Next Therapist Please
By
Laurie Finkelstein
A journey through life, therapists and potential husbands.
One
of the few books I’ve read about journeys through mental illness that actually
made me laugh. (cry and a few other fuzzy moments of remembrance)
This is a journey, written in first person, but also written in present tense, a tense we normally don’t see in fiction. Here, it worked.
Janie leads a charmed life. Charmed with the love of a husband she adored and two children. One, Drew, had Tourette Syndrome and we suffered along with Janie to discover his illness and remedies. We were so into Drew that we might not have been prepared for when a crane fell on top of their car and the men in her life were killed.
Janie suffers from depression, anxiety attacks and OCD conditions she’s had all her life. We follow along in her journal as she takes us through her life as a successful artist living in a cottage on Balboa Island. We meet her friends and she challenges us to pick her next husband, including her last therapist Rob.
Therapists: The book is divided into three parts: Part one is her everyday life, part two is her sessions with six therapists, so many she needs to give them numbers. We find out why she culls them from her life.
Potential husbands: We can related to her means of dating, which includes online dating sites. We can add to that a handyman and her ex-therapist.
Next Therapist Please is a delightful journey with Janie, a journey we might not want to end. There’s laughter, a few tears and, as mentioned above a few fuzzy moments of remembrance.
I give this four stars: four because the story skips over so many of the mental illness moments we could learn more about and four because well, maybe there were just a few too many changes of clothes. The story was light when it could have been light and so much more.
Still, it was a delight to read. Looking forward to reading more by Laurie Finkelstein.
Patricia A. Guthrie Reviewer
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