Helpless: A Novel

A NEW YORK TIMES, OPRAH DAILY, CRIME READS, TOWN & COUNTRY, AND BOOKPAGE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK!

From the New York Times bestselling author of Luckiest Girl Alive and Bright Young Women comes a "sexy new thriller" (New York Post) with a "shocking and mindbending" (SheReads) last page.

It's been twelve years since Faye Heron broke Henry Spalding's heart. Henry was her college boyfriend, her first love, but Faye was in danger of being subsumed by him and the intensity of their connection—a connection that took her beyond boundaries she'd only dreamed of crossing.

Now, Faye is one half of a power-producing duo with her Hollywood husband. Henry is a married father running the family business. On the surface, both of their lives have essentially gone to plan.

When a former and beloved college professor suddenly passes away, Faye and Henry find themselves back on campus for the funeral, circling something old and dangerous. Something, if Faye is honest with herself, she has been trying to duplicate for years. But Henry is one of a kind.

The kind who delivers a hypnotic apology for the way things ended.
The kind who suggests they go back to the hotel for a drink.
The kind who drugs and kidnaps her.

When Faye comes to Henry’s remote mountain cabin, she’s beside herself. Has Henry brought her here to punish her? She did, after all, write and star in a lauded episode of television based on their indelicate appetites and vicious breakup. As her week of captivity unfolds, Henry’s wanton demands intensify, and Faye finds herself pulled back into his irresistible gravity. But as Faye and Henry spiral into their old dynamic, a sprawling, years-old mystery begins to take shape—one that will rewrite history as Faye remembers it and reveal an astounding, cataclysmic truth.

Jessica Knoll is the New York Times Bestselling author of BRIGHT YOUNG WOMEN and LUCKIEST GIRL ALIVE—now a major motion picture starring Mila Kunis. She has been a senior editor at Cosmopolitan, and her writing has appeared in the New York TImes, New York Magazine, and Vogue. She lives in New York City with her family. HELPLESS is her fourth novel.

“Knoll is the author of really unsettling thrillers… [Helpless] is like Misery but with your ex.” —New York Times Book Review

“[A] smart thriller… This is the book to grab if you’re craving a prickle of fear. Be forewarned, the ending is a doozy.” —New York Times Book Review

“[A] taut contemporary tale of the explosive reunion of two former lovers… Knoll's twisty tale of psychological suspense, with its exploration of a nuanced relationship with elements of submission and control, will get readers talking.” —Booklist

“Toxic and titillating… Helpless’ thrilling cascade of thought-provoking plot twists and surprising reveals is sure to keep readers guessing.” —Bookpage


"Knoll is a master of ambitious, cool-headed heroines who know exactly how to package their pain. But in Helpless, she lets one of them get seriously hot and bothered... Unapologetically kinky and almost diabolically twisty, this thriller keeps making you rethink who is using whom, and why. Also: Your book club will need at least two meetings to unpack the ending." —Oprah Daily

“Knoll is back with a vengeance… This twisty and twisted story of college love, adult success, and the complex ways in which people’s pasts are written into their futures is perfect for fans of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and other psychological thrillers where women’s sociosexual desires are presented in prismatic, shifting ways.” —Library Journal

“True to form, [Knoll] absolutely goes there in this novel, offering a nuanced and unapologetic portrait of an unconventional relationship without judgment. Puts the ‘erotic’ back in ‘erotic thriller.’" —Kirkus

"A sexy new thriller." —New York Post

“A dark psychological tale of sexual obsession and memory… One part erotic thriller and one part dark romance, the book’s ending will undoubtedly have readers buzzing later this summer.” —Jezebel

“Jessica Knoll is one of my favorite writers and Helpless is her at her best. A fearless, powerful and completely original thriller.” —Laura Dave, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Last Thing He Told Me and The First Time I Saw Him

“A dark, twisty and addictive read that you will struggle to put down.” —Lisa Jewell, bestselling author of Don’t Let Him In

“I will read anything Jessica Knoll writes - her voice is inimitable, propulsive, and utterly addictive.” —Louise O’Neill, bestselling author of Only Ever Yours and Asking For It

“Slick, sexy and dripping in delicious suspense. This is Jessica Knoll at the very top of her game.” —Katy Brent, bestselling author of How to Kill Men and Get Away With It

“If Jessica Knoll writes it, I'll read it. The pages of her books seem to crackle with electricity and she's an utterly fearless writer. Perhaps never more so than in HELPLESS, a dark, daring, sexy tension-fest with head-spinning twists, which roars Knoll's refusal to ever write the same book twice.” —Catherine Ryan Howard, bestselling author of 56 Days

Helpless by Jessica Knoll is a dark psychological thriller about love, power, memory, and the way the past can distort the present. The story follows Faye Heron, a successful Hollywood producer, writer, and actress who appears to have built the life she once wanted. She is married, professionally accomplished, and outwardly in control. But underneath that polished life is a history she has never fully escaped: a consuming college relationship with Henry Spalding, the kind of love that was thrilling, intoxicating, and damaging all at once. Years later, after both have moved on in their own ways, fate pushes them back into each other’s orbit when a former professor they both admired dies and brings them back to campus for the funeral.

What begins as a tense reunion quickly becomes something much darker. Henry, now married and raising a family, reappears with the same magnetic force that once pulled Faye in so completely. He apologizes, charms her, and seems to awaken the old chemistry between them. Faye, despite her hesitation, is drawn into the emotional gravity of that past relationship, which she has already mined once before in her career through a television episode inspired by their breakup. The novel uses this setup to explore how people can turn painful experience into art, but also how doing so can leave old wounds raw and unresolved. Faye believes she understands Henry and the history between them, yet the story keeps suggesting that what she remembers may be incomplete or misleading.

The plot takes a shocking turn when Henry drugs and kidnaps Faye, taking her to a remote mountain cabin. This captivity drives the novel’s central tension. Faye is trapped not only physically, but psychologically, forced to confront the history of their relationship in a setting where every gesture, memory, and confession carries danger. At first, the situation seems like a cruel act of revenge, possibly connected to the way Faye portrayed him in her work. But as the week in the cabin unfolds, the story becomes more complicated. Henry’s behavior is not just about punishment, and Faye’s understanding of him begins to shift. The novel steadily peels back layers of manipulation, obsession, and misunderstanding, revealing that the relationship they shared was never as simple as love destroyed by betrayal.

One of the book’s strongest elements is the way it examines consent, desire, and the blurred line between control and surrender. Faye and Henry’s bond is described as intense and transgressive, a connection that was emotionally and physically consuming. Knoll uses that dynamic to ask unsettling questions about how people interpret their own pasts. What looked like passion may have been coercion. What felt like mutual desire may have carried hidden harm. What seemed finished may still be shaping the present in ways neither character fully understands. As Faye endures captivity, the novel gradually reveals that the real conflict is not only between victim and captor, but between memory and truth.

The mystery deepens beyond the kidnapping itself. As Faye and Henry circle each other in the cabin, a larger, years-old secret begins to surface, one that reorders the story Faye has told herself about her life. Knoll uses this mystery to keep the reader off balance, making the novel part thriller and part psychological excavation. The revelations are designed to change how earlier scenes are understood, turning the book into a puzzle about identity, guilt, and the stories people build to survive what they have lived through. Faye, who has spent years turning her own past into public success, is forced to realize that narration does not always equal understanding.

The novel also reflects on fame, image, and the pressure to control one’s own story. Faye is not just a private woman grappling with a former lover; she is a public figure whose work has already transformed that relationship into entertainment. That layer makes the conflict more bitter, because her private pain has been made visible to the world, while Henry has his own reasons for feeling exposed and misrepresented. Knoll uses this tension to explore how personal narratives can become weapons and how both people in a relationship may feel wronged by the version of events the other tells. This gives the book a sharp, contemporary edge, especially in its treatment of media, reputation, and the hunger for narrative control.

At its core, Helpless is about the danger of unresolved intimacy. It shows how a past relationship can continue to shape a person long after it has ended, especially when it was built on intensity, secrecy, and emotional imbalance. Faye’s life looks successful from the outside, but the novel suggests that success does not erase psychological unfinished business. Henry, meanwhile, is not simply a villain or a lover returned from the past; he is a figure whose motives, pain, and actions are bound up in the same destructive pattern that once consumed them both. That complexity gives the novel its unsettling power.

In the end, Helpless is a tense, provocative story that combines suspense with emotional and psychological depth. It is not just a kidnapping thriller, but a novel about how memory can be manipulated, how desire can become dangerous, and how the truth about a relationship may remain hidden until the worst possible moment. Jessica Knoll turns a reunion between former lovers into a tightly wound exploration of obsession, power, and the cost of believing that the past has already been understood.