Definitely not all is what it seems! Sandie Jones has quickly become a favorite and at this point I'll read every book by her! Intriguing and fast paced, The Blame Game kept me guessing right up to the very end! Twists and turns so quiet I didn't even know they were coming until they hit me head on! Thank you so much!

Another really good thriller from Sandie Jones! I wish I hadn't taken so long to read this because the twists were wild but if you take breaks between the chapters, it's easy to forget what was going on. It was a little slow to start but the second half definitely picked up and kept me hooked!

Naomi is a therapist who oversteps a lot of boundaries with her patients in hopes of helping them. She has past trauma and this makes her want to always help all of her clients no matter what the situation entails. I did enjoy this book and near the end I couldn’t put the book down. I rated it at 3 stars rather than 4, only because I felt like there were lots of details written in that could have been left out. While I enjoyed the ending, it was kind of abrupt and I still had a few unanswered questions.

Thank you so much @Minotaur_Books & @NetGalley for giving me this eARC in exchange for my honest and unbiased review (Release Date | 16 August 2022)

SYNOPSIS | Naomi is a therapist specialising in domestic abuse who runs her private practice out of her home. She is known to go above & beyond for her clients which includes offering one of them a place to stay in her secondary apartment as a kind of safe house. Her husband (Leon) isn't supportive of this idea so she doesn't tell him, except that client goes missing & the police want to talk to Naomi about her involvement with him.

WHAT I LIKED:
- even though the story felt choppy, I kept flipping the pages to see how it all wraps up
- popcorn thriller vibes

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
- the ending felt extremely abrupt & didn't actually bring anything to conclusion
- so much miscommunication & outright lying
- Naomi was a frustrating main character & she had a complete disregard for any & all boundaries
- I have read too many books recently that feature a less than trustworthy therapist

What did I just read?!

Ever created something with yarn and discovered that you’ve got bunches? LOL. That’s what this story was like….tons of untangleable bunches.

Despite unlikable characters, lack of ethical professionalism, and a manipulative, unreliable narrator, I had to finish to see what happened.

If you can keep your eye on the main idea and ignore the bunches, it’s a fast thrilling ride and the epilogue is fantastic. The twists come out of nowhere and the narrative is unpredictable.

Let’s not forget that fabulous cover! Atmospheric.

I was gifted this advance copy by Sandie Jones, St. Martin’s Press, and NetGalley and was under no obligation to provide a review.

Main Characters:
-- Naomi Chandler – psychologist specializing in treating victims of domestic violence after her father killed her mother when she was a child, late 30s/early 40s, moved to England from New York to be with Leon, works out of a garden office in the yard of their home
-- Leon Chandler – Naomi’s husband, works as an events organizer for the estate in Whitstable where they live
-- Jacob Mackenzie – became one of Naomi’s patients three months prior, has been abused by his wife of 10 years but is hoping to repair their relationship
-- Anna – another of Naomi’s patients, also a transplant from New York, she started having problems with an abusive husband after one of their young sons died a year before

Let me start by saying that I have loved Sandie Jones since receiving an ARC of her debut thriller The Other Woman. I introduced my mother to her books, and the only one I haven’t read is The Half Sister, which currently resides on my Kindle TBR list.

Because of my experience with Jones, I’m giving this book 3 stars and the benefit of the doubt because the other three I’ve read were 5-, 5-, and 4-star reads for me. If it were an unknown (to me) author, I would probably be rating it lower and passing on any other future books. 🤷🏻‍♀️

The story of The Blame Game centers around Naomi and her treatment of two specific patients, both victims of domestic violence. Jacob is a victim of his wife’s abuse, and after 10 years, he wants to save their marriage. Anna and her husband lost a young son a year ago, which is when his abuse of her started, and she is increasingly concerned that he’s going to start to abuse their other two boys. But she is terrified of trying to escape him. She bonds with Naomi over their shared past living in New York.

Muddled in with the present-day story and the driving force behind Naomi’s career choice is her past experience. When she and her sister Jennifer were young, their mother was killed by their father, and it was Naomi’s testimony in court that sent him to prison. Naomi and Jennifer went into foster care, Jennifer was adopted, and they were separated because Naomi was a teenager at the time.

When Naomi met Leon while studying to get her license as a psychologist, her move to England was a chance to start over and remake herself as an advocate for victims of domestic violence. Jennifer, on the other hand, became a drug addict and showed up at an aunt’s house when she turned 18 looking for Naomi and became newly resentful of the fact that Naomi left her again.

Seventeen years later, when we come into the present day, Jennifer has gotten her life together, has a home on Long Island, and reached out to the same aunt for Naomi’s contact information. And their father has been released from prison.

That’s the backstory behind this twisty thriller, and it’s definitely twisty. A completely unreliable narrator, Naomi avoids and conceals the truth from everyone…her husband, the police, her patients, and even herself. She has zero objectivity and continually blurs the lines between therapist and patient—meeting patients outside of her office, offering them refuge in her private home. It’s no wonder that Leon gets angry and suspicious.

Everyone is suspect here…even Naomi herself. I mean, if she lies so easily to the police, why can’t she be lying to us? The key thing that knocked the rating down for me was Naomi’s inability to set boundaries. She is seriously her own worst enemy, but we’re supposed to believe that she’s this well-known and successful psychologist, paving the way for people to escape their abusers. She makes wrong decision after wrong decision after wrong decision. When she recognizes that she should just finally come clean and tell the truth, she makes yet another wrong decision. I had a really hard time buying that.

And when everything finally comes to a head, the book is over with no real conclusion. There’s an epilogue, and we know that the police know who the real criminal is. But there are still a lot of questions that were key to muddying up the story and weren’t resolved. At the end of a thriller, I want to know who was the villain and who was the victim. I want the villain to either get cleanly away (those cases where you close a book and gasp “NOOOOOO”) or get their comeuppance. Holes in the story, though? Not so much.

I won’t give anything away. There were plenty of reviewers who loved this one. Because I have rated this author highly in the past, if you have enjoyed her books, I suggest you go ahead and give this one a read. If you haven’t read Jones before, start with something else so that you, too, can give this one the benefit of the doubt.

The Blame Game Sandie Jones
When you are a therapist where do you draw the line? Naomi finds it hard to maintain the aloofness necessary to prevent an involvement in the lives of her patients. But what happens when she is the main suspect in the disappearance of one of her clients? As her tragic childhood experience weighs heavily on her, who is the real culprit : her estranged sister, her father, her husband? An intense psycho thriller that keeps you guessing to the very end

Sandie Jones’ books have been hit or miss with me however, I really enjoyed The Blame Game. It was a page turner and I finished it in a day. I enjoyed the fact that I genuinely did not know who was lying and who was telling the truth. There were many twists in the book and I was surprised by the ending. The Blame Game is the rare thriller where I felt satisfied with the ending. The only negative about the book is that I really didn’t find the fact that Naomi would lie so much believable. But did not keep me from enjoying the book.

I received an electronic ARC from St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books.

I understood why Naomi had such horrible boundaries with her patients - she wanted to help them in a way she was unable to help her mom. However, the rest of the story fell flat for me. The back-an-forth with the detectives was confusing more than interesting to me. I look forward to reading more from Sandie Jones, even though this book was not for me.

I've read most of the books this author has published. This one is my least favorite, but I will continue reading any future books that she writes and publishes.
Naomi was such an annoying character (IMO). It was difficult to believe that she was a therapist because of the many unprofessional decisions she made throughout the book. Also, I didn't like that she was so deceptive in her personal relationships.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the digital ARC.

While I really enjoyed the first 75% of this book things flipped and things just went off the rails!!! I enjoy Sandie Jones and her writing style this one was just a miss for me overall.

Synopsis per Amazon: As a psychologist specializing in domestic abuse, Naomi has found it hard to avoid becoming overly invested in her clients’ lives. But after helping Jacob make the decision to leave his wife, Naomi worries that she’s taken things too far. Then Jacob goes missing, and her files on him vanish. . . .

But as the police start asking questions about Jacob, Naomi’s own dark past emerges. And as the truth comes to light, it seems that it’s not just her clients who are in danger.

I will forever be baffled by the fact that I just can't quit Sandie Jones's books. I have not ever rated one a 5 star, but they end up being so entertaining in kind of goofy ways IMHO that I kind of want to. But for me, 5 star reviews means that I will re-read that book in the future. And there's no way I am re-reading this book which should have been titled "The Worst Therapist...Ever". I could not with the main plot and subplots going on. The character of Naomi was a hot mess and actually needed therapy. Things jump around a lot and I had to wonder how things would be tied up and then I just kind of said well it can only be like 3, possibly 6 characters, but 3 I said would be too obvious. But it was fun trying to figure out what was going on. And then we get to the ending and why and I went seriously? And I feel like I missed like a huge swatch of things and I am still confused. So that is where I am...confused. 

"The Blame Game" follows therapist Naomi (a long time ex-pat from the United States) living in England with her husband Leo. Naomi specializes in domestic abuse and has a hard time separating herself from her patients. Two of them, Jacob, and Anna need a lot of help and Naomi keeps offering up things that she really should not (a stay at a house that she and her husband are not living in and for people to stay at their home). I also have to ask, is this allowed? I don't think therapists would ever do this in real life and would be written up by a therapists board or something. When Jacob goes missing, and it looks like Naomi was the last to see him, she's quickly suspected by the police in doing something to him and Naomi runs around like a chicken trying to cover her tracks as well as confront her past and present. 

Naomi is a bad therapist. I think I have a hard time with this whole story-line because she oversteps drastically into her patient's lives. We find out at some point she helped a patient escape her husband, and then the husband tracked her down and held a rifle to her head. I am still confused if she even reported this mess to anyone outside of her husband, but I refuse to go back and read this book. Naomi's husband keeps asking her to quit inviting her patients to stay with them and or offer them things she should discuss with him. A reasonable ask. But she acts like since he knows her past (DUN DUN DUN) he should know that she has to do stuff like this and just accept it. FYI, I would have divorced Naomi's ass like eons ago. 

Speaking on other characters, Naomi has no common sense. She doesn't realize at times she's being manipulated. I would think if you specialize in domestic abuse cases you would be good at knowing when people are lying? Am I crazy? I don't know. 

Speaking about Naomi's husband Leo and her one friend, I can see why they are fed up with her. She doesn't have room for anything outside of her patients. And then she's obsessing over her past and you just get tired. 

The writing is just okay, but the flow was kind of nuts. I think at one point I went, has it been 3 days? What is happening? 

The ending was a mess. You get an epilogue and know why things occurred and I went but wait? Why? It made no sense and I just gave up. I guess in the end that it's better to murder people than admit you were in the wrong? I don't know.

I felt like there was a lot of potential with the MC having first hand experience with Domestic Violence, and playing a role in the imprisonment of her father. I feel like that wasn’t really told/expressed in a way that made it clear for the reader until the end. There was potential for a great thriller but it really wasn’t executed in a way that made sense, or intrigued me as a reader.

It was a quick read which was probably why I finished it.

I've loved everything that Sandie Jones has written, so I was thrilled to see that she had a 2022 release coming! The Blame Game was a quick, fun read. It's hard to say much about this one without spoiling, but definitely add this to your 2022 summer TBR - it's the perfect beach read with a fun, shocking ending!

Wow this book was a trip!

Naomi is a psychologist that focuses on patients dealing with domestic abuse. After having her own trouble with it growing up, she is willing to help her patients as much as she can as long as they’re safe. Jacob is one of Naomi’s patients and he confesses to her that his wife is extremely abusive, Naomi is willing to help him out and offers him refuge. But then things start to get weird…

I feel like I can’t say too much without giving away the plot but woooow I loved this book! It was really addicting and I kept trying to figure out who exactly was doing what in this book. It was so crazy but such a great read.

While I have read and enjoyed this author's books, The Blame Game was far from my favorite. Right from the beginning we learn that Naomi is/has been keeping secrets from her husband, Leon. And one of her clients is a very whiny, creepy kind of guy. By lying even more as she tries to help him, she gets involved in serious trouble and does a series of law breaking cover ups. The first 50% of the book is a slow buildup and the next 50% makes it pretty easy to see where the plot is going and what is more than likely going to happen. I felt like the ending was very abrupt and there is no conclusion as to how all the accusations thrown between Naomi and Leon were ever resolved. This book was a failure for me.

Short and sassy. I loved this fast paced thriller. Perfect for. Beach or pool read. The twist were not predictable and had me guessing what really happened over until the end.

#theblamegame #netgalley
Oh my. The twists in this book. I kind of figured out what was happening about half way through but then it make me question myself.

Interesting story that kept my attention until the last page!

The Blame Game
Sandie Jones
⭐️⭐️⭐️

Hmm…it’s a game no one wins and no one loses or at least that’s what I thought…DV but whose is telling the truth the wife or the husband…. So much going on in this book and lots of who is to blame? It was an okay read for me, I feel like it could of been better but I did enjoy it trying to figure out who was to blame!

I am a big Sandie Jones fan, and this one was great. The plot flowed well and I was able to plow through this book in only one sitting.