Wednesdays at One: A Novel

by Sandra A. Miller

Overview

A USA TODAY best-selling book

A 2023 INDIES Book of the Year Award Finalist

“Fast-paced and chilling…a brilliant mystery about lies, shame, and secrets.”—Apple Books

If you don’t confront your past…it might confront you first.

Dr. Gregory Weber appears to have an enviable life. He's a renowned clinical psychologist residing in an elegant home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife, Liv, and their two kids. But Gregory feels increasingly disconnected. His marriage is strained, his children are distant, and he can’t stop fixating on an unforgivable mistake he made when he was seventeen. Something no one else knows about.

So when an unscheduled client named Mira starts to appear in his office every Wednesday at 1 p.m. with knowledge about his past, Gregory quickly grows obsessed with her. Is she a new patient? A secret referral from a colleague? Someone connected to his teenage transgression? 

As his attraction for Mira grows more intense with each session, so does her probing scrutiny of him. Soon Gregory’s professional boundaries begin to dissolve, and he becomes the patient, desperate to uncover his connection to this mysterious woman and find out what she wants from him.

In searching for the answers, Gregory risks losing everything that matters: his career, his family, and his mind.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798986241883
Publisher:	Zibby Books
Publication date:	07/11/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	328
Sales rank:	344,278
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Sandra A. Miller is the author of the award-winning memoir Trove: A Woman’s Search for Truth and Buried Treasure. She has written about relationships and self-discovery for The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor and many other publications. Her essay about her unconventional love story with her husband was made into the short film, “Wait,” directed by Trudie Styler and starring Kerry Washington. She teaches writing at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell and lives outside of Boston with her husband, with whom she has two grown children.

Editorial Reviews

A poignant deep dive into the muddy waters of secrets and regret, forgiveness and loss. A book to leave you breathless!”
—Wendy Walker, author of All Is Not Forgotten and Don’t Look For Me

"Intriguing, atmospheric, and masterfully written…hooked me from the first scene. I'm still thinking about this layered and gripping novel."
—Lisa Unger, New York Times bestselling author of Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six

“A taut psychological thriller about family, friendship, and the price we pay when our mistakes come back to haunt us, you will inhale it in one gulp.”
—Julie Clark, New York Times bestselling author of The Lies I Tell and The Last Flight

“In Wednesdays at One, Miller’s tautly crafted debut novel, Gregory’s buried crime literally begins to haunt and undo his present. But wasn’t Gregory’s seemingly tidy life already unraveling? In this riveting psychological thriller, Miller astutely explores the powerful tensions between the desire to be known and forgiven and the terror of being revealed."
—Victoria Redel, author of Before Everything

“A terrible secret harbored by a successful clinical psychologist propels this moving, eerie thriller. In rapturous prose, Miller captures the way truth can just as easily break us apart as heal our deepest wounds. Unputdownable.”
—Erica Ferencik, author of The River at Night, Into the Jungle, and Girl in Ice

“A rollercoaster of a novel. Twisty and surprising, you won't be able to put this one down.”
—Katie Sise, bestselling author of The Break

“It was a rollercoaster! I love a good thriller.”
—Jenny Lawson, author of Furiously Happy

From the Publisher

2023-05-09
A narcissistic psychiatrist carries the burden of a deep, dark secret that is destroying his family. Can a mysterious woman help him become a better man?

Gregory Weber’s life seems to have stagnated—and that's the best-case scenario. He and his wife, Liv, spend more time apart than they do together, and he's mostly ignored by his teenage children, Carrie and Petey. As a psychiatrist, he can self-diagnose that repressed trauma is slowly driving him away from those who love him: He has unresolved issues with his father, who's now living in a nursing home and suffering from dementia, and his sister, and he has been holding on to an explosive secret from his adolescence that led to a good friend’s suicide. When a mysterious client named Mira shows up at his office and seems to want to plumb the depths of his emotional pain, he finds himself drawn to her. He wants to be emotionally vulnerable with her and, at last, let down his guard with another human being—though she may be something more unusual than that. While Gregory has undoubtedly been carrying a great deal of pain around, it’s hard to have much sympathy for him as he judges, avoids, and otherwise takes out his suffering on those around him. His desperate longing for Mira, though we’re asked to believe it has more to do with his need to finally share his secret, reads like sexual attraction, and so his willingness to potentially blow up his life in order to be with her doesn’t make him more relatable. Instead, this is ultimately a tale of men behaving badly—for Gregory is not the only one with a secret—trying to convince us that finally telling the truth is catharsis enough even when one has been concealing a crime.

A readable thriller, but it ultimately invites frustration instead of empathy.

Kirkus Reviews