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
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
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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