A novel that offers enjoyable, if sluggish, entertainment for fans of re-imagined horror tropes.
A woman grieving for her ruined marriage and stillborn child finds herself transported to a terrifying place of nightmare and fantasy in this novel by prolific horror writer Frater (The Mesmerized, 2014, etc.).
Recently married and expecting her first child, 26-year-old Mackenzie Babin is settling into a happy life. The death of her son, inexplicably stillborn, tears her marriage apart and sends Mackenzie into a spiral of depression and anxiety. While driving away from her old life, she narrowly misses hitting a deer on a deserted back road and stumbles into a dead spot, a doorway to a place that lies between the worlds of the living and the dead, where fears and dreams all come true. A disciplined imagination can bring safety, but the slightest loss of control spawns vicious and very real nightmares. Mackenzie meets Grant, a mysterious man who becomes her guide through the dead spots, and begins to discover a previously unknown resilience and power of her own as she confronts a parade of graphic horrors. The terrors of the dead spots and some of the characters Mackenzie meets during her struggles are genuine pleasures, fondly re-imagined stock elements of the horror trade—serial-killer clowns, abandoned buildings, a reality that shifts in response to visceral fears—but the plot often shambles along without momentum, wandering from one violent or creepy vignette to the next with a peculiar lack of desire or need to drive it. Perhaps most frustrating is Mackenzie herself, positioned to be transformed into a heroine but unable to shake an infuriating helplessness and willful foolishness until very late in the game.
A novel that offers enjoyable, if sluggish, entertainment for fans of re-imagined horror tropes.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7653-3715-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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