A hard-hitting, if unevenly executed, horror tale.
Eerie supernatural events take place in a small-town general store in Thorne’s novel.
The story mostly takes place on and around March 21, 1955, in the town of Hollow River during a torrential thunderstorm. Eight people seek shelter in a store called Beard’s General, and in this conservative, religious town, everyone’s beset by secrets, guilt, and shame. There’s Peter Mayberry, a White church musician grappling with his sexuality and in love with Sam Brooks, a younger Black man. He’s haunted by memories of his devoutly religious mother’s disapproval and extreme physical abuse. Eli Wynn is an adolescent who’s berated for indulging his sexuality, and Jerry Beard faces the same stigma and shame from his own mother, Kathy, as she tries to keep things going at the general store. Mark MacDonald is the local pastor who commits the sin of thievery, stealing from Kathy and the church fund to make ends meet. Donna Gilliam, meanwhile, kills her husband in their home to keep her baby, Theo, safe, and stops at the store on her way to the hospital.Finally, there’s Marilyn, a beautiful, mysterious woman who washes up at the store. Many of the characters grapple with their sins and shame, but one is a gruesome predator, feeding upon their guilt to stay alive. The group must band together or get washed away—both literally and figuratively. Thorne’s book relies on Christian themes of salvation, absolution, and apocalypse to further the plot, with suspense revolving around whether people can overcome their personal demons to face a greater one together. The story ends on a note of reconciliation and peace as well as an afterword reflecting on real-life disasters that inspired the book’s events, such as flooding in Mississippi. His messages regarding judgement, shame, and guilt come through strongly and hit with great force. The prose can be tedious at times, though, with gratuitous, graphic descriptions of sexual violence and an excess of sexual metaphors. Still, Thorne fleshes out each character’s backstory in measured detail, making them problematic and relatable, by turns.
A hard-hitting, if unevenly executed, horror tale.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-938271-53-3
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Lost Hollow Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.
More than a decade after a Georgia man is convicted of a monstrous double murder, an uncomfortably similar crime frees him and resets the search for the guilty party.
In Clifton County, home to the Rich Cliftons and the other Cliftons, the disappearance of teens Madison Dalrymple and Cheyenne Baker during the Halloween festivities hits everyone in North Falls hard. Working with her father, Sheriff Gerald Clifton, Deputy Emmy Lou Clifton hears the clock ticking down as she races frantically to get leads on the two friends, who’d been secretly plotting to take off for Atlanta after some undisclosed big score. As a longtime friend of Madison’s mother, Hannah, Emmy hopes against hope to find the missing teens before they’re both dead. By the time Emmy’s hopes are dashed, two unpleasantly likely suspects with strong attachments to underage sex partners have emerged, and one of them ends up in prison. In a bold move, Slaughter jumps over the next 12 years to the case of Paisley Walker, a 14-year-old whose disappearance catches the eye of retiring FBI criminal psychologist Jude Archer, who promptly crosses the country to come to Clifton County and take charge—um, that is, consult—on this heartrending new investigation. Emmy, suddenly and shockingly deprived of counsel from the parents who’ve supported her all her life, doesn’t get along any better with Jude than with the larger circle of Cliftons and the Clifton-Cliftons. But together they identify one new suspect, then another, before a shootout that arrives so early you just know there are still more surprises to come.
Although it lacks the surgical precision of Slaughter’s very best nightmares, this one richly earns its title.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780063336773
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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