I am not sure I can even give a brief synopsis of This Might Hurt because it is one convoluted book. The gist of it is that there are 3 narrators - one tells the story of a troubled childhood, one is a woman in search of her sister at a “camp” on an island in Maine that has cult like traits and one is an unidentified narrator who does performances about being fearless, each one putting her life in grave danger. The entire book is an effort to try and piece it together and figure out how these narrators are related. It is dark, chilling, filled with lies and secrets waiting to be discovered and so suspenseful. The characters are all flawless and let the readers in to see their dark, sordid pasts and the profound impact it had on them. Between the intricate writing style, constant dropping of hints, revelations that come out of nowhere and slow burn, this book sucked me in and didn’t let me down.

Thank you to Netgalley and Berkley Publishing Group for the ARC.

🌟🌟🌟🌟 4/5 stars

This Might Hurt starts off with a bang and keeps an intense, steady pace throughout. It tells the story of sisters Natalie and Kit. Natalie hasn’t spoken to Kit in 6 months until one day she receives a menacing email. Kit has been at a retreat called Wisewood for half a year and has cut off all contact. When Natalie decides to track down her sister, she discovers that Kit is trapped in the clutches of a cult..and that cult might not let her out either.

This Might Hurt had such an intense and disturbing opening chapter that it reminded me of the movie Midsommar. In the movie, the opening scene puts you on edge so quickly that you are unsettled for the rest of the film. That is what This Might Hurt does to you. I love a cult story and this one gives you a great one. I love how Wrobel uses multiple POVs to allow you to see all sides of the creepy Wisewood. Did I want a little more insanity from the final act? Yes. However, This Might Hurt fully delivers on it’s promise to be a dark, thrilling, and just downright disturbing read.

ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I’m a little torn on this one. I didn’t really like or connect with the characters, but was intrigued with the story. It was slow moving and confusing at times (it took me a while to figure out there was a third unidentified narrator), but I did like the last third and the twist.

I think others will really like this one, I just get lost in the slow burn and prefer a quicker paced story.

2.5 stars - It's hard to rate this one, because I liked the way this started and I liked the way it ended, but the middle was pretty messy for me from a plot perspective. The writing itself was strong, but I felt like the story and perspectives kind of meandered all over the place.
Still, if you love a isolated mystery or a cult based thriller, this is worth checking out. I think it will just be very YMMV
CW: child abuse, high control religion/religious trauma

This book was good, if not a bit anticlimactic.
There are three POV’s,
Two timelines,
Three Main characters,
And a cult.

Two sisters, Natalie and Kit are polar opposites, but love each other nonetheless. When Kit finds Wisewood, a self improvement retreat that requires you cut ties to the outside world, her sister Nat is skeptical to say the least.
When Nat gets an anonymous email from Wisewood threatening to expose a secret she’s kept from her sister, she sets off to find Kit, tell her, apologize, and bring her home.

Overall I liked the story but felt it rambled in some places.
Thank you to Berkeley and Netgalley for my review copy.
Comment

This Might Hurt is a story about two sisters dealing with their respective trauma after the death of their mother. Natalie, the older sister, throws herself into her job. Kit, the younger sister, is still floundering in life and decides to go to Wisewood, an off the grid self-help community, for six months. After having no communication from Kit for those months, Natalie gets an email from Wisewood threatening to tell Kit something that Natalie did. Natalie hightails it out to Wisewood to confess before Kit hears the secret from someone else. Upon her arrival Natalie is immediately put off by the strong cult vibe of the place. Kit maintains she is perfectly fine, she has no intention of leaving because she has found her people and believes in the Teacher.

Interspersed between the sisters' POVs, there is a 3rd unnamed narrator whose story is told from the past up to the current. This girl had a terrible excuse for a father who sought to make his daughters strong through painful lessons. The younger sister grows up to truly believe that she is fearless, she makes painful performance art her life's work until she falls off the grid after a deadly accident.

For a large part of the book the reader is left to wonder who the 3rd narrator is and how these stories will come together....if at all. There wasn't enough tension built up for me to really care about the ending. Speaking of which, the ending was a bit anti-climatic and left semi-open for the reader to interpret what the characters were about to do after the pages stopped.....not my favorite way to end a story. While this one may not have worked for me, if you like stories featuring cults with enigmatic leaders, then this one may be for you!

Rating 2.5 stars rounded up. Many thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for my ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This Might Hurt by Stephanie Wrobel was a wild and thrilling ride. I was captivated from the start and left surprised at the end.

This is a novel about two sisters: Natalie and Kit. Natalie is the Type A go-getter older sister that always tried to compensate where their mom fell short. Kit is the younger sister with less certainty about what she wants out of life. After their mom passed away, Kit is overwhelmed by grief and decides that perhaps a six-month retreat completely off the grid at Wildwood (with the great Teacher) may provide the healing she needs as well as the confidence to overcome her fears. Eventually, Natalie receives an email from the mysterious Wildwood, giving her reason to go there immediately and protect her sister from a secret in their past. Will it bring them closer together or will Wildwood tear them apart once and for all?

Overall, I really enjoyed this novel. I was captivated from the start and there were a few plot twists that I didn’t see coming. Of the sisters, I related to Natalie more. As an older sister myself, the desire to look out for the younger one comes naturally

I have mixed opinions about this book. On one hand it is fast paced and thrilling but can be confusing with the three POV's. I understood the sisters parts but the third was confusing to figure out but when you do it all becomes clearer. The ending has me confused though and a little disappointed. It felt rushed and incomplete in my opinion. Overall though I will read this authors next book because I loved her first one so much.

Fast paced?
Yes.

Cult vibes?
Yes.

Multiple POVs?
Yes.

Past and present?
Yes.

Family drama?
Yes.

Usually, I don’t love family dramas, but this one? I though this one was a winner.

It not only brought the family drama aspect, but I thought this book was fun and I got through it so quickly! I also am always here for anything that has some good cult vibes.

If you like family dramas? Cults? And something that you can get through quickly? I’d suggest this one!

I was expecting more "family drama" with this one and got more "thriller" vibes from it ,but I'm not complaining. The book goes between the POV of Natalie, her sister Kit, and another person who fits in to the story but we aren't told how until about 2/3 of the way in. After reading this though, I hope my sister doesn't join a cult because I don't know if I have it in me to go after her like Natalie does Kit. The "secret" that she was keeping though-- I saw coming from a mile away. Even still this was an enjoyable read.

A pair of sisters, each responded differently to the childhood they endured, one tried to overcome it and one was drowning until she found a safe place to recenter and work on creating a new path.

Coming from a pair of sisters, I love to read books about sisters as I may be partial but I think a sister relationship is quite unique to the other two kinds of sibling relationships. Having two females that can sometimes be compared to each other and are in the same family competing for time and attention can be very difficult. I love when the sisters have the same childhood, but come out very different and then must figure out how and why they are who they are.

Another storyline wove in and out of the Kit and Natalies. A young girl who is unknown until the connection is made, tells the origin story of a woman who also had a hard childhood and once the reader finds out who is who, all the pieces come together. I didn't love the chapters of this young girl as much as Kit and Natalie story, but once I found out who this person is, it definitely made the puzzle feel complete.

This book also had a creepy mystery element to it that kept the pacing moving forward. I would recommend this to readers, but with the warning that if you are sensitive to stories with cult like vibes, then this may not be up your alley. I studied religion in college and love reading books about a group of people getting behind a person or idea and becoming a following and what all that looks like! This was an interesting one!!

One of my favorite tropes is any theme centering around the power of sisterhood, whether its blood sisters or besties. In This Might Hurt, the author introduces us to two sisters, both with the same traumatic upbringing and both coping in entirely different ways.

Kit, the youngest, moves through life as an underachiever, barely getting through one emotional breakdown after another. Then there’s Natalie, the polar opposite, overachiever and super successful at her chosen profession. Both women have secrets and when Kit runs off to Wisewood, a cultish type setting that promises to help their guests achieve ‘true fearlessness’, she completely disappears off the grid.

While I enjoyed the atmosphere Wrobel created, I was pretty confused by the additional character that popped up here and there. I felt misled, honestly, and not in the hey, this is a great unreliable narrator way. I don’t want to be spoilerish so I’ll leave it at that. I found the present timeline to be a bit sluggish and the ending just didn’t hold up. I struggled writing this review because I didn’t hate it but I didn’t like it, either. I read this over a month ago and again, had to struggle to write this.

Not for me but I loved Rose Gold so I’ll definitely continue to read this author.

Thank you, Berkley Publishing, for this gifted copy.

This Might Hurt by Stephanie Wrobel is a suspense book with many layers. This story was told from different viewpoints and holds one of my favorite origin stories. Getting to see the trauma and how it shaped this particular character made their actions take on so much more meaning. I felt Natalie was a staid character and found myself hurrying through her perspective because I loved the other two POV’s so much. If you are looking for a book that will keep you reading late into the night, love cults and magic, this is the one.

I really enjoyed Wrobel’s Darling Rose Gold so I’ve been looking forward to this book so much! I don’t think anyone can write deranged parents quite like Wrobel. 🙌🏼

Heads up: child abuse, parent death

Natalie’s younger sister, Kit has informed her that she’s going to be living at Wisewood for the foreseeable future, which Natalie thinks is kinda weird until months later she receives a threatening email from someone there. Natalie has been keeping a secret from Kit so she shows up at Wisewood to confess, only to find that her sister is neck-deep in a cult, run by Rebecca, a sociopathic mentalist. 😬 Natalie is determined to get both of them home in one piece, whatever it takes.

Okay, so with the word cult being in the synopsis, that was really all that I needed to want to read this one. But it felt more like a hippie-dippy commune with a weird, cliquey inner circle. 🤷🏼‍♀️

This was still a solidly written, fast-moving thriller. I basically read the entire thing in one sitting and couldn’t put it down even to go to sleep, which is the marker of a great book. I just HAD to know how it ended.

However, flashbacks were pretty confusing and you’re not sure who is who, which may have been the point. But, I’m not the biggest fan of finding out halfway through a book that I had mistakenly attributed most of the book to another character. It didn’t feel like a twist as much as made me feel kinda dumb and a little irritated.

I did go in with pretty high expectations, which I probably shouldn’t have done because I’m not sure that this lived up to them.

Natalie’s younger sister, Kit, has always been flighty, but she takes her irresponsibility to a new level when she signs up for a six-month-long “wellness retreat” on a remote island called Wildwood. Kit is not allowed any contact with the outside world, so when Natalie receives an email from someone at Wildwood threatening to tell Kit about Natalie’s deepest secret, Natalie races to the island to get ahead of the story.

I’d read a few critical/ho-hum reviews of this book before I dug in, so I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it! The story was about more than just a cult (though there was plenty of cult business) — it was really about the complicated relationships between sisters, especially sisters who experience trauma together.

I didn’t love that the third narrator - an abused child turned magician/mentalist/performance artist - was initially unnamed. It was pretty clear to me early on who she was going to be, so keeping her identity kind of a secret seemed unnecessary, like it was supposed to be a twist (?), but it really didn’t need to be one to be effective. Her story depicts a childhood controlled by the whims of a sadistic father, which leads to further perpetuation of trauma on herself and others and was the most interesting part of the book for me.

This book was kind of a slow burn, but I thoroughly enjoyed seeing how everything unfolded. I’m pretty sure I’m one of four people who hasn’t read Darling Rose Gold yet, so that’s going on my TBR for sure, and I’m already looking forward to reading whatever Stephanie Wrobel writes next.

If you are into books with super dysfunctional family stories, this is a must read. I really enjoy Stephanie Wrobel's writing style and have now enjoyed both of her books so much. This is one I cannot say too much because I do not want to spoil anything. But trust me when I say, once you start you will not want to stop.

2.5 stars

I found the title of this book very fitting after I read this book since this book was very confusing to me. Two different timelines. The present is marked by "Natalie" and the past is an unknown narrator--not labeled. It took me a bit to figure out what I was reading and how these two timelines connected. I don't like being confused while I am reading.

The story was very slow-moving for me. I was waiting for something to excite or wow me. Sadly, that did not happen. I didn't like the ending, either. I am not a big fan of open-ended endings and wanted more of a resolution.

Thank you to Berkley Publishing and NetGalley for an advanced readers arc. All opinions and thoughts are my own.

This was one that really kept me guessing. The story is told through two timelines and multiple perspectives giving the story more depth. It had a 'cultish' theme which made it different from some other thrillers I have read and also gives it a wild twist. I can't wait to see what Stephanie Wrobel writes next!

Cult stories are always intriguing to me. They are inherently secrerive and alluring and a perfect setting for a mystery novel. Wrobel definitely kept the pages turning and I really enjoyed the complex relationship between Kit and Natalie.

A gripping, thoughtful suspense novel that has left me thinking of it nonstop.

MV Rating: 6/10
•Told through multiple POV’s that ultimately intersect, three women explore the concepts of fear/disappointment/ownership.
•Two of the characters are sisters, and I found their dialogue to be the most compelling in the book. Their introspection and explanation of the same situation from two sides was beautifully written.
•The third character, who is revealed in the book, goes on a journey of her own that literally reads like a villain origin story. You can truly feel her character become more and more self-involved, pompous, and manipulative as the story goes on and I loved the ending for her.
•If you’re looking for a tidy read, this isn’t it - the writing is beautiful, and the story is compelling but it is not wrapped in a bow at the end. The ending is written in a way that allows your mind to wander through possible options.
•I usually don’t gravitate towards this style of book, since it’s a totally slow build with a unique ending, but I did enjoy it overall and would recommend it if you’re looking to try something new in the suspense genre.

Thank you to Berkeley Publishing and Netgalley for the ARC access!