Review: Helpless by Jessica Knoll

Helpless by Jessica Knoll

Blurb from Goodreads:

It’s been twelve years since Faye Heron broke Henry Spalding’s heart. Henry was her college boyfriend, her first intense love, but Faye was in danger of being subsumed by him.

Now, Faye is one half of a power-producing duo with her Hollywood husband. Henry is a married father running the family business. Both of their lives have essentially gone to plan.

When a former and beloved college professor suddenly passes away, Faye and Henry find themselves back on campus for the funeral, circling something old and dangerous. Something, if Faye is honest with herself, she has been trying to duplicate for years. But 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 comes to Henry’s remote mountain cabin, she’s beside herself. Has Henry brought her here to punish her? She did, after all, write and star in a lauded episode of television based on their indelicate appetites and vicious breakup. As her week of captivity unfolds, Henry’s wanton demands intensify, and a sprawling, years-old mystery begins to take shape—one that will rewrite history as Faye remembers it and reveal an astounding, cataclysmic truth.

 I was expecting so much from this because the blurb sounded great and I have long been a Jessica Knoll fan.  I've loved all of her other books and found her writing acerbic but honest in the best way.  This just felt like a manipulation and I didn't want it in the way it was done. Hope you have better luck!

Helpless comes out next week on July 7, 2026 and you can purchase HERE.  

I drive through campus with the air-conditioning blasting, trying to get my skin to stop buzzing. On the lawn of the last standing fraternity house, two shirtless guys toss a lacrosse ball back and forth, feet sliding around in battered brown leather flip-flops. I slow in front of the small yellow house where I lived my senior year with a group of girls who always felt more like colleagues than friends, then come to a complete stop when I see the front door open. One brunette, one blonde, their hair in matching high ponytails, come bounding down the stairs with tennis rackets strapped to their backs, laughing and bumping hips in a way that more or less foretells their future. They'll be roommates in a moldy prewar building in Back Bay, maids of honor three or four Septembers after, then, by the time I'm forty, they'll be gifting each other the most expensive item off their baby registry, the white oak crib or the NASCAR stroller, whatever the in-laws didn't snap up first. It's not longing with which I watch them. I would not be who I am now if I were able to trade affection so easily, and I happen to like who I am now.