'In this spellbinding novel, a young mother is struck by a mysterious psychological affliction that illuminates the eerie dimensions of the human mind—and of love. A provocative literary puzzle from the New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Miracles.'

The Strange Case of Jane O. was written in such a clinical way, I can only assume it was Walker's intention for it to read like non-fiction, like a legitimate first-hand experience. That's how it felt for me anyway.

This story unfolds for us in alternating perspectives; one being Dr. Byrd, the psychiatrist treating Jane O., and the second is through Jane's letters to her son.

I started reading this yesterday, without any expectations, and found I could not stop. I couldn't and I didn't. Not until I finished last night. I just sat down and read the whole thing.

Even though this comes off very scientific and straight-forward, and maybe lacking some emotional aspect and character connection/draw we long for when reading, it was also intriguing, surprisingly gripping and wildly thought-provoking. And because of this juxtaposition, I find it difficult to articulate how well and truly sunk I was from beginning to end.

It was impossible to discern if either POV was trustworthy. At times, neither of them felt like it and for the life of me, I couldn't figure it out. I appreciate unreliable MCs/POVs WHEN they're done well. I like the pull of curiosity without feeling like I'm being dragged, and naturally, I want to be kept on my toes - neither of which is a given, obviously. But it was certainly given here. That's exactly what this book did for me.

Do I recommend? Absolutely. Especially for those who find psychiatry, diseases and disorders of the mind fascinating like I do.

In the end though, you may find yourself wondering if it was Jane's brain on fire, or if all of the bizarre occurrences we experience with both Jane and Dr. Byrd, were something else entirely....

.....but you'll have to find out for yourself........ ;)

Thank you NetGalley and Random House for this arc in exchange for review!

Pub date: 2.25.25

Thank you NetGalley and Random House for this arc in exchange for review!

Pub date: 2.25.25

Ob. Sessed. This book was so fantastic! I have loved Karen Thompson Walker's past 2 novels, and was thrilled to nab an early copy of her latest. Obviously it did not disappoint, and I think this is her best yet. (If you haven't read the The Dreamers yet though, read that one first!) A rare literary fiction novel that has a great mystery and a satisfying, uncomplicated conclusion. I could not put this book down and read it in a day.

I almost don't want to say more because I went into this blind and it really made all the difference. Just know that it involved a woman named Jane who is hallucinating and losing time. She's practical though, and has one of those memory things where she can remember every day of her life in exact detail, so things that may derail her or make her not trust her memory are especially peculiar. Told through the view point of her therapist, and Jane herself, it's a wild ride that I know people are going to love next year!

Can I give this story 6 stars? Oh my goodness - I just finished The Strange Case of Jane O, and I am delightfully stunned by this amazing story! Psychiatrist Dr. Byrd takes on a mysterious patient, Jane, and is professionally baffled by her bizarre symptoms. Jane has suffered from hallucinations, and some blackouts, and needs help reigning in her life.

This story is written from Dr. Byrd's point of view at times, and also from letters that Jane has written to her toddler son, Caleb. I was smitten with this book from page one, and was spellbound until the last word. I took a good long while to turn the story over and over in my head after I finished, and then ultimately, a sweet tear fell down my cheek.

Highly recommend!

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read and review The Strange Case of Jane O.

While I know very little about psychology, I was absolutely drawn in and found The Strange Case of Jane O. truly fascinating. Her previous novel, The Dreamers, also evoked a similar what-the-hell is going on vibe that I found fantastic! This one really left me reeling with one reveal after another. I can't wait to see this book get the hype it deserves!

The novel begins from the perspective of a psychiatrist who has begun to treat the mother of a young child who is having what he’ll describe as fugue episodes as well as other unusual things. For example, Jane had a conversation with a middle-aged man who died twenty years earlier when he was in high school.

Jane then tells things from her perspective, and, initially, she also seems like a reliable narrator.

Things get more interesting as the novel progresses.

NetGalley provided an advance copy of this book, which RELEASES FEBRUARY 25, 2025.

This was one of those books where I was attracted by the cover and title, so I did have the advantage of going into it blind. It definitely adds more suspense, but trust me when I say this novel isn't lacking when it comes to suspense. If you like psychological thrillers, you will like this! It also has a huge mystery component to it that I enjoyed. I'm left with so many questions, though. Overall a great and unique read.
Thanks for the ARC!

I requested this from NetGalley based on author Angie Kim's super positive review. I thought it was a mystery, ala Sherlock Holmes, but it is a psychological mystery/thriller with a particular angle that I was not expecting and am glad I didn't know about when reading it. I purposely did not tag my review here or on goodreads with that angle so as to not ruin the surprise for other readers.

This is a story of Jane, a mother of a young child, who comes to visit psychiatrist Dr. Henry Byrd, after a disturbing personal incident that she can't remember. She claims to have met Dr. Byrd decades earlier and recalls momentos from his office at the time. Strangely, Dr. Byrd has no memory of seeing her as a patient.

The reader is exposed to more of Dr. Byrd's personal history and his developing relationship with Jane, who goes on to have more troubling situations that point to a mental health crisis which Dr. Byrd seems unable to properly diagnose or treat. The reader initially trusts Dr. Byrd, then Jane, and then isn't sure what to believe.

The book is a slow burn with an intriguing conclusion that makes you think. It is a book for people who are curious and appreciate that there is more than meets the eye in our universe. A more intellectual read vs. a classic mystery/thriller trope. There is a covid-adjacent angle which I don't love, but it supported the plot development and was fairly benign. I enjoyed it, 4-stars.

Thank you, NetGalley, and Random House, for the pre-release ARC to read and review.

This was such a fantastic book! It was like a puzzle in the whole book kind of played out in my mind like a movie, so I think it would make a great one. I love all the little puzzles and twists and turns that this book had. I love how it seems kind of like a magical realism, but also paranormal/Sci-fi

Thank you to NetGalley, to the author, and to the publisher for this complementary ARC in exchange for my honest review!!!

What a strange and amazing story! One of those where you are reading it and picturing who should play the characters in a movie version. Mind-twisting.

This book was something completely unexpected! A young woman experiences a mysterious psychological incident which sets off a number of sequential mysteries when her psychiatrist goes missing. This is the kind of gripping but slower mystery that goes places you would not expect, and the writing was absolutely beautiful. I wouldn't normally go for a sci-fi book, but this really hit the spot!

This was... somewhat anticlimactic. The story started off slow, but it eventually picked up as Jane's backstory began to unravel. Then it kind of lost me again. I'm giving it 2 stars because the premise was interesting and there was an unexpected reference to Elliott Smith. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

The Strange Case of Jane O is a fascinating dive into the unknown. From the moment Jane wakes up in a park with no memory of the past 24 hours, the story takes you on a whirlwind exploration of mental illness, psychosis, and the blurred lines between delusion and alternate realities. The plot is both intriguing and unpredictable, keeping me hooked as I tried to piece together what was truly happening. I found the story incredibly unique and thought-provoking, with a depth that lingers long after the last page. Though I expected it to lean more into a thriller at times, the psychological and existential twists made it even more compelling. Highly recommended!

I was a psychology major in college, and my favorite things to learn about were the case histories of patients whose unusual symptoms and circumstances revealed fascinating things about the workings of the mind and the brain. So when I was invited to review this book on NetGalley and read the description, I was immediately hooked.

This novel tells the story of a woman with a perfect memory who begins to experience strange symptoms -- hallucinations, blackouts lasting hours to days -- and as a result starts to doubt her memories. It's told in alternating sections in the form of case notes of the psychiatrist treating her and of her own letters to her young son, which she writes for him to read at some point in the future and which reveal her struggle to understand what is real and what is not. But the reader soon realizes that neither narrator is completely reliable, Jane because of her symptoms and her doctor because of his past efforts to research phenomena that can't necessarily be proved through science. The result is a fascinating, propulsive story that will leave anyone questioning their memory and whether someone with a seemingly perfect memory can remember things that never happened.

This is a strange book. I had read both of the author's past two novels and felt the same way, but was not as unnerved by them as I was this one. It is about mental health, parallel universes, coincidence, and memory with shades of COVID. The chapters alternate narrators between a discredited psychiatrist and a patient he is (reluctantly) treating. I was disturbed, distressed and engrossed, and yet, To me, the writing was a little stiff and the pandemic virus plot line a little contrived. I cannot recommend.

Strange and beautiful, this engrossing tale cross-crosses time and space in the voice of two intimately-voiced first-person POV narrators.

First we have Dr Henry Byrd, a psychiatrist with a traumatic past, who appears to have many secrets that may or may not intersect the world of his current patient - a woman who is quite likely the most unusual client Henry will face.

Henry’s patient, Jane O, thirty-eight years old, is suffering from the life-long effects of her prodigious and excessive memory, a phenomenon known as “Hyperthymesia”. This condition has resulted in Jane’s deep and profound “loneliness of the soul”, which may be related to her recent eerie psychological behavior - behavior that Dr Byrd soon finds to be as deeply troubling as it is unexplainable.

As Jane begins to tells her inner story via a diary written for her infant son — a backdrop that may help explain some of her current challenges — we, the reader, get a fascinating peek into her extraordinary world, -- a tale that counterbalances the (initially at least) more rationally-focused confusion of Dr Byrd.

How Jane and Henry come to resolve their respective narratives is a story well worth reading, and one that kept this reader deeply absorbed (and guessing all the way) throughout this puzzling and expertly-crafted narrative.

Without giving the plot away (no spoilers here) this is a tale that will delight explorers of the human mind — as it challenges linear thinking, dissolving the boundaries between the relationship of human identity, memory, trauma, and our mental experiences and choices — and opens the door on a world that will ask far more questions than it will answer.

A great big thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for an ARC of this mind-bending book. All thoughts presented are my own.

Jane O., is on the surface, a very ordinary woman. She lives in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn and works at the main branch of the New York Public Library in Manhattan . She is a single mother and has her child, a little boy, in a homey daycare. However, Jane is anything but ordinary . She remembers literally every fact and object she has any interest in. And, recently, she has encountered, on a busy Manhattan street, the middle aged version of a boy, Nico, she knows has committed suicide. Days later, she enters a kind of fugue state and wanders off, leaving her child at daycare. She can remember nothing of what she did, coming to in a park much later. She seeks out the services of Dr. Byrd, a psychiatrist she saw briefly as a teenager after Nico's death.

Byrd and Jane live lives that are much alike. Both are single parents; both have experienced profound loss and trauma. Jane through the suicide of Nico moments after she talked to him, Byrd, through the loss of his wife and then his job. Their story spools out, in turn, through letters written by Jane, which are to be read when he is older, and by Byrd in a case note.

This is not a traditional mystery. I thought I had figured it out a half dozen times, but I was wrong. Its ending makes perfect sense, is satisfying and ,in looking back over the course of the story, all elements are tied together. The reader is in for a good ride. Walker keeps the plot moving along like a Coney Island roller coaster, zigging and zagging , climbing great heights and plunging down to great depths. This a five star read.

I was SO excited for this early read because I have loved her previous 2 books. Now the worst part about having read this is that now I'm ready for her next before this even hits pub date.
The research and thought behind this novel is mind blowing. The author has written such a unique, thought-provoking, and well hashed out story with such sympathetic characters. Dr. Byrd, Jane, Nico, and the Dr.'s wife were somehow all equally developed and easy to identify with.
The mystery created behind this story was also so intriguing. At first I felt myself immersed in the parallels between motherhood and dissociation then caught up in the race to capture Jane's history and try to diagnose her. But the 'answer' was so much more pleasing and fascinating than I imagined. A highly recommended read!

Wonderfully unique and beautifully written. This was not what I was expecting but I was pleasantly surprised.

I was so excited for this book...unfortunately this isn't my favorite book by this author. It was very interesting, and it kept me turning pages, but ultimately I didn't love this story. Dr. Byrd, an NYC psychologist, is sharing his notes about one of his patients, Jane O. Jane has been having these "blackout" episodes where she disappears, but continues to care for herself and her son. Is this really a fugue state....or is she pretending? Interspersed through the story are Jane's letters to her infant son. I was confused some of the time, really thrown by the pandemic section, but I could not stop reading. I will read anything from this author, but her first two books were hits to me--this one fell flat.

Beautiful writing and an intriguing story. Not the ending I wanted, but I appreciated it.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/213870076