WEDNESDAYS AT ONE

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.