What Looks Like Crazy (Crazy #1) – Charlotte Hughes

Psychologist Kate Holly's own life has become the stuff of intensive therapy. She's divorcing her gorgeous firefighter husband, she has an eccentric secretary, her mother and aunt have erected a vaguely sexual sculpture in her front yard, and her psychiatrist ex-boyfriend won't stop calling to find out what color panties she's wearing. Now, Kate's being bombarded with mysterious threats, and the only person who can help her is the one man who always makes her lose her mind-and heart.

Breaking It Down Further: Kate Holly is a psychologist who helps patients whose lives are falling apart. The only thing is, her life isn’t so great either. She’s about to officially divorce her firefighter husband since she spends her life in fear that he’ll get hurt or die in a burning building, she can’t get away from her crazy family (specifically her mom and aunt who collect junk and sell it as treasure), and to top it off, she’s now receiving threats after they cement a provocative statue in her front yard. How can she help her patients fix their lives when she can barely hold it together?

I really enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would! It was a very quick read with Kate Holly being a really likable character for me. For what it’s worth, trust your husband to do his job and stick it out because I cannot believe she would even consider letting Jay out of her life! He seemed like a great husband with a great connection to Kate and great looks don’t hurt either. He was extremely likable as well, and I think Charlotte Hughes wrote it so that you want to root for Kate and Jay to stay together.

Kate’s friend and assistant Mona is a real kick! She’s rich and sassy and somehow down-to-earth all at the same time. She was a great person to sort of stick it to Kate and tell it like it is no matter what and a nice comic relief as well! And also a great new friend in Mike the dog, who becomes a big part of the story as well.

Funny to see all the wacky patients Kate has to deal with and also some nice and touching moments with her helping as well. Lots of Plum-esque moments with the goofy patient moments (a la Stephanie and her FTAs). I know Charlotte Hughes and Janet Evanovich teamed up for a few works (which I have yet to read, but do own a few!), so it made perfect sense and I’m really glad it felt so similar since I love Stephanie Plum.

Oh, and I forgot to say, as an almost Psych minor (what does that count for, right?), it was nice to see that the diagnoses for the patients were relatively accurate. A lot of times in books or TV shows, people just throw terms out there and they’re way off, but from the little knowledge that I retained from all my Psych classes, even if there were some really uncommon cases in there, at least the descriptions were accurate (or accurate enough for me)!

4.5/5 stars
Really pleasantly surprised with this one! It was such a quick read that I found myself wanting to jump right into the next book. It was a nice balance of love story, comedy, and a dash of mystery/thriller.