The Last Session

A white-knuckled locked-room thriller about a social worker who, after coming face-to-face with her dark past, must infiltrate a mysterious wellness center.

Working in a hospital’s psychiatric unit, Thea, a social worker, helps patients by day and drowns her traumatic past at night. But when a catatonic Jane Doe is admitted, Thea is sure she knows this woman yet can’t quite grasp how. Jane Doe even looks like Thea. While talking with her roommate about a crush she had as a teen, Thea recalls the movie Stargirl and is shocked to realize Jane Doe is the famous child actress Catherine O’Brien who starred in the movie at age thirteen. She’s even more shocked when Catherine suddenly leaves the facility with two unidentified people.

Thea feels a connection with this woman and, following a trail of clues, tracks her whereabouts to a wellness center in New Mexico. Sensing that Catherine was in trouble and not in her right mind, Thea signs up for a weekend at the center and quickly finds herself dealing with two charismatic leaders, Sol and Moon. She believes their healing methods are unsafe and who are they really? And where is Catherine? Thea senses danger when she discovers Moon knows about Thea’s past sexual traumas. She’s also caught in a dangerous web of people who are not who they say they are. When Thea finds Catherine, she can tell that Catherine is captive to this center and to Moon. When Thea decides to leave and take Catherine with her, all hell breaks loose, and she finds herself facing her biggest fear and the horror of losing her life.

Julia Bartz submerses the reader in a harrowing mix of cults, sexual power, myth, trauma, secrets, and past lives. The author has done a brilliant job with her research on cults and slips in knowledge of psychiatric terms that shows her background as a licensed therapist. I found the setting perfect for this type of thriller—the dark and isolated desert, a deep underground cave system. This is what gives the novel a locked room feel. There are plenty of wicked twists and turns that whip the reader like a sandstorm. Bartz does a tremendous job of weaving the mystical and psychological. By the end of the story, chaos erupts, and the action kept me turning the pages.

My main issue is Thea. She’s a mess and I understand that she’s an unreliable narrator. But setting her up as a social worker seemed a stretch. At the beginning of the novel, we see that she has no control over a group she leads. She drinks to deaden her pain from her past sexual trauma. I think the book would have been stronger if she had been tough and tried to ignore her traumas. Thea is so vulnerable that her goal to free Catherine (and therefore herself) seems outside her ability and hangovers. Her only decision—to free Catherine—has no forethought and all the action stems from that one decision even though “the writing is on the wall.” I think that if there had been equal strength between Moon and Thea, the novel would have benefited.

Overall, The Final Session is well worth reading. I loved The Writing Retreat, Bartz first thriller, and look forward to her next.

Thanks to NetGalley, Julia Bartz, and Atria Books for providing me with an ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.