Helpless: A Novel

A USA TODAY BESTSELLER!
From the New York Times bestselling author of Luckiest Girl Alive and Bright Young Women comes a "sexy new thriller" (New York Post) about a successful Hollywood producer who is kidnapped by the man who once knew her best—and the devastating secret that could destroy them both.
Faye Heron has an enviable life. Her work on an acclaimed television show built professional bridges and burned personal ones. Now, she’s one half of a power-producing duo with her Hollywood husband. Beautiful, rich, and successful, Faye has spent years believing her version of the past and using it as material for her writing.
Then, her former film professor passes away, and the funeral brings her back to her college campus and face to face with the man she she barely escaped.
Henry Spalding was Faye’s first love, whose presence still looms large in her mind. Their connection was obsessive, intoxicating, impossible to replicate. Because Henry is one of a kind.
The kind who delivers a hypnotic apology for the way things ended. The kind who suggests they go back to the hotel for a drink. The kind who drugs and kidnaps her.
When Faye wakes up bound and imprisoned in Henry’s isolated mountain cabin, she’s forced to confront a terrifying possibility: this may not be about revenge. As the days pass, Faye begins to chip away at the truth. What was the real cause of her professor’s death? And could it have something to do with why Henry has brought her here? Most jarring of all—what really happened all those years ago with Henry? Is it possible her version of the past cannot be trusted?
With every revelation, the walls close in. As Faye and Henry are pulled back into the toxic, magnetic bond that nearly destroyed them once before, a sprawling, years-old mystery begins to take shape, rewriting history as Faye remembers it and building to a “shocking and mind-bending” (SheReads) final page.
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Community Reviews
“It didn't feel like something on your to-do list then. It felt like you really wanted me too. It was like you got off on being helpless…It has a ring of truth to it. I've always wondered if that's the phrase because it's like searching for a ringing phone in a strange house with a long corridor of seemingly endless rooms. You get closer, the ringing gets louder. The caller is persistent, the message urgent–they will keep trying until you pick up. I am nearer to an answer; that much I am sure is true.”
But now, “The truth has exploded between us, and there should be bloody brain matter on the rough rug and the log walls, fragments of my skull. My mind has been blown out. The truth is a bomb site, severed electrical lines at your feet, the long and daunting labor ahead of rebuilding, rewiring…I forget. Is it medically advised to tie someone up after a potential spinal-cord injury?” “His eyes are like two ink blots from a psychological exam administered to someone who may or may not be a psychopath.”
“We are beyond that ordinary kind of bad…and 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…I’m still in here. I cannot be deleted…I am not being ruined. I am being reminded of what I am capable of…I’ve been capable all along. And this renews me…This life is on loan. And truthfully? Knowing that keeps me sharp. I am someone who needs the fear.”
He has “found the innermost doll in the nesting set, the smallest, most solid me,” but “What will he do to me when he realizes I cannot be kept?”
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