An intermittently effective suspense tale that should satisfy die-hard horror buffs.
Seeking shelter from a massive rainstorm, two teenagers stumble into a psychopath’s hideout and must fight for their lives in McWhorter’s (Swallowing the Worm and Other Stories, 2015, etc.) gory debut novel.
Three teenage girls have gone missing in the sleepy town of New Paris, Ohio. Did they belong to a suicide cult? Or did they flee to new lives in New York City or Los Angeles? To escape these swirling rumors, high school seniors Luke and Garrett head out on a weekend fishing trip. Their chipper mood is soon interrupted by “menacing clouds, the color of gunmetal,” foreshadowing the violent downpour that follows. In the midst of the storm, Luke and Garrett’s boat breaks down, so they wander down eerily empty roads until they find a private driveway that leads to the run-down, abandoned New Congregational Church. At least it seems abandoned—upon closer inspection, Luke and Garrett discover an empty coffin in the middle of the sanctuary, simple drawings bearing the names of the missing girls, and a teenage girl they don’t recognize wearing a cheerleading uniform from their high school. Right after this discovery, Luke is knocked unconscious. He wakes up inside the coffin; outside, he hears the mysterious girl, who informs Luke that she and her father have been harvesting the bones of their victims. Luke manages to escape, and he unearths even more of the church’s grisly secrets as he struggles to survive a bloody cat-and-mouse game with the girl and her father. In this horror novel, McWhorter too often relies on his readers’ assumed knowledge of horror tropes to do his work for him—one character’s scream, for instance, “was like something out of a horror movie. Like nothing I’d ever heard.” Also, Luke’s narration tends to be somewhat vague and uninspired. However, McWhorter’s sections from the demented girl’s perspective are unforgettably creepy: “But, she knew her father’s work. She knew what his knives did to the human body and how much blood they brought out.”
An intermittently effective suspense tale that should satisfy die-hard horror buffs.Pub Date: July 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-937979-15-7
Page Count: 280
Publisher: PlotForge, Limited
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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