The Hypnotist's Love Story by Liane Moriarty

This author has a number of books written that are well known, and I am not entirely sure why I chose this one as a starting point with her. The main character is a hypnotherapist named Ellen who has a bit of a sparse and unfulfilling dating life. She’s finally given in and decided to try internet dating and she finds Patrick. His first wife died of cancer years back, he has a son (she has some hesitation about parenthood and it turns out she likes it) and he seems almost perfect. Except for one thing. Patrick has stalker. A former live-in girlfriend, Saskia, who hasn’t been able to let go. She’s not violent, but she spends a lot of the time just in the background watching. So it is creepy, and I kept waiting for it to escalate, but that is not where this is going. There is alot to unpack here about what love and loss is, and while the whole stalking thing had me on the edge of my chair in a bad way, which detracted from my enjoyment--I am not into thrillers, even less so now than ever before--there is a lot of good material here. There is also, as a side note, a lot of good information about hypnosis. One of my favorite therapists has been doing additional training in it, and this book gets it right.