A wild, if occasionally slow, brew of sorcery, Satan, and rural America.
Debut author Toothman’s character-driven horror novel unfolds in West Virginia.
It’s 1970 in Clockmaker, West Virginia, a small coal-mining town, and teenagers Joseph Smith and Priscilla Carpenter feel trapped. Joseph will one day escape to follow the Grateful Dead, but Priscilla has no such out. She lives in constant fear of her abusive father, Everett. Life improves when Priscilla finds a book about witchcraft, but the dark arts aren’t easy to master. She must work with disgusting ingredients, and she must also learn discipline. To become a real witch, she patiently climbs the ladder, like a “kung fu master.” But her sacrifices will be worth it if she can, for example, make urine rain on those who deserve it. Of course, satisfying petty grievances is merely the beginning; when it seems Priscilla’s ready to set aside her witch’s cauldron, there’s much more to come. An older Priscilla revisits her powers to address a health issue and, in so doing, draws unholy attention to herself. Enter the devil himself. Toothman’s novel ably builds the inner life of his lead (as with Priscilla’s taste in literature) and includes occasional black-and-white drawings from illustrator Wotton. The result contains many tropes of the horror genre, but the story isn’t so easy to classify. It references historic events, including the Buffalo Creek flood, and riffs on subjects like telekinesis. It all makes for a novel packed with the unexpected, like a cannabis-smoking devil. As Priscilla gets deeper into witchcraft, it becomes clear she’ll be stirring up chaos, which fuels the novel. But the story’s momentum can be uneven. Joseph’s character is ho-hum; his musical leanings and his conflicted feelings about the devil (“Sure, sure, he seemed nice”) don’t add much. Not when there are circles of hell to learn about and other devilish details that reveal a complex, fascinating world.
A wild, if occasionally slow, brew of sorcery, Satan, and rural America.Pub Date: Dec. 21, 2023
ISBN: 9798987763216
Page Count: 570
Publisher: Millions of Colors
Review Posted Online: Dec. 27, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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