This Might Hurt, A Review

We’ll keep your secrets… If you keep ours.

The Recovery of Rose Gold Review.

This Might Hurt follows Natalie Collins, a Boston workaholic who recieves an email one day that threatens to tear her entire life apart. Natalie’s sister Kit has been staying at the Wisewood wellness retreat for the last six months and the centre email Natalie, threatening to reveal her big secret.

Desperate to tell Kit herself, Natalie frantically travels to Wisewood and demands entry, having no idea what she has just walked into. Wisewood is a curious place, promising to rid its vistors from their fear and chamge their lives for the better, whatever the cost. Natalie walks in fully intending to save her sister from the madness but six months is a long time and Kit might just be too long gone to save.

I think that because of this book’s blurb Wisewood was built up to be this incredible fortress that was going to be near impossible to escape from when in reality it was nearly the exact oppisite. Granted we didn’t actually spend much time with Natalie at Wisewood (more on that later) but if anything Natalie was encouraged- or even begged- to leave multiple times and she infact only stuck around through her own choice. The literal tagline to this book was ‘It’s hard to get into but impossible to leave’ but I just did not get this impression at all. Don’t get me wrong Wisewood was a fantastic setting and I loved the build up of the cult through Kit’s POV but with Natalie we didn’t soend nearly enough time there which was disappointing as she was arguably the main character. I just wish we’d spent slightly more time in Natalie’s POV rather than Kit or Rebecca’s just so we could het a better insight into Wisewood from an outsider’s perspectice.

I really enjoyed each of the 3 POV’s and how they helped build up the story, each woman had her own connection to Wisewood and through all of them we got a fully fleshed out experience of the place. The alternating chapters between the two sisters gave a great insight into the family dynamic and Natalie and Kit’s childhoods and Rebecca’s own backstory made for a compelling read. I think my only comment on the alternating chapters is that I wish the three had alternated the entire novel instead of in parts, so instead of just focussing on one sister we’d get all three stories running simultaneously.

It’s always interesting in these cult based novels (eg Fog Island) to see the development of said cult and how its leaders manage to convince the characters to stay. Wisewood was all about overcoming fear and I think Rebecca was able to manipulate by using percieved favouritism and emotional blackmail. Kit went in fairly skeptical but ended up being the most devoted at all and so her progress was definitely interesting to read. Rebecca’s own backstory and how she came to form Wisewood was also interesting and her childhood and the points system made for a compelling character study. I also liked how Wrobel incorporated magic into a cult leader because they are very magical people in a way, they certianly need to know how to work an audience one way or another.

Overall This Might Hurt was an enjoyable read and I loved the three alternating POV’s and build up of Wisewood through the flashbacks. Rebecca’s backstory was an intense one and I loved how Wisewood grew from her mistakes, I only wish we’d got to spend a bit more time there. Overall though This Might Hurt was a great second novel for Wrobel and I’ll definitely be checking out anything she writes in the future.