A clever cocktail of psychological thriller and supernatural horror.
A young psychiatrist goes head-to-head with a patient with a reputation for driving caregivers mad.
It’s 2008, and Parker, the narrator of DeWitt’s crisp and creepy debut, is moved to blog about his experience treating Joe, an institutionalized young man with a terrifying ability to exploit others’ worst fears. Previous doctors have given up on Joe, left emotionally shaken by him; on Parker’s first day, one orderly exits Joe’s asylum room in hysterics, and soon after his nurse kills herself in despair. Still, Parker plunges in, inspired by youthful determination and a commitment to his profession. (His mother’s mental illness inspired him to pursue psychiatry.) Joe is initially polite and seemingly sane, an experience that cues a series of twists until Parker discovers the truth about whether Joe is misunderstood, mad, or something harder to define. DeWitt’s story exploits some well-worn tropes (“lunatics running the asylum” prominent among them) and nakedly evokes The Exorcist and Dracula (Parker’s name seems an homage to Stoker’s Jonathan Harker); subplots involving Parker’s fiancee and the asylum’s administration don’t have much life to them, and the nurse’s early departure spares the reader extended time with her clichéd Irish accent. But the central plot and storytelling are gripping, built on smart psychological parrying and good old-fashioned gross-outs: Parker recalls his mom pleading for help because “the damn maggots won’t crawl out of me, baby,” and Joe says he was haunted by a creature with “fly eyes and two big, superstrong spider arms” that “eats bad thoughts.” The story’s blog format gives the novel a casual, galloping pace (DeWitt posted an early version to a Reddit horror-fiction community), and the climactic confrontations between Parker and Joe are entertainingly intense.
A clever cocktail of psychological thriller and supernatural horror.Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-358-18176-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
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
A haunting, timeless exploration of the evil men do—and the imprint it leaves behind.
A middle-aged woman channels her best Miss Marple when she finds herself facing a nightmare from her past as she seeks to make sense of her present.
Jane Trevally is at a crossroads of sorts. After a traumatic childhood, she sought safety and solace in marriages with wealthy men. Now twice divorced and living with her four dogs in the crumbling English country mansion that is her birthright, she’s feeling the need to do something, to take a job, when one day a runaway dog turns up on her doorstep. The dog is chipped, and with the help of a local vet and her loyal stepson, Dexter Lombardi, Jane traces the dog’s home to the edge of Hampstead Heath, in London—a place that brings back the memory of a terrifying night from her youth, when a handsome man picked her up and took her back to this very house. Everything there felt wrong; she just managed to escape, certain that if she had stayed, she would have died that night. Now, soon after knocking on the door and returning the dog, she discovers that he had run away from an Airbnb near her house, where he had been staying with a young woman who seems to have disappeared. With the help of Dexter; his father, Tony, her second ex-husband; Tony’s former security enforcer, Tobias Wilson; and her own gift for connecting with people, Jane sets out to find the woman, taking her first steps on the path to becoming a private investigator. While Jane serves as the heart of the novel, Jewell also narrates chapters from several other characters’ points of view, all of which chip away at the horror that is the house on the Heath. By slowly revealing past and present simultaneously, Jewell keeps the mystery fresh as she plays with Gothic tropes and the timeless imagery of “a house of horrors” embodying human sin. She doesn’t flinch from exploring the depths of depravity in this house—and its humans.
A haunting, timeless exploration of the evil men do—and the imprint it leaves behind.Pub Date: June 23, 2026
ISBN: 9781668033906
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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