have enjoyed other books by Jones in the past.

Thank you St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read/review this ARC!

The Blame Game is a book about boundaries: the boundaries in a marriage, the boundaries between a doctor and their patient, and the boundaries we’re willing to cross to protect what we consider ours.

Naomi has been in trouble before. She hates the rules that keep psychologists from offering actual help to their clients in need, and she’s crossed bounds in the past to provide physical aid to someone she thought deserved it. Which is why she is now running her own practice rather than working at a clinic. And why she is lying to her husband Leon and letting a patient use their cottage without his knowledge. Jacob, an unlikely victim of domestic abuse, just needs a place where he can hide from his wife and start over. Naomi sees no reason why she, as a therapist who happens to own a rental property, can’t provide that place. Even if Leon thinks that crosses lines and even if her profession severely frowns on such behaviors.

Then things start to go terribly wrong. Naomi’s office is broken into, Jacob’s file goes missing, then reappears in her house. Her aunt calls to tell her that her mother’s murderer has been released from prison. Her deeply troubled sister seems to be looking for her. Another client shows up on Naomi’s doorstep, wanting somewhere to stay. A drunken Jacob makes a pass at her. And then the police arrive.

The writing here is clear and descriptive and the structuring of the enigma surrounding Naomi is solid and straightforward. The pacing is excellent – I didn’t feel the narrative lagged at any point – and the mystery is intriguing. It centers less around what is happening than around who is causing it. Is Jacob a master manipulator who has somehow gotten Naomi caught up in a web of dangerous deceit? Is Naomi’s sister seeking vengeance for the past? Is what happened to Naomi’s mom being reenacted by her killer, with Naomi either being framed for the crime or being set up as the final victim? Is Leon, who has righteous cause to be angry, behind it all? I found this conundrum interesting because any/all of these scenarios are conceivable. Everyone is seen from Naomi’s point of view, whose unreliability makes their (possible) criminality plausible. She’s so focused on herself and the role she played in her mother’s death that she doesn’t always see the world as it is. At various points in the novel, that makes for a fascinating whodunit-and-why that captures the imagination of the reader despite the heroine’s often ill-advised bumbling.

Which leads me to my issues with this book. A lot of the thrills and chills of a mystery/suspense/thriller novel come from the idea that it could happen to you. The thought that the reader could find themselves meeting a dangerous, seductive person and be beguiled by them or that they could simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time and find themselves amid a horrific mess not of their making is often what gives the story impetus. The Blame Game didn’t work that way for me, however. I didn’t feel a connection to the problems Naomi faces because I couldn’t imagine too many people being stupid enough to put themselves in that situation. I think I was meant to find Naomi a caring soul but instead, she comes across as careless and cavalier. It doesn’t take long for most psychiatrists and psychologists to figure out that the laws/ethics that separate them from doing more than being a concerned, conscientious guide for their clients exist for their protection. A drowning person, aka the client, will often pull their rescuer down with them. You have to be trained not just on how to get the victim out of the water but also on how to keep them from victimizing you along with them. I could write pages on this issue but my point is simple – the rules protect the vulnerable client and the provider. Naomi’s dismissal of these stipulations bugged me from the start, especially since it also involves treating her husband coldly and ignoring every ounce of input he gives. She invites people onto their property and into their home against his expressed wishes and then seems genuinely startled that it causes problems in their marriage.

Another quibble I had about Naomi and her practice might just be an American thing but I was confused as to how payments and taxes for her business work. At one point she tells Jacob, “I won’t take your money if you’re going to spend the hour imagining a relationship we don’t have.” At another, when she tells Leon she’s booked extra sessions with a client he says, “I suppose it’s all money in the bank.” A client says she’s been skimming money from the housekeeping to pay for her weekly sessions with Naomi (she must have a heck of a housekeeping budget because these appointments typically cost a fair amount.) So Naomi is doing paid work. She is in England, where the NHS doesn’t offer long-term therapies of this sort, meaning that her patients would be paying for her services from their own pockets or via their private health insurance. But two of those clients conceal their identities from her – which made me wonder how she was actually being reimbursed? Unless they’re paying cash – extremely unlikely – surely their names would be attached to the transactions, whether by credit or debit card or other means which would leave a paper trail? And in order to begin treatment, surely she’d have had to have checked ID and medical histories? Even if the clients had presented fake IDs, they would, surely, have proven her innocence to the police? These questions kept plaguing me as I read, and I had to wonder how Naomi was actually allowed to continue practicing when she doesn’t appear to be complying with the basic legal requirements around her job

That said, smooth prose, consistent characterization, and an interesting mystery make The Blame Game an easy-to-read story that is moderately enjoyable despite its foibles. Fans of the domestic thriller or anyone looking for a suspense novel with an emphasis on intrigue over violence/psychosis will probably like it.

Naomi is a therapist with a tendency of getting too close to her clients. Her marriage is stale, and she finds herself drawn to a client so much so that she offers him a place to live. Then another client tugs at her heart strings and she offers this one another place to live….all without telling her husband. When one of the clients turns up missing and a finger is pointing at Naomi, she goes to the cops, no attorney in tow, and many lies.

Naomi is the worst type of therapist; unobjectionable, unethical, no boundaries, unprofessional all the way around. I can’t say I like any of the cast of characters. Writing was ok, would give this author another try. Just found the storyline had many holes. Ending didn’t live up to my hopes.

Thanks to Ms. Jones, Minotaur Books and NetGalley for this ARC. Opinion is mine alone.

I was picked to read an ARC of The Blame Game in exchange for an honest review.

This book really disappointed me. There was too many characters and not enough depth and character development in my opinion. I feel like some will really like this book and other’s will not. That’s ok each of us have our own likes and dislikes. Not every book you pick up will be your absolute favourite. I was expecting more thriller and I felt it was more just a mystery with characters I didn’t like at all. I really wanted a showdown at the end and more reasons as to why the characters were doing what they were doing. I felt there was a lot of blanks that needed to be filled.

A big thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this one.

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Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the advanced copy of THE BLAME GAME for in exchange for my honest opinion!

This is my first that I have read by Sandie Jones, but I am happy that I got the chance to read it! It was quick paced and kept me on my toes. I was very much invested in the main character Naomi and wanted to see her story line through!

The only thing I was not the biggest fan of, was the ending. I feel like it ended too abruptly and was too fantastical. It did not follow the same pace as the rest of the book had. I would have been more than happy if a couple of additional chapters were added in to flesh some details out/make the ending slightly more realistic!

This book was a little disappointing compared to previous works I’ve read from this author. It felt a little sloppy in terms of character development - many of the main characters actions didn’t seem natural or believable. And the “twist” was somewhat predictable since there were so few characters to choose from, though it was still fun to read and guess at.

Naomi is a psychologist who specializes in domestic abuse. She loves helping her clients in any way she can. Even if it means giving too much of herself, and overstepping a bit much. One of her clients, Jacob, is in an abusive marriage and wants out. Naomi wants nothing more but to help him. Then when he winds up missing, Naomi turns into the number one suspect of his disappearance...and weird things keep happening to her. Can she help Jacob...and how do you know when you've gone too far?

I listened to the book a bit more than I read, I really enjoyed the narrator. I think she did a fabulous job.

Overall, I thought the book was good. I wasn't as invested as I thought I would be. There wasn't any reasoning behind it. It just didn't hook me. I thought Naomi was a bit dumb. She put herself in some of the weirdest situations. As a psychologist I feel like she overstepped a lot. I get why, with her past, but still. I'm not going to go into too much detail and spoil anything, but I shook my head at her a lot.

The twists I didn't 100% see coming. I called part of it, but in the end I was wrong with the majority of it. I love books where you think you know what is happening then bam, you were wrong. The end of the book left me with a few questions.

The first 80% of The Blame Game was very strong, but I found the last bit confusing. A lot going on, and a lot to keep track of. Nonetheless, I still really enjoyed it!