A chilling supernatural tale with indelible characters.
In this third installment of a thriller series, an orthopedic surgery resident inherits a haunted hotel with potentially lethal family secrets.
Dr. Benjamin Oris is now the proud owner of The Abigael Inn, courtesy of a great aunt he didn’t know he had. He immediately thinks of selling it, as the Massachusetts hotel is five hours away from the Philadelphia hospital where he works. But rather than speak to a realtor, he decides to inspect the inn, currently closed for the winter. Before Ben leaves, his comatose mother, who transmits sometimes-cryptic telepathic thoughts, tells her son: “I need you to finish it.” Everything seems OK in Massachusetts; a capable head housekeeper runs the hotel, and Ben reunites with his maternal grandparents, whom he’s seen only once. But rumors of a haunted Abigael Inn swirl, and unexplained sights and noises unsettle Ben, all alone at the vacant hotel. His fear only mounts when his girlfriend, Laurette, joins him, as they determine ghosts abound, including a particularly nasty one. They dig deeper into the inn’s history as well as Ben’s mysterious family on his mother’s side and turn up someone’s horrifying plot involving murder and a paranormal ceremony. Rubin offers readers an effective change of pace in this installment. While the previous volumes were medical thrillers with supernatural touches, this novel spotlights the paranormal. Early scenes at the haunted hotel showcase genre conventions, from a ghostly conversation via a Ouija board to a scribbled message on a steamy mirror. But the story slowly amps up frights as an evil presence emerges and threatens multiple people. As in the preceding books, the supporting cast nearly outshines the protagonist. For example, Sophia Diaz (who has a son with Ben) and Laurette, both series staples, prove vital in fighting sinister forces. The author’s pithy writing keeps the story popping all the way to the rousing final act.
A chilling supernatural tale with indelible characters.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 293
Publisher: Indigo Dot Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.
Could making a movie about the disappearance of five women from an island reawaken an evil presence there?
Five dresses hang from the topmost limbs of an oak on a remote island in a Vermont lake. That memorable image marks a mystery from a century ago, when five women believed to have been part of a commune vanished forever. As this novel opens, another group gathers on the island to make a movie based on that tale. Marin Keane, the narrator, is surprised but thrilled to find herself cast as one of the leads; she’s a struggling actor whose biggest part so far has been “Bridesmaid with Eczema” in a drug commercial, so playing Daisy Rue, whose haunting diary is the basis for the movie’s script, could be a career-making move. Ronan Peters, the writer-director, is talented and, Marin notes, hot. His reason for gathering the cast on the island is a kind of boot-camp rehearsal: They’ll spend a week living there, wearing period clothes, and managing without internet or phone service. Oh, and holding séances. What could go wrong? Marin quickly meets the other women in the cast: regal character actor Julianne Brown, cool and competent Heather Benchley, bratty former Disney star Susie Hutchinson, and, striking awe in all of them, Violet Wright, a much-awarded Meryl Streep-ish figure who will play the woman who brought the others to the island, which she owned. They get to work, but soon enough someone disappears. The book’s plot, like the movie’s script, largely follows Daisy’s journal, and since the reader is supplied with pages-long sections of that journal, there’s not much suspense about what will happen next. There are some effective set pieces, such as the group’s first séance. But in its last quarter, the plot collapses into a muddle of #MeToo vengeance, improbable secrets, and jarring character reveals that is, as Marin says, “the most Scooby-Doo thing I’ve ever heard.”
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2026
ISBN: 9798217044092
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.
The master of supernatural disaster returns with four horror-laced novellas.
The protagonist of the title story, Holly Gibney, is by King’s own admission one of his most beloved characters, a “quirky walk-on” who quickly found herself at the center of some very unpleasant goings-on in End of Watch, Mr. Mercedes, and The Outsider. The insect-licious proceedings of the last are revisited, most yuckily, while some of King’s favorite conceits turn up: What happens if the dead are never really dead but instead show up generation after generation, occupying different bodies but most certainly exercising their same old mean-spirited voodoo? It won’t please TV journalists to know that the shape-shifting bad guys in that title story just happen to be on-the-ground reporters who turn up at very ugly disasters—and even cause them, albeit many decades apart. Think Jack Torrance in that photo at the end of The Shining, and you’ve got the general idea. “Only a coincidence, Holly thinks, but a chill shivers through her just the same,” King writes, “and once again she thinks of how there may be forces in this world moving people as they will, like men (and women) on a chessboard.” In the careful-what-you-wish-for department, Rat is one of those meta-referential things King enjoys: There are the usual hallucinatory doings, a destiny-altering rodent, and of course a writer protagonist who makes a deal with the devil for success that he thinks will outsmart the fates. No such luck, of course. Perhaps the most troubling story is the first, which may cause iPhone owners to rethink their purchases. King has gone a far piece from the killer clowns and vampires of old, with his monsters and monstrosities taking on far more quotidian forms—which makes them all the scarier.
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.Pub Date: April 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3797-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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