Karen E. Osborne’s Getting It Right: A Psychological Thriller is a psychological thriller about buried family secrets, childhood trauma, and the difficult work of building a life that isn’t controlled by the past. The novel follows Kara, a Bronx teacher who survived horrific abuse in foster care, and Alex, the privileged daughter of a prominent attorney. When Alex’s father suffers a heart attack, he asks her to find Kara, the daughter he abandoned decades earlier. Their connection gradually pulls both women into a tense story involving betrayal, financial crime, stalking, and violence. The opening line, “Jim Smyth died young, but not soon enough,” immediately establishes the novel’s blunt emotional honesty.

Kara is the heart of the book. She’s caring, intelligent, and deeply committed to her students, but she’s also vulnerable to people who make her feel valued. Osborne captures that weakness in the simple observation, “Being needed was magic dust.” That sentence explains much of Kara’s relationship with Zach, a married financier who uses affection and promises to draw her into his secret dealings. Her choices can be frustrating, but they remain believable because the book shows how closely her desire to help others is tied to her fear of being unwanted. Kara’s foster siblings, Tuesday and Flyer, add even more emotional weight, since their bond carries love, guilt, anger, and a shared history none of them can easily put into words.

Alex’s storyline gives the novel a different kind of pressure. She’s spent her life managing her volatile parents, protecting her sisters, and accepting every new crisis as her responsibility. Searching for Kara forces her to reconsider the father she adores and the family story she’s been taught to believe. The contrast between Alex’s wealthy Westchester upbringing and Kara’s childhood in the foster-care system sharpens the novel’s questions about race, class, privilege, and accountability. Their growing relationship doesn’t develop too neatly. Curiosity, resentment, shame, and genuine affection all compete for space, which makes their scenes together feel emotionally credible.

The suspense comes from several connected threats, and Osborne keeps the story moving through short chapters and alternating viewpoints. Kara’s involvement in Zach’s financial scheme places her under federal scrutiny, while a series of frightening encounters creates the sense that she’s being watched from several directions at once. At the same time, the crisis surrounding the group home brings the book’s concern for neglected children into the main action. Some plot developments arrive quickly, but the most effective tension comes from character. Kara repeatedly has to decide whom to trust, while Alex has to determine whether repairing her father’s damage is an act of love, obedience, or something she’s doing for herself.

Getting It Right: A Psychological Thriller is a story about people trying to face harm without allowing it to define every relationship that follows. Forgiveness matters here, but Osborne treats it as a slow and uneven process. The ending respects that idea. Kara’s life hasn’t suddenly become simple, and her relationships still require patience, honesty, and repair, yet she’s beginning to act from confidence instead of fear. The final reflection, “The past hadn’t loosened its grip. Not completely. But she had,” gives the novel a fitting sense of earned hope.

Pages: 335 | ASIN : B0H6C5WT5Q