Visible by Darlene Corbett

Visible by Darlene Corbett
Series: Standalone
Publisher: WordCrafts Press (May 14, 2024)

REVIEW BY PRISCILLA BETTIS

Rachel is a psychotherapist who runs a weekly group session with five clients: Yardley, Matt, Jason, Shalene, and Sapphire. We learn why each client is in therapy and what they’re doing to move forward. One client was attacked in public which ended up putting her in the hospital. Another watched his mother die when he was just a young boy. Another has major trust issues. Yet another whom you’d think would be on top of the world is dealing with a shattered heart. And the fifth one is struggling with complex survivor’s guilt.

Then there’s Rachel herself. She’s also in therapy! She has family trauma in her past, plus she’s a widow. Part of her therapy includes dance class which is why there are dancers’ legs on the book cover.🙂

I enjoyed all of these characters. Corbett throws in some bad guys and gals, too, the kind that make you scrunch your face up when you’re reading or grip your Kindle too hard. By the end, these characters had outcomes that will satisfy any reader.

That doesn’t mean everything turns out hunky dory for all the characters, but life is messy sometimes. The story shows how people of faith can hold on to hope even through the messy times. Readers are not privy to the characters’ prayers or presented with a lot of Bible verses (there are some paraphrased verses in dialogue), but we see how God and worship provide healing and hope.

Speaking of worship, we know Rachel and at least one other character go to mass. Some others are Christians but not specific denominations. Yardley and her boyfriend are Jewish. There is respect across the Christian and non-Christian faiths for one another’s beliefs. Considering difficulties in our society with antisemitism lately, it was lovely to read a story with characters of different faiths getting along.

There are so many wonderful things I enjoyed about the book, but I didn’t love everything. A majority of the story is told through lots of dialogue during the group sessions. I would have preferred more action scenes. To be fair, I don’t know how an author would write a book about group therapy without a lot of dialogue, so only one fish off. Here’s a sample of what I mean. One of the clients is sharing childhood memories with the group. Readers don’t see what happened to his young self; instead, he tells the group (and readers):

“A few blurry memories come forward. One of Lola, caramel arms around me, reading, and whispering, You the best boy in the whole wide world. Another I couldn’t make out except seeing a body on a couch. I put it aside as best I could, and being a kid, focused on sports and grades. But a couple of years later, something else popped into my mind. The more I concentrated the clearer it became. I started remembering my six-year-old self and my confusion back then.”

-Darlene Corbett, Visible

(Did you catch that?—a corpse on a couch! Oh, that poor six-year-old child!)

This book is written by a therapist who felt called by God to be a therapist. Characters’ behavior during therapy, the role faith plays in healing, and methods the characters use to cope with and emerge from their hurts felt realistic, and I learned a lot about group therapy. If you like women’s fiction with psychological insight (plus a dash of romance), you’ll enjoy Visible. Overall, four fab fish!

I purchased the Kindle version of Visible.