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The Privilege
She knows who killed him. The law says she can't tell.
A therapist holds hundreds of secrets. It's the job. People sit in her chair, confess the worst thing they've ever done, and trust her to hold it.
Then a patient confesses to a fatal hit-and-run — and walks out like nothing happened.
Three days later, the victim's mother is referred to her as a new patient. Same office. Same chair. She's searching for answers about her son's death. Answers the therapist already has.
Every Tuesday: the mother, searching for the truth.
Every Thursday: the killer, making sure it stays buried.
The law says the confession is protected. The privilege is absolute. But when the killer starts watching the mother — and makes it clear he knows exactly who she is — the rules designed to protect become the walls that imprison.
Now the therapist faces an impossible choice: break the law and destroy her career, or keep the secret and risk a mother's life.
The Privilege is a devastating psychological thriller about the space between duty and conscience — and what it costs to do the right thing when every option is a form of harm.
Book One in the Hollowell Moral Thriller Series.
For fans of Jodi Picoult and Lisa Scottoline.
A therapist holds hundreds of secrets. It's the job. People sit in her chair, confess the worst thing they've ever done, and trust her to hold it.
Then a patient confesses to a fatal hit-and-run — and walks out like nothing happened.
Three days later, the victim's mother is referred to her as a new patient. Same office. Same chair. She's searching for answers about her son's death. Answers the therapist already has.
Every Tuesday: the mother, searching for the truth.
Every Thursday: the killer, making sure it stays buried.
The law says the confession is protected. The privilege is absolute. But when the killer starts watching the mother — and makes it clear he knows exactly who she is — the rules designed to protect become the walls that imprison.
Now the therapist faces an impossible choice: break the law and destroy her career, or keep the secret and risk a mother's life.
The Privilege is a devastating psychological thriller about the space between duty and conscience — and what it costs to do the right thing when every option is a form of harm.
Book One in the Hollowell Moral Thriller Series.
For fans of Jodi Picoult and Lisa Scottoline.
- GenresThriller
253 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 1, 2026
About the author
A.R. Hollowell
14 books108 followersA.R. Hollowell is the author of psychological thrillers that explore the moral pressure points of ordinary lives. His novels place readers inside impossible choices, not simply to frighten them, but to leave them asking the more unsettling question: what would I have done?
His work lives in the uneasy space between what is legal and what is right. He writes about people caught inside institutions built to protect them, including courts, hospitals, families, workplaces, and systems of authority, where truth is often incomplete and every available choice comes with a consequence. His characters are rarely given clean answers. Instead, they must confront loyalty, guilt, power, grief, responsibility, and the private cost of doing what they believe is right.
Known for atmospheric suspense, emotional complexity, and ethical dilemmas that continue beyond the final page, Hollowell’s stories blend psychological tension with questions of conscience. Whether the threat comes from a hidden past, a professional system, or the person closest to the protagonist, his novels ask readers to look beyond the obvious and consider the human consequences of silence, certainty, and survival.
When he is not writing, A.R. enjoys flying drones, building new things, exploring emerging technology, and watching movies with his family.
Readers can follow A.R. Hollowell and join the Hollowell Circle of Trust Facebook group for new releases, bonus chapters, behind-the-scenes updates, and conversations about the stories still to come.
His work lives in the uneasy space between what is legal and what is right. He writes about people caught inside institutions built to protect them, including courts, hospitals, families, workplaces, and systems of authority, where truth is often incomplete and every available choice comes with a consequence. His characters are rarely given clean answers. Instead, they must confront loyalty, guilt, power, grief, responsibility, and the private cost of doing what they believe is right.
Known for atmospheric suspense, emotional complexity, and ethical dilemmas that continue beyond the final page, Hollowell’s stories blend psychological tension with questions of conscience. Whether the threat comes from a hidden past, a professional system, or the person closest to the protagonist, his novels ask readers to look beyond the obvious and consider the human consequences of silence, certainty, and survival.
When he is not writing, A.R. enjoys flying drones, building new things, exploring emerging technology, and watching movies with his family.
Readers can follow A.R. Hollowell and join the Hollowell Circle of Trust Facebook group for new releases, bonus chapters, behind-the-scenes updates, and conversations about the stories still to come.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 188 reviews
June 11, 2026
Y’all, The Privilege had me hooked from page one. 😳 A therapist hears a patient confess to a fatal hit-and-run… then ends up counseling the victim’s mother. Talk about a moral nightmare.
The therapist is smart, compassionate, and trapped in an impossible situation, while the tension ratchets higher with every session. The victim’s mother broke my heart, and the killer had me side-eyeing every page. 👀
Hollowell’s writing is sharp, emotional, and packed with suspense. The ethical dilemma at the center of the story is like watching someone walk a tightrope over a pit of alligators—you know disaster is coming, but you can’t look away.
A clever, thought-provoking psychological thriller that kept my nerves fried and the pages flying.
The therapist is smart, compassionate, and trapped in an impossible situation, while the tension ratchets higher with every session. The victim’s mother broke my heart, and the killer had me side-eyeing every page. 👀
Hollowell’s writing is sharp, emotional, and packed with suspense. The ethical dilemma at the center of the story is like watching someone walk a tightrope over a pit of alligators—you know disaster is coming, but you can’t look away.
A clever, thought-provoking psychological thriller that kept my nerves fried and the pages flying.
June 7, 2026
I was really excited to read this story. Having a psychology degree, I wanted to see how the therapist was going to handle having both the man who committed the hit and run, and also the mother to the man he hit as her patients . My mind was screaming the entire time I was reading this book. One part of me kept saying to report him, but at the same time, the code of ethics states she legally can’t because he isn’t a threat to himself or others. He just committed a heinous act at that particular moment, and without intent. But then here comes the grieving mother. And she definitely can’t tell this mom who did this to her son. I was still screaming. This was so intense for me. The patients want where my tension lay. It was with the therapist. Morally bound to never be able to say anything to anyone ever or she risks losing her license ands her job. I was completely intrigued with how this put all the weight on the therapist. Showing the difficulty of her job. And how it affected her. I was obsessed with this story. These two patients were the ultimate form of burnout for her. On both a professional and personal level. I can’t imagine how she even rented remotely held herself together with all of this information.
I found this to be very well written, intense, and kept me on the edge of my seat and my brain working overtime throughout the entirety of this story. I will definitely be reading the second one.
I found this to be very well written, intense, and kept me on the edge of my seat and my brain working overtime throughout the entirety of this story. I will definitely be reading the second one.
May 4, 2026
This was my first ARC that I have received and read and I was very excited. However, I did not consider this to be a psychological thriller like stated and like I was expecting. There were many parts in the dialogue that were significantly repetitive and descriptions that were used too frequently, which made it difficult to focus on the story at hand. There were times where I felt the book could have finished but kept going.
With that being said, I did find it difficult to rate this book. I did find the story line to be interesting. The author really captured the raw range of emotions the main character felt/experienced throughout the book very well. I am grateful that I was able to receive this advanced copy but it did fall short for me. I will be interested to see how this will become part of a series.
With that being said, I did find it difficult to rate this book. I did find the story line to be interesting. The author really captured the raw range of emotions the main character felt/experienced throughout the book very well. I am grateful that I was able to receive this advanced copy but it did fall short for me. I will be interested to see how this will become part of a series.
August 13, 2026
I won a copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway! This was an entertaining thought exercise involving moral and ethical dilemmas surrounding dual therapeutic relationships. The main character is empathetic to the point of lacking appropriate boundaries. It makes sense for someone in a helping profession to want to help everyone in their office, yet the issue remains with conflict of interest, triangulation, and breach of confidentiality. Who are you legally responsible to protect? There was a lot of repetition due to the dual therapeutic relationships, and I wish the author was a little less wordy in their prose. I enjoyed the moral dilemmas throughout this book and am excited to see that it is part of a series involving institutional systems designed to protect people.
June 9, 2026
What an intriguing read.
Thankyou to A.R Hollowell for this advanced Complimentary copy via booksirens. This review is being left voluntarily and all opinions expressed are my own.
A therapist named Elena takes on a client who discloses having committed a hit and run. However, under state law and governing rules of practice she can't disclose the crime unless someone is in imminent danger.
She also takes on another client, a grieving mother whose son was killed in a still-unsolved hit and run. At this point the red flags are blaring and Elena should walk away from one of these patients but she feels a sense of duty to both.
Can she really remain impartial and professional? Can she provide balanced and unbiased care to both?
It is an interesting look at the patient-therapist bond and the "privilege" that means that what is shared between them cannot be shared any further unless there is imminent threat or danger.
She looks to her mentor for guidance. She reads the guidelines front to back but she is wrestling with her conscience. In different circumstances, she knows the decisions she would make.
This story poses so many ethical and moral dilemas and asks what would you do in this situation?
I found myself mad and shouting at Elena, but another part of me could see that she really thought she was doing the right thing.
This was a psychological suspense novel that allows us to look at the inner thoughts and conflicts that Elena faced. It felt a bit repetetive towards the end.
This was a good read and I would recommend.
Thankyou to A.R Hollowell for this advanced Complimentary copy via booksirens. This review is being left voluntarily and all opinions expressed are my own.
A therapist named Elena takes on a client who discloses having committed a hit and run. However, under state law and governing rules of practice she can't disclose the crime unless someone is in imminent danger.
She also takes on another client, a grieving mother whose son was killed in a still-unsolved hit and run. At this point the red flags are blaring and Elena should walk away from one of these patients but she feels a sense of duty to both.
Can she really remain impartial and professional? Can she provide balanced and unbiased care to both?
It is an interesting look at the patient-therapist bond and the "privilege" that means that what is shared between them cannot be shared any further unless there is imminent threat or danger.
She looks to her mentor for guidance. She reads the guidelines front to back but she is wrestling with her conscience. In different circumstances, she knows the decisions she would make.
This story poses so many ethical and moral dilemas and asks what would you do in this situation?
I found myself mad and shouting at Elena, but another part of me could see that she really thought she was doing the right thing.
This was a psychological suspense novel that allows us to look at the inner thoughts and conflicts that Elena faced. It felt a bit repetetive towards the end.
This was a good read and I would recommend.
July 16, 2026
I found myself invested in Elena's journey from the very beginning because I wanted to see how she would survive everything life kept throwing at her. The way the truth finally came to light felt natural and satisfying. I also thought the therapy sessions and the investigation were some of the strongest parts of the book. It was interesting to see the difficult balance therapists have to maintain when the law does not always line up with what they believe is right.
This story shines as a psychological drama more than a thriller. The author spends a lot of time exploring the thoughts and emotions of both Elena and Diane which made their struggles feel genuine. While a few sections covered similar ground the story continued to move forward and never became boring. I also appreciated that the ending focused on the aftermath instead of ending as soon as the central conflict was over. Watching Elena begin to rebuild her life made me even more interested in continuing the series.
This story shines as a psychological drama more than a thriller. The author spends a lot of time exploring the thoughts and emotions of both Elena and Diane which made their struggles feel genuine. While a few sections covered similar ground the story continued to move forward and never became boring. I also appreciated that the ending focused on the aftermath instead of ending as soon as the central conflict was over. Watching Elena begin to rebuild her life made me even more interested in continuing the series.
June 6, 2026
I contemplated if I wanted to read this book since I am a mental health therapist. People tend to get so much wrong about the profession, but I decided to give it a chance. I am glad I did! Hollowell takes one event, a hit and run incident where the victim dies, and provides the complex viewpoint of three separate individuals: the driver, the victim’s mother, and a well-meaning (although misguided) therapist to both. His ability to provide the perspectives of three individuals whose behaviors and thinking are so different is what makes this book so engaging. It is easy to say, “I would never” but real life shows us that not everyone responds the same. Looking forward to reading book 2 when it comes out.
August 8, 2026
A really fascinating book about ethical conundrums and the physical and emotional toll of keeping secrets. There’s a surprisingly beautiful element of the story that is about healing and community and belonging. Really unique book.
July 13, 2026
I really enjoyed this book. It's a debut and I was very pleased with the read. Very well written and thought out. It didn't seem like a thriller though but that didn't make a difference still liked it very much.
August 2, 2026
Enjoyed reading this book. I love how it provokes that moral struggle in the reader..what would you do, if it were you? Extremely well written and definitely a book you won’t be able to put down! I’m starting the next in the series right away!
June 22, 2026
Really good!!! Highly recommend!!!
As the author's note says in the beginning, the characters are fictional but their dilemma is a real one.
Can't wait to read the second part.
As the author's note says in the beginning, the characters are fictional but their dilemma is a real one.
Can't wait to read the second part.
June 2, 2026
Have you ever read a book that grabs you, pulling you in on the first page? And within the first 2 chapters you are wondering who will play the characters in the movie or Netflix show? I did on Sunday. That book is The Privilege by Author A.R. Hollowell.
The Privilege is a highly effective psychological thriller dealing with one of the most serious ethical issues those entrusted to care for people are faced with. What do I do if a patient reveals they have committed a crime, may be capable of more…and the law of client privilege bars me from revealing this? How do I protect future victims while maintaining patient confidentiality?
Therapist Elena finds herself trapped in this situation…and her journey carrying this knowledge is drop-the-mic tension!
While reading I found my own heart racing, my own hand holding my chair tighter…and my lungs gently reminding me that needing to breathe is important.
The characters are so believable. The descriptions of the atmosphere and emotions are palpable. The dialogue between them reads like a movie in my mind and I want to keep turning pages to see what happens next.
This story presents ethics, life changing decisions, therapy, grief and relationships spot on.
I would highly recommend this book! It will be a fast read, as you won’t want to put it down.
I received an advance reader copy from the author. This is my voluntary and honest review.
The Privilege is a highly effective psychological thriller dealing with one of the most serious ethical issues those entrusted to care for people are faced with. What do I do if a patient reveals they have committed a crime, may be capable of more…and the law of client privilege bars me from revealing this? How do I protect future victims while maintaining patient confidentiality?
Therapist Elena finds herself trapped in this situation…and her journey carrying this knowledge is drop-the-mic tension!
While reading I found my own heart racing, my own hand holding my chair tighter…and my lungs gently reminding me that needing to breathe is important.
The characters are so believable. The descriptions of the atmosphere and emotions are palpable. The dialogue between them reads like a movie in my mind and I want to keep turning pages to see what happens next.
This story presents ethics, life changing decisions, therapy, grief and relationships spot on.
I would highly recommend this book! It will be a fast read, as you won’t want to put it down.
I received an advance reader copy from the author. This is my voluntary and honest review.
August 27, 2026
Received as an advanced reader copy from the author
I really enjoyed this book! This was my first ARC and I'm so glad I got the opportunity to check it out! I was literally pulled in from the beginning and wanted to keep reading to find out what happened next. This was definitely not a typical thriller book filled with different twists, but instead moral dilemma.
As someone in healthcare, who is held to certain laws/legislation, it had me thinking what would I do if I was in that situation or if I could see myself making those same choices. I got really pulled into the main character Elena, from the choices she made and the secrets she had to hold. I'm definitely looking forward to the next book in this series to see how things play out!
If you are into crime, psychology, and anything involving moral dilemma, I would definitely check it out!
I really enjoyed this book! This was my first ARC and I'm so glad I got the opportunity to check it out! I was literally pulled in from the beginning and wanted to keep reading to find out what happened next. This was definitely not a typical thriller book filled with different twists, but instead moral dilemma.
As someone in healthcare, who is held to certain laws/legislation, it had me thinking what would I do if I was in that situation or if I could see myself making those same choices. I got really pulled into the main character Elena, from the choices she made and the secrets she had to hold. I'm definitely looking forward to the next book in this series to see how things play out!
If you are into crime, psychology, and anything involving moral dilemma, I would definitely check it out!
June 9, 2026
Firstly, thank you to Booksirens and A.R. Hollowell for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. The Privilege first drew me in as I was interested in the premise of the privilege between a therapist and their patient. The moral dilemmas that arise throughout is definitely what keeps you hooked in. Elena is a character you can truly sympathise with and has you questioning what you might do if posed with that same situation. Speak up or stay quiet. Personally, I struggled a bit to stay engaged as parts of the story were a bit repetitive. Aside from that it was well written, the suspense slowly builds and I would be interested in reading the continuation of the story in book two. Thanks again for the opportunity in reading this ARC.
June 26, 2026
This book was truly a fascinating read that had me in awe from the beginning. I was not prepared for this type of psychological thriller. The pacing was so smooth that at times I’d forgot it was a book. A.R. Hollowell’s choice of theme was refreshing. Who’d thought a story geared around a therapist would be so thrilling. Each character was nothing short of interesting. Each brought something different into the story. This story will have you thinking and considering what would you do if you were in the characters shoes. How would you go about things? I’m in suspense to see what’s up next for book 2 because lets be real this story and the characters need a book 2.
Thank you A.R. Hollowell & Booksirens for the eARC. This review is that of my own.
Thank you A.R. Hollowell & Booksirens for the eARC. This review is that of my own.
September 20, 2026
4.5⭐️
If doing the right thing costs everything, is it really worth doing?
This story was gripping and although it may not have been a thriller, it was immensely thought provoking.
The way the story unfolded could be seen as obvious or predictable but it is a small looking glass into the profession of psychotherapy. I did not know about ‘the privilege law’ or what it entails and to see how a therapist could be bound by law to keep silent when human morals say differently made for a stunningly beautiful read.
I will say the ending was definitely giving LOTR: The Return of The King by having about four different times the book could have ended but the cliff hanger was definitely a nice touch.
I 100% recommend this book especially if you want a clean read (as there’s no major triggers besides grief). A slower paced, thought provoking novel that not only questions the laws some abide by but forces the reader to question their own morality.
If doing the right thing costs everything, is it really worth doing?
This story was gripping and although it may not have been a thriller, it was immensely thought provoking.
The way the story unfolded could be seen as obvious or predictable but it is a small looking glass into the profession of psychotherapy. I did not know about ‘the privilege law’ or what it entails and to see how a therapist could be bound by law to keep silent when human morals say differently made for a stunningly beautiful read.
I will say the ending was definitely giving LOTR: The Return of The King by having about four different times the book could have ended but the cliff hanger was definitely a nice touch.
I 100% recommend this book especially if you want a clean read (as there’s no major triggers besides grief). A slower paced, thought provoking novel that not only questions the laws some abide by but forces the reader to question their own morality.
June 1, 2026
The Privilege by A.R. Hollowell is an addictive, exceptional, quiet, and deeply unsettling dive into ethics, law, and self preservation. It is a profound exploration of the human psyche and the blurry line between right and wrong.
Therapist Elena knows from the very start that her Tuesday patient, Diane, and her Thursday patient, Thomas, are deeply connected. Treating them both is a forbidden gamble she deliberately takes, driven by an immense sympathy for Diane.
For four months, the emotional toll of this choice weighs heavily on Elena. She is trapped by professional privilege, a sacred boundary she is legally bound to protect, and she faces a moral dilemma that could cost her her license and career.
While the conclusion felt slightly dragged out, the brilliant character development keeps you hooked, forcing you to ask: what would you do when there truly isn't a right answer?
My thanks to Booksirens for the ARC. This is my own opinion.
Therapist Elena knows from the very start that her Tuesday patient, Diane, and her Thursday patient, Thomas, are deeply connected. Treating them both is a forbidden gamble she deliberately takes, driven by an immense sympathy for Diane.
For four months, the emotional toll of this choice weighs heavily on Elena. She is trapped by professional privilege, a sacred boundary she is legally bound to protect, and she faces a moral dilemma that could cost her her license and career.
While the conclusion felt slightly dragged out, the brilliant character development keeps you hooked, forcing you to ask: what would you do when there truly isn't a right answer?
My thanks to Booksirens for the ARC. This is my own opinion.
July 13, 2026
Oh, my goodness this was such a good book.
I thought this was such a good book. I read parts of this a couple of times. I know that this is an extremely tender subject. Therapist do have a very rough time. There rules are in place to protect the mental needs of their patients. But should criminals be allowed to unburden themselves and never have a consequences? That’s a moral issue. I’m looking into what the next book is.
I thought this was such a good book. I read parts of this a couple of times. I know that this is an extremely tender subject. Therapist do have a very rough time. There rules are in place to protect the mental needs of their patients. But should criminals be allowed to unburden themselves and never have a consequences? That’s a moral issue. I’m looking into what the next book is.
June 13, 2026
The Privilege
4.75⭐️ This book had me hooked from the first chapter I couldn’t put it down. I was feeling the weight of every decision, every secret, and every consequence. The characters felt real, flawed, and human, which made their struggles hit even harder. I felt every emotion, every decision so intense. I can’t wait to start book 2 .
4.75⭐️ This book had me hooked from the first chapter I couldn’t put it down. I was feeling the weight of every decision, every secret, and every consequence. The characters felt real, flawed, and human, which made their struggles hit even harder. I felt every emotion, every decision so intense. I can’t wait to start book 2 .
July 16, 2026
5 ⭐️
Wow! This book was absolutely brilliant! I recently won an ARC for book two in this series and I thought I had better read this one first. I’m so glad I did. The storyline seized my interest from the first sentence and never let up. I am really looking forward to starting book two. Very well done!
Wow! This book was absolutely brilliant! I recently won an ARC for book two in this series and I thought I had better read this one first. I’m so glad I did. The storyline seized my interest from the first sentence and never let up. I am really looking forward to starting book two. Very well done!
July 8, 2026
Great read!!! Chapters were a little long for me, but the story was fantastic!! Makes you think what you would do if you were in the therapists shoes. They have a tough job! Can’t wait to start book 2
July 12, 2026
ARC COPY READ - received by author.
I really enjoyed the plot of this book. The storyline is perfectly written. I have to say - the main character drove me insane but I feel the author did a great job trying to get her predicament across. Will continue series.
I really enjoyed the plot of this book. The storyline is perfectly written. I have to say - the main character drove me insane but I feel the author did a great job trying to get her predicament across. Will continue series.
April 28, 2026
ARC
Ok….WOW. This book was honestly a little outside the realm of what I’d normally read and not what I would normally sway towards for fear of boredom. ( I love any great action-packed, graphic crime thriller)
This was ANYTHING but boring and stirred a great moral dilemma within me. As someone who has worked in healthcare and is held by similar laws and legislations ( Aussie gal here so things differ slightly). I found myself imagining what I would do if I were thrust into a situation like this……and honestly? I have arguments that support both sides of this story.
I was instantly drawn to Elena and the impossible position that she was straddling: The battle between Therapist-patient privilege and the ethical framework, laws and legislations that invisibly bind the hands of all of those who choose to uphold its oath.
Despite the lack of ‘gore’ and action-packed murder mysteries that I’m used to, I never got bored throughout this book (and I’m a very impatient person when it comes to reading books that can’t reel me in within the fist couple of chapters).
If this is only book 1 of a 3 book series than sign me up now for the next 2 because I can’t recall the last time I read a book that made me second guess every belief that I once held surrounding patient confidentiality and the multifaceted battle that those bound by these laws face throughout their careers.
Easiest 5 ⭐️ I’ve given this year 😊
Ok….WOW. This book was honestly a little outside the realm of what I’d normally read and not what I would normally sway towards for fear of boredom. ( I love any great action-packed, graphic crime thriller)
This was ANYTHING but boring and stirred a great moral dilemma within me. As someone who has worked in healthcare and is held by similar laws and legislations ( Aussie gal here so things differ slightly). I found myself imagining what I would do if I were thrust into a situation like this……and honestly? I have arguments that support both sides of this story.
I was instantly drawn to Elena and the impossible position that she was straddling: The battle between Therapist-patient privilege and the ethical framework, laws and legislations that invisibly bind the hands of all of those who choose to uphold its oath.
Despite the lack of ‘gore’ and action-packed murder mysteries that I’m used to, I never got bored throughout this book (and I’m a very impatient person when it comes to reading books that can’t reel me in within the fist couple of chapters).
If this is only book 1 of a 3 book series than sign me up now for the next 2 because I can’t recall the last time I read a book that made me second guess every belief that I once held surrounding patient confidentiality and the multifaceted battle that those bound by these laws face throughout their careers.
Easiest 5 ⭐️ I’ve given this year 😊
June 6, 2026
This book is well paced and tackles ethical questions faced by psychologists. I enjoyed the book, but I wish the main character wasn’t so stupid.
August 9, 2026
Kept me wanting more and more.
A thriller to the end.
A thriller to the end.
Review of advance copy received from Author
I closed ‘The Privilege’ on a Mumbai afternoon in early May, sat with it for a long time in the silence of my Bandra West flat bedroom, and then turned back to the first page. I had not believed, in the days before I opened it, that a debut novel by an unknown writer publishing under the small Armitage Press imprint would ‘press’ itself against my chest and refuse to leave. I expected, with the familiar resignation of a reader who has worked her way through too many competent legal thrillers, an evening of serviceable plotting and a manageable suspense. What I found instead was a book of moral gravity so disciplined and so honestly built that, by the third chapter, I had set my smart pen down and stopped taking notes. Some books do not want to be analyzed before they are received. Five stars, without hesitation. ‘The Privilege’ is the most ethically serious thriller I have read in a long while.
The premise is, on its surface, the kind of high-concept hook that fills the catalogues of every commercial publisher each spring. Elena Vargas is a Chicago therapist with fourteen years of clinical practice behind her, and a small office above a yoga studio on Armitage Avenue. On a Thursday in November, her third-session patient - Thomas Crane, a wealthy real-estate developer - confesses with rehearsed calm that, on a rain-slick October night the previous month, he struck and killed a twenty-four-year-old graduate student named Ryan Hollowell on a stretch of Sheridan Road near the university, sat in his car for ‘two, maybe three’ seconds while the calculation ran, and drove away. The privilege belongs to him; Illinois law is unambiguous; Elena cannot tell. Three days later, by a referral she has neither the moral clarity to refuse nor the professional ground to accept, Ryan’s mother -Diane Hollowell, retired Evanston teacher, knocking on doors with flyers in a winter coat - becomes Elena’s new patient.
What lifts this novel from competent thriller to something genuinely lasting is Hollowell’s refusal - and one feels it as a moral choice, not merely a craft choice - to soften any edge of the dilemma he has set. The book’s ethical question is not solved. It is suffered. For four months of narrative time, Elena sits with Diane every Tuesday at two o’clock and with Thomas every Thursday at four, knowing what she knows, and the novel inhabits her body as the secret begins to consume it - twelve pounds lost, hair coming out in the shower, headaches behind the eyes, hands she has to hide under her notepad. ‘The Privilege’ understands, with a clinician’s seriousness, that the body is the first place where conscience registers - that the failure to speak is not a passive condition but an active wound. I cannot recall another thriller that has so faithfully recorded what silence costs the silent.
The prose itself is the second of the novel’s quiet astonishments. Hollowell writes in short, controlled sentences, with a Hemingway-esque economy that is nonetheless capable of sudden lyricism - check this out - a maple tree losing its leaves ‘with a kind of exhausted dignity, one at a time’; the click of an office door in an empty stairwell sounding ‘like a period at the end of a sentence.’ The minimalism never preens. It is the prose, one feels, of a writer who has imposed on himself the same discipline he has asked of his protagonist - say only what is true; say nothing more. There is, throughout the book, an authorial restraint that signals a writer who trusts his reader and trusts his subject - an increasingly rare combination in contemporary commercial fiction. Bravo A.R. Hollowell!
The novel’s structural architecture is similarly disciplined. Four parts - The Weight, The Trap, and the two after, which I shall not name for fear of spoiling - carry the reader through confession, surveillance, breaking, and the long, unsentimental work of repair. Hollowell is unafraid of patience. He gives Detective Luis Reina an entire mid-novel arc to build the case from toll records, body-shop receipts, and the stubborn forensic instinct of a man with a yellow legal pad and twenty years of cases behind him. He gives Diane the dignity of her own investigative grief - the flyers, the cameras, the doorbell rounds of a mother who refuses to be a passive recipient of bureaucratic indifference. He gives even Freud the cat - Elena’s small orange domestic conscience, perched on the kitchen counter through every crisis - a presence as exactly observed as any human character.
The ensemble is what one notices, finally - a moral landscape populated by people, not figures.
But the chapter that decided me on this book, is the one in which Elena enters a small Catholic parish on Fullerton Avenue and meets Father Tom Brennan. There is, in contemporary American fiction, a chronic discomfort with the figure of the priest (ROFL) - a literary embarrassment that produces either caricature or nostalgia. Hollowell writes Father Brennan as neither (Thanks be to God, Alleluia). He is middle-aged, balding, replacing burned-down candles on a Wednesday afternoon (They should do this in Mumbai, India too – why do I have to do it all the time!!??), and he asks Elena no questions she has not first asked herself. He tells her, instead, the parable of a parishioner who came to confession every Saturday for three years for the same sin, and who one day went home and told his wife. The marriage broke, and was rebuilt over years of pain, and ‘the truth didn’t fix anything’ Father Brennan says - it merely cleared the ground for building on something that wasn’t rotten. Then he uses the one word that pierces Elena’s professional armor - enabling. She has used the word with her own patients for fourteen years. She has never applied it to herself. The blow is moral, and it is exact, and any reader who has ever sat with the slow accumulation of small compromises will recognize in this scene the kind of clarity that good Catholic moral theology has always understood - that grace, when it arrives, often arrives as the lifting of a single self-deception.
I do not know whether A. R. Hollowell is Catholic; I do know that the novel’s moral architecture is profoundly indebted to the confessional tradition, with its insistence that absolution is a door one must still walk through. This is not a Catholic novel in the narrow sense, but it is a novel that takes seriously what the Catholic moral imagination has always taken seriously - that conscience is real, that it has a body, that silence has a cost, and that the cost cannot be deferred forever without consequences that are spiritual before they are professional. As a Catholic reader - as a Benedictine consecrated virgin in formation, as one who carries her own discipline of Catholic theological reading into every novel she opens - (as a Catholic Biblical Theologian myself) I felt the weight of these intuitions on every page. I felt, too, the dignity of a secular novel that allowed religious seriousness into its frame without apology and without sentimentality, and which respected the priest as an interlocutor rather than reducing him to scenery.
I should note, in fairness to readers whose tastes differ from mine, the perspectives a less enthusiastic critic might raise. The pacing is unhurried; readers who come to legal thrillers expecting the brisk procedural rhythm of a John Grisham or a Scott Turow (my IBDP English Literature tuition students are obsessed with this guy! Why??! I am doing something wrong big time!) will find Hollowell’s patience trying. The ethical conclusion is genuinely contested within the therapeutic and legal-ethics professions - a great many practicing clinicians will read Elena’s eventual decision as a violation rather than a vindication, and the novel honors them by refusing to argue otherwise. The prose, for all its precision, occasionally trades vividness for restraint, and a reader who prizes lush sentences may feel the writing too austere. The novel’s secondary cast - Margaret Chen the supervisor, Gloria the clinic director, Detective Reina, Father Brennan, the late-arriving Dr. Reeves - is unambiguously sympathetic, and a critic of harder taste may complain that Thomas Crane is the only true villain in a moral landscape this complex. Each of these is a fair observation. None of them, to my reading, diminishes the achievement of the whole.
What ‘The Privilege’ offers, beyond its considerable virtues as a thriller, is the rare gift of a novel that respects its own subject. Hollowell publishes under a surname - Hollowell - that is also the name of his murdered character, and the dedication reads - For the therapists who carry what they cannot say. And for the families still waiting for answers. It is a small detail, easy to miss, but it tells the reader something important about the seriousness of the project. Whoever A. R. Hollowell is - the use of initials, the surname shared with the victim, and the modest single-book imprint suggest a writer who has chosen this material with deliberate care, and who may well be writing under a pseudonym - he has written this book under the sign of the wound it explores. The author’s own brief note at the end concedes that the dilemma has no clean answer; that, he writes, is the point. It is a rare contemporary thriller that ends with such intellectual honesty. Author A.R. Hollowell – you intrigue me!
That is what I shall remember of ‘The Privilege’, long after the plot details have softened into the general inventory of books I have read.
I do not often read thrillers these days. I do not often finish them. Too deeply drowning in my studies in Catholic Theology and Data Science and Data Analytics and MBA Human Resource Management and Paralegal Law Diploma Courses. I have rarely closed one and felt, as I felt closing this one, that I had been in the presence of a serious moral artist working at the height of his attention. Five stars undoubtedly, and the warmest possible recommendation to readers who are willing to be patient with a novel that is patient with itself. ‘The Privilege’ will repay the patience many times over – grab your copy of the book when it is released soon. I shall watch for Book Two with the kind of anticipation I usually reserve for Catholic theological monographs and rare second-printings of Marian devotional texts. That is, I think, the highest compliment I know how to give.
And I took three hours to type this book review – and now it is time for me to go for Mass. I shall mull over the mystery of the author while walking towards the Church of my choice this early morning.
Interesting novel. Intriguing novelist.
A must read for all readers who like ‘thinking thrillers’.
The premise is, on its surface, the kind of high-concept hook that fills the catalogues of every commercial publisher each spring. Elena Vargas is a Chicago therapist with fourteen years of clinical practice behind her, and a small office above a yoga studio on Armitage Avenue. On a Thursday in November, her third-session patient - Thomas Crane, a wealthy real-estate developer - confesses with rehearsed calm that, on a rain-slick October night the previous month, he struck and killed a twenty-four-year-old graduate student named Ryan Hollowell on a stretch of Sheridan Road near the university, sat in his car for ‘two, maybe three’ seconds while the calculation ran, and drove away. The privilege belongs to him; Illinois law is unambiguous; Elena cannot tell. Three days later, by a referral she has neither the moral clarity to refuse nor the professional ground to accept, Ryan’s mother -Diane Hollowell, retired Evanston teacher, knocking on doors with flyers in a winter coat - becomes Elena’s new patient.
What lifts this novel from competent thriller to something genuinely lasting is Hollowell’s refusal - and one feels it as a moral choice, not merely a craft choice - to soften any edge of the dilemma he has set. The book’s ethical question is not solved. It is suffered. For four months of narrative time, Elena sits with Diane every Tuesday at two o’clock and with Thomas every Thursday at four, knowing what she knows, and the novel inhabits her body as the secret begins to consume it - twelve pounds lost, hair coming out in the shower, headaches behind the eyes, hands she has to hide under her notepad. ‘The Privilege’ understands, with a clinician’s seriousness, that the body is the first place where conscience registers - that the failure to speak is not a passive condition but an active wound. I cannot recall another thriller that has so faithfully recorded what silence costs the silent.
The prose itself is the second of the novel’s quiet astonishments. Hollowell writes in short, controlled sentences, with a Hemingway-esque economy that is nonetheless capable of sudden lyricism - check this out - a maple tree losing its leaves ‘with a kind of exhausted dignity, one at a time’; the click of an office door in an empty stairwell sounding ‘like a period at the end of a sentence.’ The minimalism never preens. It is the prose, one feels, of a writer who has imposed on himself the same discipline he has asked of his protagonist - say only what is true; say nothing more. There is, throughout the book, an authorial restraint that signals a writer who trusts his reader and trusts his subject - an increasingly rare combination in contemporary commercial fiction. Bravo A.R. Hollowell!
The novel’s structural architecture is similarly disciplined. Four parts - The Weight, The Trap, and the two after, which I shall not name for fear of spoiling - carry the reader through confession, surveillance, breaking, and the long, unsentimental work of repair. Hollowell is unafraid of patience. He gives Detective Luis Reina an entire mid-novel arc to build the case from toll records, body-shop receipts, and the stubborn forensic instinct of a man with a yellow legal pad and twenty years of cases behind him. He gives Diane the dignity of her own investigative grief - the flyers, the cameras, the doorbell rounds of a mother who refuses to be a passive recipient of bureaucratic indifference. He gives even Freud the cat - Elena’s small orange domestic conscience, perched on the kitchen counter through every crisis - a presence as exactly observed as any human character.
The ensemble is what one notices, finally - a moral landscape populated by people, not figures.
But the chapter that decided me on this book, is the one in which Elena enters a small Catholic parish on Fullerton Avenue and meets Father Tom Brennan. There is, in contemporary American fiction, a chronic discomfort with the figure of the priest (ROFL) - a literary embarrassment that produces either caricature or nostalgia. Hollowell writes Father Brennan as neither (Thanks be to God, Alleluia). He is middle-aged, balding, replacing burned-down candles on a Wednesday afternoon (They should do this in Mumbai, India too – why do I have to do it all the time!!??), and he asks Elena no questions she has not first asked herself. He tells her, instead, the parable of a parishioner who came to confession every Saturday for three years for the same sin, and who one day went home and told his wife. The marriage broke, and was rebuilt over years of pain, and ‘the truth didn’t fix anything’ Father Brennan says - it merely cleared the ground for building on something that wasn’t rotten. Then he uses the one word that pierces Elena’s professional armor - enabling. She has used the word with her own patients for fourteen years. She has never applied it to herself. The blow is moral, and it is exact, and any reader who has ever sat with the slow accumulation of small compromises will recognize in this scene the kind of clarity that good Catholic moral theology has always understood - that grace, when it arrives, often arrives as the lifting of a single self-deception.
I do not know whether A. R. Hollowell is Catholic; I do know that the novel’s moral architecture is profoundly indebted to the confessional tradition, with its insistence that absolution is a door one must still walk through. This is not a Catholic novel in the narrow sense, but it is a novel that takes seriously what the Catholic moral imagination has always taken seriously - that conscience is real, that it has a body, that silence has a cost, and that the cost cannot be deferred forever without consequences that are spiritual before they are professional. As a Catholic reader - as a Benedictine consecrated virgin in formation, as one who carries her own discipline of Catholic theological reading into every novel she opens - (as a Catholic Biblical Theologian myself) I felt the weight of these intuitions on every page. I felt, too, the dignity of a secular novel that allowed religious seriousness into its frame without apology and without sentimentality, and which respected the priest as an interlocutor rather than reducing him to scenery.
I should note, in fairness to readers whose tastes differ from mine, the perspectives a less enthusiastic critic might raise. The pacing is unhurried; readers who come to legal thrillers expecting the brisk procedural rhythm of a John Grisham or a Scott Turow (my IBDP English Literature tuition students are obsessed with this guy! Why??! I am doing something wrong big time!) will find Hollowell’s patience trying. The ethical conclusion is genuinely contested within the therapeutic and legal-ethics professions - a great many practicing clinicians will read Elena’s eventual decision as a violation rather than a vindication, and the novel honors them by refusing to argue otherwise. The prose, for all its precision, occasionally trades vividness for restraint, and a reader who prizes lush sentences may feel the writing too austere. The novel’s secondary cast - Margaret Chen the supervisor, Gloria the clinic director, Detective Reina, Father Brennan, the late-arriving Dr. Reeves - is unambiguously sympathetic, and a critic of harder taste may complain that Thomas Crane is the only true villain in a moral landscape this complex. Each of these is a fair observation. None of them, to my reading, diminishes the achievement of the whole.
What ‘The Privilege’ offers, beyond its considerable virtues as a thriller, is the rare gift of a novel that respects its own subject. Hollowell publishes under a surname - Hollowell - that is also the name of his murdered character, and the dedication reads - For the therapists who carry what they cannot say. And for the families still waiting for answers. It is a small detail, easy to miss, but it tells the reader something important about the seriousness of the project. Whoever A. R. Hollowell is - the use of initials, the surname shared with the victim, and the modest single-book imprint suggest a writer who has chosen this material with deliberate care, and who may well be writing under a pseudonym - he has written this book under the sign of the wound it explores. The author’s own brief note at the end concedes that the dilemma has no clean answer; that, he writes, is the point. It is a rare contemporary thriller that ends with such intellectual honesty. Author A.R. Hollowell – you intrigue me!
That is what I shall remember of ‘The Privilege’, long after the plot details have softened into the general inventory of books I have read.
I do not often read thrillers these days. I do not often finish them. Too deeply drowning in my studies in Catholic Theology and Data Science and Data Analytics and MBA Human Resource Management and Paralegal Law Diploma Courses. I have rarely closed one and felt, as I felt closing this one, that I had been in the presence of a serious moral artist working at the height of his attention. Five stars undoubtedly, and the warmest possible recommendation to readers who are willing to be patient with a novel that is patient with itself. ‘The Privilege’ will repay the patience many times over – grab your copy of the book when it is released soon. I shall watch for Book Two with the kind of anticipation I usually reserve for Catholic theological monographs and rare second-printings of Marian devotional texts. That is, I think, the highest compliment I know how to give.
And I took three hours to type this book review – and now it is time for me to go for Mass. I shall mull over the mystery of the author while walking towards the Church of my choice this early morning.
Interesting novel. Intriguing novelist.
A must read for all readers who like ‘thinking thrillers’.
May 21, 2026
I really enjoyed the book, it was an interesting storyline. Not like most psychological thrillers. There was a bit of repetition throughout, but didn’t turn me away from reading. I would be interested in reading more in the series.
May 23, 2026
The Privilege was given to me as an advanced copy by A.R. Hollowell; these are my thoughts. The book started strong with a moral conundrum for the main character as she fought with how to handle the situation she was placed in by a confession. The resolution was a little too long in my opinion. This is a 3.5 star read rounded up to 4 stars.
May 20, 2026
The story line was different and actually made you think if this really happens to therapists
May 9, 2026
Review of advanced copy
I received an arc of this book for free in return for an honest review. I truly enjoyed the storyline and will most likely be intrigued with the rest of the series. It was very interesting to learn of all the cans and can’ts of therapists and to read how it can truly affect someone in that profession. I feel there was a lot of repetition throughout that could have been skimmed a bit but overall really solid read. It is not your typical psychological thriller however it is definitely a little edge of your seat what happens next read for me!
I received an arc of this book for free in return for an honest review. I truly enjoyed the storyline and will most likely be intrigued with the rest of the series. It was very interesting to learn of all the cans and can’ts of therapists and to read how it can truly affect someone in that profession. I feel there was a lot of repetition throughout that could have been skimmed a bit but overall really solid read. It is not your typical psychological thriller however it is definitely a little edge of your seat what happens next read for me!
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