A fresh and eccentric monster tale.
In Matthews’ dark horror novel, a woman searches for her mentally ill father in an abandoned psychiatric hospital and finds more than she bargained for.
Twenty-four-year-old Kori Persephone Driscoe’s father, Peter, has been missing for years, so she and her mother decide to empty their house. Kori also visits the soon-to-be-demolished Northville Psychiatric Hospital to look for her dad, as she’s done many times before. There, she finds disturbing graffiti in a tunnel and dwells on her father’s troubled past. A security guard discovers and chases her—but then an apparent rock golem appears and murders her pursuer. She finds that the creature is actually her father, but he seems disturbed, and committed to feeding genetically altered patients called Vrykolakas. Flashbacks relate Peter’s past involving the devious Dr. Zita and a patient named Maya with a troubled tale of her own. The Vrykolakas attack Kori, and later, she wanders in the woods outside the hospital; before long, she learns about a rogue doctor’s bizarre project. Matthews’ worldbuilding over the course of this novel has a contagious verve, as well as psychological complexity. Sometimes, though, it veers into undefined psychiatric jargon; for instance, unwary readers may not know that to “decompensate” means to lose the ability to maintain one’s mental health. There’s also some awkward phrasing (“Her arms wanted to embrace him, but her hands disagreed”) and moments of purple prose, such as a description of moon’s “endogenous rhythms of circalunar periodicity.” Nonetheless, this well-researched novel is likely to grab horror fiction readers’ attention like a sudden howl at the moon.
A fresh and eccentric monster tale.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-578-78683-4
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Wicked Run Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.
The loss of her police officer father and the discovery of an abandoned car in a local lake raise chilling questions regarding a young woman’s family history.
When Hazel Sharp returns to her hometown of Mirror Lake, North Carolina, for her father’s memorial, she and the other townspeople are confronted by a challenging double whammy: As they’re grieving the loss of beloved longtime police officer Detective Perry Holt, a disturbing sight appears in the lake, whose waterline is receding because of an ongoing drought—an old, unidentifiable car, which has likely been lurking there for years. Hazel temporarily leaves her Charlotte-based building-renovation business in the capable hands of her partners and reconnects with her brothers, Caden and Gage; her Uncle Roy; her old fling and neighbor, Nico; and her schoolfriend, Jamie, now a mother and married to Caden. Tiny, relentless suspicions rise to the metaphorical surface along with that waterlogged vehicle: There have been a slew of minor break-ins; two people go missing; and then, a second abandoned car is discovered. The novel digs deeper into Hazel’s family history—her father was a widow when he married Hazel’s mother, who later left the family, absconding with money and jewels—and Miranda, a consummate professional when it comes to exposing the small community tensions that naturally arise when people live in close proximity for generations, exposes revelation after twisty revelation: “Everything mattered disproportionately in a small town. Your success, but also your failure. Everyone knows might as well have been our town motto.”
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781668010440
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A weird, wild ride.
Celebrity scandal and a haunted lake drive the narrative in this bestselling author’s latest serving of subtly ironic suspense.
Sager’s debut, Final Girls (2017), was fun and beautifully crafted. His most recent novels—Home Before Dark (2020) and Survive the Night (2021) —have been fun and a bit rickety. His new novel fits that mold. Narrator Casey Fletcher grew up watching her mother dazzle audiences, and then she became an actor herself. While she never achieves the “America’s sweetheart” status her mother enjoyed, Casey makes a career out of bit parts in movies and on TV and meatier parts onstage. Then the death of her husband sends her into an alcoholic spiral that ends with her getting fired from a Broadway play. When paparazzi document her substance abuse, her mother exiles her to the family retreat in Vermont. Casey has a dry, droll perspective that persists until circumstances overwhelm her, and if you’re getting a Carrie Fisher vibe from Casey Fletcher, that is almost certainly not an accident. Once in Vermont, she passes the time drinking bourbon and watching the former supermodel and the tech mogul who live across the lake through a pair of binoculars. Casey befriends Katherine Royce after rescuing her when she almost drowns and soon concludes that all is not well in Katherine and Tom’s marriage. Then Katherine disappears….It would be unfair to say too much about what happens next, but creepy coincidences start piling up, and eventually, Casey has to face the possibility that maybe some of the eerie legends about Lake Greene might have some truth to them. Sager certainly delivers a lot of twists, and he ventures into what is, for him, new territory. Are there some things that don’t quite add up at the end? Maybe, but asking that question does nothing but spoil a highly entertaining read.
A weird, wild ride.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-18319-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
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