A haunting and often genuinely moving modern horror tale.
In Patten’s horror novel, a young boy deals with a supernatural family legacy.
At the beginning of the story, 12-year-old Dwight Skinner and his younger brother, Aaron, are playing a game. At their grandfather’s insistence, they’re taking turns tossing grapes into his open mouth. When one grape lodges in his throat and the old man starts to choke, Aaron is alarmed, but Dwight, who’s developmentally disabled, thinks it’s all just a game and keeps tossing grapes. After the grandfather dies and Dwight’s furious father locks him in his bedroom, a rock crashes through the window, and Dwight sees a shadowy figure down on the sidewalk. Dwight is certain that the apparition is his friend, his superpowered assistant, and when his enraged father makes to attack him and his mother, he seems correct: the dark figure brutally beats his father. “Deception was the heart of the Skinners’ safety for three generations,” readers learn. “Secrets, their mistress.” Now young Dwight is the latest inheritor of those secrets, which date back to the Nazi persecution of the Romani people (the book includes a “Warning to the Reader,” presumably in part referencing the epithet in the novel’s title, noting that the story includes “contextual negative descriptions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and wrong now. Rather than remove the content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future for society”). The author adroitly fleshes out this family drama, alternating scenes set in the past with present-day sections centered on the mysterious Mr. Mortimer, who has knowledge of forbidden experiments conducted by the Nazis on Jews and Romani—experiments that may be reaching an awful culmination in little Dwight. In well-paced scenes reminiscent of the best of Robert McCammon’s work, Patten blends science and dark magic in a story in which the most vulnerable of heroes must find a way to save his family. The prose can sometimes verge on purple (“A whip of warm wetness lashed and splattered Dwight’s face in painless surprise”), but the narrative’s well-stoked energy never flags.
A haunting and often genuinely moving modern horror tale.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9798987300527
Page Count: 216
Publisher: HELBOUND Productions
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For readers who like their fun laced with skin-crawling weirdness.
A comic-strip artist loses first her cat and then, possibly, her mind.
Working with artists Horner and Staehle, as he did for Hidden Pictures (2022), Rekulak uses illustrations to support a paranormal thriller plot. Penny Padgett, a 27-year-old cartoonist living in Philadelphia, has published three beloved graphic novels about her life with her cat, Popcorn, and is working on a fourth when Popcorn darts out the window during a snowstorm and disappears. When all efforts to locate him fail, Penny spirals into unproductive despair. Her live-in boyfriend, Dean Everhardt, who works in finance, insists she accompany him to a cocktail party at the Brandywine Valley estate of his most important client, Evelyn Bruehl. At the party, Penny hears mewing that at first she’s sure must be Popcorn, but which turns out to be a very different cat named Godfrey. Godfrey immediately attaches himself to Penny, and when Evelyn—who’s about to take an extended trip to Europe—asks her to cat-sit, Dean pressures her to agree. Though at first Godfrey’s presence helps Penny break through her writer’s block, she’s completely disgusted by his custom-made food, which is delivered by his equally repugnant private veterinarian. And then something very strange starts happening to her artwork, which is suddenly filled with macabre and demonic imagery she can’t remember producing. Also, she’s losing weight and something terrible is happening to her skin. At this point the plot pivots into full-on horror, with a disgusting infestation of giant beetles and revolting odors taking over Penny’s house and a horrific murder next door. Penny finds some clues about what’s happening in a biography of Evelyn Bruehl’s grandfather, illustrator Barnabas Godfrey—the cat’s namesake. The 80-plus pages of illustrations include both Penny’s comic panels and Barnabas’ 19th-century images, the latter also filled with hints of what will emerge in the dramatic, screamworthy climax.
For readers who like their fun laced with skin-crawling weirdness.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781250895875
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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