What makes a toxic-relationship story so irresistible? Just as the characters can’t seem to stay away from each other despite knowing it’s a Very Bad Idea, we can’t stop turning the pages to see what happens next, even if we suspect that finding out will be both electrifying and aggravating—perhaps even disturbing.
Readers in search of books that spin toxic traits into sexy entertainment gold will relish Jessica Knoll’s edgy, darkly romantic thriller, Helpless. After 12 years away, Faye Heron, a multihyphenate Hollywood powerhouse with an equally successful producing-partner husband, returns to her upstate New York alma mater for the funeral of her favorite film professor and mentor Patrick Toner, aka PT.
There, she reunites with PT’s nephews, her friend Campbell and her ex-boyfriend Henry. Faye hasn’t spoken with Henry since their difficult breakup, which she transformed into an Emmy-winning TV episode. She worries he’ll be angry with her, even as her desire for him is inexorably rekindled; she feels “like we are images on one of those infrared cameras, everyone else in blue, us in red. The only two in the room burning with the truth about who I really am.”
Henry, mightily displeased with “the episode,” drugs and kidnaps Faye, hiding her in a remote cabin in the Adirondacks. But is that the only reason he’s locked her away, or is there more to the story? As the two warily circle each other, they fall back into old patterns replete with intense sex, dominance and submission, and sometimes-violent struggles for control. When blackmail and murder come into play, Faye wonders if she’ll make it out of the ordeal alive. “Even if I get out of here and explain I’ve been drugged, kidnapped, starved, forced to wash my hair with Pert Plus, I will be ruined,” she thinks.
Knoll tackles class conflict, taboo desires and long-held secrets rising to the surface—plus a wealth of shocking twists—with skill and aplomb. Helpless is sure to delight fans of Knoll’s previous books, as well as Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Sequel, Colleen Hoover’s Verity and Emerald Fennell’s film version of Wuthering Heights.