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
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
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
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