A disturbing, quirky, and addictive read.
In Gordon’s psychological thriller, a grieving mother falls into an internet rabbit hole that leads her into a dangerous downward spiral.
Rebecca Ann Gauthier (aka Becca) is on her computer, captivated by her new obsession. For the past year, the 41-year-old has found psychological and emotional relief from her sorrows by living out an imaginary life while participating in “Mommy Wine Time,” a Facebook group in which the members compare esoteric recipes, lavish gardens, and extravagant lives. Her Mommy Wine Time name is Lucy Westenra, a reference to a vampire in the Dracula story. Nobody in the group knows that 11 years ago, Becca’s 4-year-old son, Gabe, drowned in Becca’s parents’ above-ground swimming pool, or that she and her former husband, Matt, are divorced. Becca and her closest friend, Lynn (“Lynn, Lynn—city of sin”) are both New Hampshire social workers. Lynn comes to Becca’s apartment for their ritual weekend get-together; while Lynn takes Ativan and practices yoga, Becca drinks wine and continues to scroll online. She receives a message from Karen Richards, the admin of the Facebook group. Karen calls her “Vampire” and invites her to join a select subgroup in a private chat room. And just like that, Becca creates another false identity (“BeckyWithTheGoodHair”) and is drawn into a diabolical cyber-trap that threatens her total undoing. Gordon’s novel is a gothic horror story for the 21st century: Becca is the story’s narrator, but a large portion of the novel is epistolary in a cleverly updated way, reproducing texts among the members of Karen’s subgroup (it is a cult of Karen, composed of her acolytes) and phone conversations with Karen. As the story progresses, the individual stories of the members of this little club become increasingly bizarre and violent. Becca’s mental state deteriorates, and her obsession with Karen convincingly grows all-consuming as her intense grief and guilt over losing Gabe, and her continuing love for Matt, lead her deeper into Karen’s malevolent web. It’s a twisty, haunting tale in which nothing is as it first appears.
A disturbing, quirky, and addictive read.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9798347030057
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Podium Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
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