Lamentably, The Blame Game falls into a category that I'm beginning to see more and more - forgettable domestic thrillers that don't do anything different from 90% of the books in the genre. This book has the ingredients that you've seen before: a therapist with questionable ethics, a main character with a dark past, distrustful spouses, etc. But I had so many gripes with the execution of this story that I couldn't set aside – Naomi is an extremely unprincipled therapist and dishonest person in general, the police "investigation" of the missing persons case is a total joke, Naomi's backstory feels completely out of place, and most importantly, the ending of this book was so confusing that I had to go back and re-read it three times just to make sense of it (and even then...). Unfortunately, this book was a pass from me. (Thank you to Minotaur Books for the ARC via Netgalley.)

The Blame Game by Sandie Jones is a thriller about Naomi, a psychologist who specializes in domestic abuse and goes above and beyond to help her clients. She helps Jacob leave his abusive wife; but small things keeps happening, and she wonders if maybe she's in danger herself. This story had a lots of things going on, and I'm not sure the author did a good job wrapping all the different stories up. Thanks to NetGalley for the free digital review copy. All opinions are my own.

One of my fav go to authors! I enjoyed this book from beginning to end! I loved how there were so many connections and hidden parts that kept being brought up without it feeling like too much. Will continue to read books by this author!

The Blame Game
By: Sandie Jones

➡️swipe for Goodreads synopsis

This was a hard book for me to get into. I had a hard time believing that Naomi would get that invested in her clients/patients. I mean, to the extreme she takes it to? It was too much for me, and May have ruined the book for me.
Though the big twist was unexpected, the ride to get there was rough. A lot of paranoia and withheld information made it drawn out and a little crazy to read. Watching Naomi question her mental stability, through a large chunk of the book, was tedious. It definitely made it more of a psychological thriller, but not super thrilling.
I didn’t love this book. Which is hard for me because I have loved Sandie Jones in the past.

Naomi, a psychologist who specializes in domestic abuse, due to what happened to her family when she was a child just has routine meetings with a man known as Jacob. He has said that he is being abused by his wife. When all of a sudden no one can find Jacob things take a turn. One thing I have to ask is "Why does the husband never believe the wife in books?" I constantly question why every husband is immediately turned against their wives. At least Naomi is about to let things go the way it looks like it will go. She is going to fight! That is definitely an upside is the female character fighting for herself. Anyways this book has some lovely twists and turns and was a great read. I highly recommend it.

Great domestic psychological thriller that started off fast paced but slowed down a little towards the end. Until you get to the very end and then the twists really hit.
Good twists and turns and interesting characters.
Thank you to Netgalley, St. Martins Press, Minotaur books, and the Author Sandie Jones for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you so much to @minotaurbooks for sending me a complimentary arc of The Blame Game to read and review close to publication. The Blame Game came out on August 16, 2022 - available now!

I haven't read any of this authors earlier books, and if I'm honest after this one, I'm not sure if I will (except The Other Woman because of my read all the Reese picks ongoing goal).

Naomi is a psychologist specializing in domestic abuse and often finds herself getting too close to her clients and overstepping professional boundaries (I added that last part). She allows a client to move into a flat that her and her husband own to get away from an abusive spouse and soon after he goes missing.

I'm getting pretty bored of women making poor decisions, keeping unnecessary secrets. There were so many times during this book that Naomi could have made any other decision, and there would have been a better outcome.

I had a lot of trouble keeping up with the different characters and what their histories were. I guessed the twist in this book very early, and none of it seemed realistic or possible.

If your looking for an easy read, and don't mind if the pieces don't really fit together or make sense... this is the book for you.

Fascinating and totally unpredictable! I absolutely loved this book, couldn’t put it down. One of my favorite books of the year.

Okay, Sandie Jones, you got me. I spent the whole book thinking are you kidding me. This is not even going to be a real twist, but then there was a real twist! Great work! It wasn't the most amazing book I've ever read because I spent the majority of it wondering how in the world a therapist could be so manipulated by every person surrounding her. Didn't she study psychology to make a living? That aside, this was an entertaining book that I obviously didn't predict.

Thank you so much to @netgalley for this advanced reader's copy for an honest review.

A psychologist, Naomi, has a patient, Jacob, who has been abused by his wife. Naomi's specialty is abuse. The book has a lot of twists and turns and winds up with a murder in its pages. Naomi's career is at risk as she is being investigated for many things. A lot of characters in the book. An interesting read.

This book just didn’t grab me. It was slow to start for me and I did not feel connected to the characters

Naomi is an American living in the London area. She is a psychologist who specializes in domestic abuse clients. She sometimes has a hard time separating her personal feelings from her work, thus becoming too involved in some of her clients lives. She has been working with Jacob, an abused man who finally get the courage to leave his wife. But when Jacob disappears, not everything is as it seems. Naomi must figure out the truth, all while not being dragged into a messy situation. All the while she is still seeing her other clients who also need her help. Can Naomi continue to help her clients without her own secrets being discovered?

I thought the idea of this book was great, I was not wild about the execution. The ending left me with more questions than answers in my opinion. I found Naomi to be completely unprofessional and in the real world her license would be revoked. Her husband was unlikable in that he really only cared about himself and his feelings. I did like the reveal towards the end. I would have rated this higher if the ending was more concrete. But of course, that could be what the author intended.

Overall I give this book a 2.5 (rounded up to 3) stars. I would like to thank NetGalley, the publishing company, and the author for access to this book in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed "The Other Woman" by Sandie Jones, so I was thrilled when I got approved for this advanced copy on NetGalley! Unfortunately, this book falls victim to what so many books do - authors writing a book with a psychologist main character and having there be SO many issues with the psychologist. I wish authors would stop including psychologists in their books and portraying them unethically.

Thank you NetGalley, St Martins Press and Sandie Jones
I enjoyed this novel from the author, quick read.
3 stars

🌟REVIEW 🌟

The Blame Game by Sandie Jones

Naomi Chandler is a therapist with a soft.spot for her patients. But when is it helping and when is it crossing the line?
This tense thriller moved through layered storylines with ease. While initially I wasn't very engaged, by about a third of the way in I was devouring it.
This book explores love, marriage, friendship, and when a professional relationship crosses the line.
Definitely recommend as we move into Fall. Perfect book for cuddling up hh a fire and reading the night away.

I was really looking forward to this book, but it ended up being a bit of a let down. I enjoyed some of it, and the premise of the book was great, but the execution wasn’t there for me

(I was requested to review an ARC as provided by NetGalley and Minotaur Books. This is my unbiased review)

Sometimes there are books that come out from the thriller genre that leave you with the expectation of the typical. From the beginning I wasn't sure what to make of The Blame Game. The psychotherapist and her overzealous willingness to help her clients by any means necessary, the strange and quite damaged clients, and the fragile bond between a husband a wife.

Of course that all leads up to the 'who did it?' and 'what will happen next?' expectation. The reader automatically presumes this is going to be your run of the mill thriller. In some ways it very much is but in other ways it is not. The book left me guessing who was the culprit and who was telling the truth.

To start off with there is the plot and the characters. The story focuses on the psychotherapist Naomi Chandler and what happens when someone willing to help maybe gives too much of herself. One of her clients ends up being not who she suspected and another one of her clients even more so.

The novel is not without its loose ends. However, the questionable loose ends and random splattering of Naomi's fractured past and childhood do not damage the fact the book is a decent read. The guessing game of what is going on when Naomi is accused of having an affair with her client is accelerated when the client goes missing. This all seems the typical story but Jones adds to the story with bits and pieces of things not to be expected.

The Blame Game is a book worth checking out. It is a thriller that meets a thrill readers expectations and then goes to the next step taking the reader to the next level. Does the book leave me asking questions? Sure it does but sometimes that is the best relationship between an author and the reader, when the author leaves more to the reader's imagination. Until next time, happy reading!

So, I have read all of Sandie Jones' past 4 books. The Blame Game is probably the one I was on the fence about the most. The entire book I was SCREAMING at Naomi, the psychtherapist protagonist. She repeatedly made bizarre decisions toward her patients that would have likely caused her to lose her license if she were not a fictional character. In the course of this short-ish novel, we only meet two of her patients, but she oversteps her professional role with each of them. One she offers to let rent a vacant apartment she and her husband own and the other she actually offers to let stay in her house! The author's offered explanation for Naomi's behavior is that because of her background where her father beat her mother to death when she was a teen, she over-empathizes with victims of domestic abuse. Of course her husband of 17 years doesn't appreciate it, but does that matter? Not to Naomi. So one of her clients goes missing and suddenly Naomi is in the hot seat for likely being one of the last people the missing person saw. Does she do the rational thing and come clean and explain what happened the last time she saw her client? Nope. She decides she will spin a ridiculous web of lies to cover her tracks. No big deal since she's innocent, right? (Eyeroll) Even when every lie she tells is easily disproven, Naomi digs in. No one believes her. So as the reader, I could not figure how in the world this book was going to turn out. All said, while I was addicted to the pace of the story, I was THIS CLOSE to giving it two or three stars. But honestly the very very very end of the book is what saved it for me. The epilogue was good enough to pull it up to 4 stars for me.

I never thought I could love a book more than Sandie Jones’ The Other Woman, but this one…. Gosh it may have claimed the top spot!

The absolute whiplash that comes with this books is SO worth the ride. Her characters are flawless as always and the plot building is superb. It’s the make of a great story for me when I just am blindsided by the events that unfold and feel utterly betrayed by the fictional characters and not many books do that to me.

Sandie Jones will forever be at the top of my list of authors and continues to put out thriller after thriller keeping me on the edge of my seat.

I didn’t enjoy this thriller for a couple of reasons. The main one being that Naomi’s balance (or lack thereof) of helping her patients was extremely frustrating to read and crossed so many doctor-patient lines getting overly invested into their lives. In that regard, it was really hard to root for and like Naomi and the positions she put herself in, the lies in which she stupidly told, and ways in which she kept digging herself further and further into trouble.
There were a couple things in the story I thought had a fair amount of emphasis put on them that could’ve lead to a more interesting plot direction and then fell short (ie. the estate and recluse of an owner, Naomi’s backstory, etc).
Honestly this book really felt rushed and was all over the place in terms of potential and execution. I also didn’t think the title fit the book at all, and was poorly chosen. Super disappointing as I have enjoyed other books by Jones in the past.

Thank you St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read/review this ARC!