RITA Reader Challenge Review

Repressed by Elisabeth Naughton

This RITA® Reader Challenge 2017 review was written by JayneH. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Romantic Suspense category.

The summary:

Hidden Falls is exactly as Samantha Parker left it—small, insular, and prone to gossip. Eighteen years have passed since she witnessed her brother’s murder, but she’s still the talk of the town. Until a handsome child psychologist with haunting memories of his own arrives.

Dr. Ethan McClane isn’t exactly a newcomer. If it weren’t for his latest case, he’d never set foot back in Hidden Falls. Thankfully, no one seems to recognize him as the troubled teen from years past. Not even Sam, the delightfully sharp and sexy high school chemistry teacher he can’t stop thinking about.

When Sam and Ethan work together to help one of her students, sparks ignite. But Sam’s hazy memories of a long-ago night concern Ethan, and unlocking the repressed images reveals a dark connection between them. As the horrors of the past finally come to light, their relationship isn’t the only thing in danger. A killer will strike again to keep an ugly secret hidden. This time no one will be safe.

Here is JayneH's review:

Trigger warnings: there are flashbacks to children in peril and an attempted rape scene.

Repressed was a re-read for me. I don’t re-read books, so it was interesting to revisit a book with a more critical eye. I’ve read most of Elizabeth Naughton’s Romantic Suspense books as they’re usually in Kindle Unlimited and for me, they are good quality reads. It was also fun to find myself going “ohhhhhhhhh yeahhh” when certain plot points came up!

Samantha Parker, our Heroine, originally returns to Hidden Falls to temporarily take care of her sick mother. After her mother’s death however, Sam has to stay longer to sell the family home before she can leave Hidden Falls behind her for good. The rundown house and crappy housing market isn’t making a return to California easy for her though.

Sam’s working as a Chemistry Teacher at her former High School to fund her stay. At the outset of the book she finds herself experiencing harassment that escalates from TPing and Forking (I had to Google that because I didn’t grow up in the US), to finding sinister threats painted on her garage door and later, in her classroom.

She has a new student, Thomas, who after several run-ins with the law was sent to live with his estranged grandmother and has to start court-mandated therapy sessions. Sam’s previous experiences with therapists as a child after witnessing the murder of her brother, leaves her heavily skeptical of therapists to the extent she views them as capable of more harm than good.

Enter our hero: Dr. Ethan McClane, Hottie Child Psychologist, who takes on Thomas’ case pro-bono as both a favour to his mentor, Judge Wilson, and as a way to exorcise some of his own ghosts. He sees Thomas as a reflection of himself in his youth.

When they meet Ethan is instantly, “Who is this beguiling woman?” whereas Sam has already made her mind up about this potential hazard to her student’s mental health.

A continued series of situations where Sam finds herself in danger give us a glimpse that Ethan is also a returnee to Hidden Falls, but that his identity & his past are somehow unknown to other residents of the town.

When Ethan continues to stay beside her during several scary incidents, including discovering a human remains in the woods behind Sam’s house, Sam realizes she may have been preemptive in her judgment of him. She surmises that if she is asking Ethan to give Thomas a second chance, shouldn’t she be willing to do the same thing?

Although she’s feeling lusty towards him, she wants to maintain a distance because of the temporary nature of her time in Hidden Falls and because of her past. She views herself as “not normal” and “damaged goods,” in part due to her regular nightmares involving the creepy cabin behind her house, and so usually self-selects out of any romantic entanglements.

Ethan, being the smart psychologist, knows this is mainly self preservation and, despite the temporary nature of his time in Hidden Falls, decides he doesn’t want to miss out on something that could be fantastic. Personally I’m a sucker for a hero that wants the relationship more than the heroine.

One thing I loved was that Ethan always called her Samantha, rather than Sam, which is how everyone else refers to her. It’s as if he was aware there was more to her than she shares with the world, or even sees in herself, and he uses her full name to remind her of that, that she isn’t reduced to a mere 3 letters.

The discovery of the human remains raises the town’s memory of a teacher that left under suspicious circumstances some 18 years previously. Sam’s conjecture is that the body is that of the teacher. However, town lore says that she left after the allegation of inappropriate relationships with students and the reveal of an affair with the Mayor, soon after which the Mayor’s wife committed suicide.

Soon we have four interwoven storylines:

  • Ethan’s Dark Past
  • Samantha’s nightmares
  • Thomas
  • The dead body in the woods

How are they connected? Are they connected? Well, of course they are, but you’ll have to read it to figure out how!

This story, although set in a small town, is not a cozy small town mystery. There are still small town tropes: everyone has a specific role, often one they’ve had since high school, and everyone knows everyone else’s business. But there’s an isolation which leaves a lack of warmth and homeyness to outsiders. Ethan falls into this category of course and even more so when he’s trying to redeem another outsider, Thomas.

I liked that this wasn’t the mystery I thought it was going to be from the blurb. It wasn’t Sam and Ethan solving a crime. It felt like building blocks being slowly presented for your perusal and as you sit with them, they slowly come together to form a foundation of lies on which several people’s lives have been based. Sam’s return to Hidden Falls is a catalyst that causes this crappy foundation to be exposed and start to crumble, but also for both Sam and Ethan to be able to put past horrors behind them.

What I really like about Ms. Naughton’s books is that they feel more like Romantic Thrillers or Mysteries, as they lack the inclusion of ex/current military/Spec ops, or the heroine being in peril, although she does end up in perilous situations. Not that I don’t love those too (trust me, I’m all about a Texas Ranger) but this is a different flavour of that genre. Her book Gone, which is the second in this series of interconnected standalones, was one of my favourites of 2017 so far.

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  • Available at Amazon

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Repressed by Elisabeth Naughton

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  1. Megan M. says:

    Ooh, this sounds really good! Great review!

  2. Rebecca says:

    I know most people assume teachers are lazy morons with part time jobs that leave them lots of time for gradual courtship and discovering bodies in the woods but this author sounds like she didn’t even bother to do basic research (because everyone knows how to be a teacher, right). Even assuming Sam is the worst teacher ever, and feels no responsibility to her students OR her colleagues, and no compunction about taking a temporary job and ditching them in the middle of the year, and even assuming that the school is so desperate for science teachers that they’ll hire her on the understanding that she’s leaving and they’ll have to do another job search in a few months, there’s mention of “returning to California.” There is no such thing as national teacher certification in the US and state certifications are NOT automatically reciprocal. You can get hired on the understanding that you’re in the process of receiving state certification, but in my experience supervisors WILL check that you’re doing the paperwork (because the school is at risk of state sanctions if they hire uncertified people) and the process is cumbersome. So we have a heroine who is so anxious about ONE troubled student that she spends all this extra time on him, but is willing to send a giant FU to ALL her other kids by hightailing it out of their lives as soon as possible (regardless of the emotional effect of a stable adult abandoning them, and the practical effect on their education of leaving mid-year, not to mention things like college recommendations and so on), and a heroine who can’t get involved with the hero because she’s only in town temporarily but who is willing to go through a long and sometimes expensive certification process for the sake of a job she plans to leave. Sense this not does make.

    Don’t get me started on a small town which supports a child psychologist (unless it’s a university town, or has a medical center nearby or something) or the idea that private psychologists work “pro bono.” Because Our Hero has to be noble. He can’t just be a professional who works at a CLINIC for low-income patients for a salary. Or – gasp – is employed by the school in a recognized role for their students.

    If this is the level of knowledge and thought most voters bring to basic education and healthcare services in this country it’s no wonder they consistently elect people who sell them snake oil about health and education.

    /rant

  3. MirandaB says:

    @Rebecca: Nice rant! Great points on teacher certification, and I wondered about the ‘pro bono’ child psychologist too.

    Also: “Ethan, being the smart psychologist, knows this is mainly self preservation”

    If doesn’t matter why she doesn’t want the relationship, ETHAN. If she doesn’t want it, then you need to go away. You sound like a dick.

    Not that Sam’s any huge prize either. Certainly, therapists can do more harm than good. So can pediatricians, neurologists, and teachers. It depends on the individual. Sounds like Sam needs to hightail it out of that town and work on her own issues before starting a relationship.

  4. Sandra says:

    I got hung up on selling the house. Nothing says she has to live there. Find a realtor, hire a lawn service, rent the house, go back to CA, wait for the house to sell. Problem solved.

    Also, this book was published almost a year ago and it’s still Amazon exclusive? What about those of us who own a nook and refuse to read on phones?

    And, I did grow up in the US, and also had to google forking. Not a phenomenon I’ve come across before.

  5. SB Sarah says:

    While editing this review, I also had to Google forking! I’m so glad I’m not alone.

  6. Amanda says:

    As a millennial, I ALSO had to Google forking.

  7. DonnaMarie says:

    Thank you for your review Jayne! I’ve been in a romantic suspense slump, but you may have just found me a cure. I am intrigued!

    I, too, have no knowledge of “forking”, but I thought it was an age thing. Glad to know it’s not just me.

  8. Redcrow says:

    “One thing I loved was that Ethan always called her Samantha, rather than Sam” – okay, wait, but what are her own preferences in that regard, though? That’s kind of important. If she wants to be called Samantha and is somewhat/very frustrated that everyone ese insists on shortening her name, or if she has no preferences whatsoever, it’s one thing. No objections from me, if that’s so. But if she feels more like Sam, if she likes to be Sam, and he keeps calling her Samantha… No. No, no, no. It’s not “romantic”, it’s infuriating. Please, tell me that it’s not the second case in this book.

  9. JayneH says:

    @Jane – No, She liked it too. It made her feel “seen” by him in a way that other people didn’t. She felt dismissed by a lot of other people in her life.

  10. NT says:

    Sandra,
    The reason the book is still an Amazon exclusive is because it was published by Montlake, Amazon’s in-house romance imprint. So yeah, I’m pretty sure they don’t care about Nook users.

  11. Vicki says:

    Not finding any of her books as Nook books.

  12. Sandra says:

    @NT: Ah, I missed that part when I looked at the pub date. I know authors have to do what they think is best for themselves and their career, but it’s frustrating for someone who doesn’t do Amazon.

  13. Heather Greye says:

    Ah, geez. I feel like I need to jump in and say I have done the forking. (Which sounds dirty as all get out.) but it was only a little. We were all about TPing the water pool teams houses.

  14. Redcrow says:

    @JayneH – based on the context I’m going to assume that comment was for me, even though I’m very much not “Jane”, so thank you for clarification. I’m glad he calls her by the name she likes.

  15. vaultdweller101 says:

    @ Rebecca: I’m curious about your comment about child psychologists because that’s not entirely accurate, in my professional experience. While some CPs might be attached to universities and medical centers, there are plenty that you’ll find in moderate to smaller towns. It varies from state to state. In my state, child psychologists are typically independent, attached to managing community mental health entities, embedded within the child welfare or forensic system or some combination of all of that. You can also seem them as independent practitioners in some of our very poor, rural counties. Very rarely do you see working psychologists, for example, attached to major medical/health centers in clinics (?) or the universities of our state (except as actual professors and researchers).

    The people who work with children in clinics for low-income families, or in schools delivering therapeutic services, are almost always LCSWs, MSWs and LMHCs.

    I’m a social worker, and I’ve worked in child welfare, the prison system and in community mental health, so that’s where I’m coming from.

  16. Rebecca says:

    Hi, vaultdweller – Fair points about social workers being prevalent in clinics. Honestly, my experience is via family members who work in in-patient settings, which are atypical, and in either a very large city or a VERY small town (less than 5000) where health professionals of ANY kind are non-existent. (You want even a basic check up you drive three or four towns over to a community health center forty-five minutes away.) I accept that in a town big enough to HAVE a psychologist he (or she) would probably have a private practice. The public schools I’ve worked in had distinct salary lines for school social workers AND a school psychologist, because the latter was more involved in testing for various disabilities, and sometimes doing actual counseling, while the former were more involved in setting up out of school services and working with students’ families. Psychologists are generally more expensive than social workers, so school administrators have a preference for the latter, but the former does exist as a job title, and would be quite plausible, and seems like the most logical way of bringing a character into contact with either a troubled child or a teacher. (It’s been a while since I’ve dealt with IEPs, but I believe some of them sometimes MANDATE a psychologist as part of treatment, even though you’re right that an MSW is generally as competent. But it’s boxes on a form, not reality.)

    My reaction was perhaps to the idea that “community mental health” is readily available even in the kind of very small town where everybody knows everybody’s business and has grown up together. (There are an amazing number of towns in Romancelandia where everyone seems to know everyone’s family history and have a “reputation” and so on that follows them for decades, but that are also suspiciously well stocked with all kinds of specialized businesses that normally would need a far higher population density to survive. Part of the fantasy, I know.) I’m sure I’m not saying anything you don’t know, but the idea that there are always plentiful services for mental health is a pretty cruel myth in many parts of the country, especially in rural areas, and closing our collective eyes to that means people do slip through the cracks.

    I also have issues with the “pro bono” idea, because it plays into the very dangerous fantasy that psychologists (and teachers, and doctors, and social workers and so on) who “really” care about their patients/students work for “love.” Professional boundaries exist for a reason, and the idea that a psychologist takes on a case for free because a child reminds him of his own troubled youth raises all kinds of red flags about boundary issues and over-identification. In this instance it seems weird to me that the author wrote a hero who is way OVER-involved and at the same time a heroine who is so UNDER-involved in her job that she sees no problem with breezing in and out of her students’ lives as a temporary presence. There seems like a basic lack of respect for what both teachers and mental health professionals actually do, which manifests itself partly as ignorance of their working conditions, and partly as pretty rotten ideas about what constitutes professional behavior.

    Anyway, absolutely no disrespect intended to social workers! Just a raised eyebrow at the “pro bono” psychologist in a town that I envisioned as too small to support even an internist.

  17. Zyva says:

    @Rebecca. Interesting localisation points.
    I was able to swallow most of the odd professional contexts – presumably in place to enable a resonably quick getaway for the happy ending – because they slot into working conditions in my overseas locality… (in the recent past. There was a big wakeup to the 12 to 25 mental health danger age range, via the Patrick McGorry report, and more services have been laid on than existed in my time.)

    Teachers on contract will always be tied down to finishing out the year here. Typically, we’re talking a maternity leave replacement, where the regular class teacher is asked if they want to return before the start of each school year up to the 6 year max…or a try-out period for a newbie. Either way, assuring continuity of care is not something the substitute can do. Getting out of extra responsibilities and having more time than a typical teacher is not so unlikely, though. De facto compensation for the way you don’t get between year holiday pay unless the contract is renewed fast or your status converted to ongoing (permanent), ie if sensitive, management will free ‘technicality only’ not-so temps up to earn extra money (eg a music teacher can more easily give private lessons after school if they’re not lumbered with staff bus monitor duty). Houseflipping is a bit unexpected as a side earner…for me…however it is relatable enough to draw in huge reality tv audiences in Oz. The treechange Brit shows also draw respectable audiences. (Shudder.)

    We had visiting staff, I think 3 days a week, for mental health care at my textbook sized small town secondary school. 600 students, 5000 population town. Localities in the American system could well be in a worse way, though, because I believe it was ‘only in Australia’ (federal?) funding for the chaplain position – unallocatable, in a rapidly religiously diversifying school population – that was redirected into those secular services. Even some of my youngers interstate did less well in that area. To the extent that where my fully funded Health teacher taught research-based curriculum, they got a religious lobby produced program and staff seconded to them for sex ed, giving them gruesome details on gonorrhoea and understating the effectiveness of condoms.

    I was exposed to a lot of involuntary treatment/psyche probing as a child, with my parents trying to build cases against each other. People trying to dig for stuff that’s not there. Sometimes seeing things as they weren’t. Like being ignored for hours regularly on visits to a stepparent. Stupid psych guy did not peg the parent’s neglect or the step’s enabling. Called it jealousy on my part. Ugh. Adult-centric is a really dirty word coming from me for reasons. He’s one.
    My secondary school then capped it off by dragooning me into seeing their counsellor as their remedy for being the victim of a campaign of sexist bullying in my first senior program year. The M.O. was for the sports teacher to ‘ask’ me repeatedly to take up the offer as the House sport team meeting broke up. In the near proximity of schoolmates of all ages. And it was a female teacher, which adds an extra layer of feminism fail.

    After that, while I am aware of the equity of access issues, and the ‘romanticising the well-off only’ problem, and I prefer more realism than that as a rule, emotionally I just can’t bring myself to consider a person who is contractually obligated to deliver care in the absence of consent heroic. That makes the “higher quality care than available in small [read: parochial, stereotyping, toxic] town” factor and “unofficially court-ordered treatment allows more room to negotiate consent than the official process, at worst, it allows for wrapping things up if the kid refuses treatment, with no career damage” factor very salient for me.
    And while I hope my experiences are uncommon, the ‘minority of the worst’ in child and youth mental health are regularly highlighted in media, and also exaggerated in fiction. Material enough to keep a wide swathe of the population vicariously traumatised.
    That would explain why the makers of Revenge season 1 featured the takedown of the now adult heroine’s venal, negligeant court-appointed child psychologist; they expected it to be relatable to a mass audience.
    It would be better if realistic/representative and relatable went together as a general rule, but I can see and feel where the gap comes from. Besides asylums.

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