Everyone has a breaking point. Is this marriage based on unconditional love or an unhealthy obsession?Susan Branch’s life revolves around the care of her charming and inscrutable husband John, a man born into wealth and prestige who lost his family’s fortune when his mysterious chronic illnesses left him bedridden. Together they live a decrepit existence beholden to the current owners of his … of his family’s former estate.
After years of devoting herself to John’s care, Susan is worn out and frustrated. Yet she is determined to scrape together whatever resources she can to keep John comfortable and happy. This includes stealing Demerol from the doctor’s office where she works to feed John’s ever-increasing need for pain medication.
As John’s condition continues to puzzle doctors, Susan begins to notice strange objects appearing around her house. Ever wary of creepy Old Pete, the groundskeeper, Susan decides to confront the elderly man and put an end to his snooping for good.
John suffers a critical emergency, but he is saved and is soon released from the hospital. As his health begins to improve, Susan dreams of a normal life, but her hope for a miracle transforms into a nightmare one fateful afternoon when she discovers
the true cause of John’s sickness.
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This author commanded my attention within the first page. In the acknowledgements, at the end, the author states the book is based on a factitious disease. I vacillated between thinking the wife wanted attention, thus maintaining her husband’s constant sicknesses, and that the husband was causing his illnesses.
On a visceral level, this was a very disturbing book, especially toward the end of Book 1 in a series of 3. However, when I was finished reading, I automatically wanted to read the next book.
The author writes well and captures the essence of the disease. There were passages that were hard to read due to the character also likely a psychopath. It was troubling the couple maintained this “sick” relationship – without challenging or questioning the events within the book.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
This book seemed right up my alley. I went into it expecting something dark twisted and possibly more than a bit uncomfortable. In the beginning this almost seemed like it might pay off but as I got deeper into it, it became painfully obvious where it was actually going.
The story starts off slow which didn’t bother me much until all the questions came and the answers didn’t live up to expectations. Like how Suze met John. His mom was shouting at him about falling down in the kitchen and breaking something and Suze was a nurse in the hospital at the time. The way John and his mother talked I got the impression he was a young kid. However, Suze marries him just two years or more later so at the very least he must be 18 and she’s a nurse, not an intern or anything so I’m placing her at early 20’s. I dunno something about their introduction to each other didn’t spark relationship vibes. It didn’t spark any emotion it just read as information. And unfortunately, the answers it gave fell flat.
Suze, after hearing John shouting about suing the doctor who can’t fix him decides she’s going to be with this guy romantically. He’s been in and out of the hospital consistently for two years and, as far as I can tell they haven’t been on one date, but in a moment when he’s being as obnoxious as he can be that’s when she decides to take him on. It’s hard to get on board with that when we haven’t seen him being overtly nice and a decent human being. Basically, doing what most narcissist and sociopaths do playing it up good to get their prey and then showing their true colours after their brainwashing mission is complete. Without all of this prep work John is immediately unlikeable, especially since our opening to him was textbook manipulation 101 so readers are looking to see how he made her so dependent on him when he’s always sick and actually needs her. How did he nip away at her own self worth to get to this point? But, as I already said it turns out he did nothing, she willingly walked into this.
That is the other thing, John is really unlikeable but so is Suze. When he shouts at her she even mentions that he shouts at everybody but not her. Sigh, so he’s always been an a$$ yet in one of those moments she decides to start loving him. She so passive about everything too. No matter how stuck in the relationship she is without a job John is as good as dead. With all the pent-up negative energy she has she always chooses to stay with him and risk losing the job she needs to take care of him. She’s clearly angry and feels trapped but as all the evidence points to her knowing he was a nuisance before taking him on it’s hard to feel for her deciding it was her duty to help him. He was most definitely not her problem. She was also clearly suffering, even if she didn’t know it, from a need to save people and John was the perfect subject for that. This also made it hard to feel for the end because it’s obvious she’s in this because of her own mental illness crutch so she’s no better off than John.
The plot got more frustrating as the book went on, mostly because we knew what was happening. It was obvious. The fact Suze couldn’t see it was obvious was more of an annoyance than good plotting. Like how she never that I can remember verbalises that he’s clearly addicted to painkillers but only complains she might get fired over it. Or that fact that he was high out of his mind one time yet hadn’t touched the painkillers. Like he’s not supposed to be up about and walking so where did this high come from if the drugs are still there. She’s a nurse she should know better. She catches him walking without his brace but then accuses her landlady of lying about him walking and only vaguely thinks about it when she walks away. There is no way she forgot that he was out and about when she had such an intense reaction to him moving when she saw him.
Then when she finds items in the house under the bed of all places, she accuses the caretaker of leaving them behind. Sigh, after decades of doing the same job why would he go out of his way to walk all the way into her husbands’ room and then, of all things, shove the evidence far underneath the bed because that’s what criminals do hide the weapon at the scene. The more time we spent in her head the less likely her level of naivete felt believable. Then the ending comes and it’s just over. She takes the crazy route instead of just leaving John alone to deal with the situation unsatisfied with the prospect of his addiction never being fulfilled again. Now they’re both crazy and John is enjoying his crazy, I doubt Suze is though so it feels like she lost here. And it’s abrupt. Like over.
Maybe if it ended differently this might have read better. Maybe if John came off more as manipulative and lovable instead of whiny and annoying the present ending might have fit better. Maybe if it felt like Suze was manipulated into this marriage with more setup and groundwork written into the story I would’ve liked her more. Especially if, as a nurse, she wasn’t so clueless to not notice the signs once they happened. It’s hard to believe that after all those years together he’d suddenly make his first mistake. There had to be signs before this.
Also, it’s hard to believe that with his condition he would jeopardise the family income because he can’t possibly feed his desire without her insurance, and the meals she provides him, the hospital stays he loves so much would be gone. All situations are relative so it’s hard considering his situation that he’d even allow the business to go under. The way it happened felt too easy. There are so many simple, dark and manipulative things he could’ve done to ensure he kept Suze trapped. most of them would help feed his addiction so it’s odd he’d intentionally let a world that is easily designed to support his habit crumble considering what his habit actually is. He’s an addict, destroying the source of his addiction is counterproductive.
I think this is where it all fell apart for me. I couldn’t feel for either of these characters. Neither of them read as unintelligent enough to make the decisions they made. The eerie dark feeling of the plot didn’t get a chance to settle in because John’s character was always off so it was all a matter of waiting for Suze to realise what we all knew pretty much from the beginning of the story. It didn’t dig deep enough into Suze’s psychosis for me to buy the snap at the end and John was too annoying and what he was doing was obvious enough that I couldn’t take him seriously.
This story got more average as I continued reading. The good thing is it was written well, the pacing was fine. I never felt bogged down reading it or so annoyed I gave up on it. It was definitely an okay read. It just wasn’t as intense as I expected it to be and I didn’t hate or love the characters enough to get attached to this story.
I recently had the pleasure of providing a foreword to a collection called Lost Voices released through The Writing Collective. Within that collection, a number of outstanding stories were featured, but the stories Wojciechowski wrote have stayed with me. I’d never read any of her work, and it was either Joseph Sale or Ross Jeffery (both featured in the same collection) who suggested I start with this.
Sick is a psychological-medical-thriller that had me riveted. Now, don’t get that phrase wrong – this isn’t Michael Crichton ER stuff or Grey’s Anatomy. No, this leans more towards something Tom Six would conjure than Mr. Crichton.
We are introduced to Susan and John. Susan is a nurse, now working at a podiatric clinic. She’s married to John, a chronic sufferer. He’s clumsy, frail and often dealing with medical issues that confound the most experienced of doctor’s. They met when Susan was a nurse treating John. Back then he was the heir to a family fortune, living in a mansion. Now, with his wealth squandered, they’re relegated to living in the guest house, the new mansion owners feeling sorry for the couple’s situation.
This thing hums along. You feel for Susan but also have moments of frustration and anger as you see brief glimpses of John playing his situation up to manipulate her.
I liked how Christa never fully takes her foot off the gas pedal, but also never slams it to the floor until the finale. It builds and builds, intrigue to what is going on growing. As things keep crumbling around Susan, you know somethings about to break, somethings going to crack – and when it does – fantastic stuff.
I highly recommend this for people looking to check out Christa’s work, but also for those who like limited set-piece thrillers. There are minimal characters and minimal locations and Wojciechowski uses that to the utmost.