A smart send-up of Lovecraftian horror that doesn’t quite stick the landing.
A young boy uncovers secrets and conspiracies in a small Massachusetts town with his new best friend in Ludwigsen’s coming-of-age horror novel.
The down-on-their-luck Castillo family leaps at the opportunity to move from Queens to a seaside New England town rent-free while the father, Ted Castillo, works to set up an off-shore oil rig. Bud Castillo, the family’s 13-year-old son (and the book’s narrator) is more than happy to tag along after a mysterious incident leaves him ostracized by his Boy Scout troop. Massachusetts promises a fresh start: a new school, new friends, and new scout troop. Unfortunately, when Bud and his family arrive at their new home, they discover a town in a state of total decay, with only one other child roaming around. This child, Aubrey Marsh, quickly befriends Bud; the two decide to form a scout troop together (with the support of Bud’s mother) and investigate the town’s dark past. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that something strange is afoot in the Lovecraft-inspired town of Innsmouth—after all, as Bud’s mother astutely asks, has anyone “ever heard of oil in Massachusetts?” Ludwigsen does an excellent job building tension and a conspiratorial atmosphere as Bud and Aubrey try to uncover what’s really going on in Innsmouth and determine what lurks just off the coast. With an eclectic array of townsfolk, anchored by the charismatic and frightening Reverend Pritchett, who runs the outwardly progressive (but also kind of cultlike) local church, the author slowly lays out the pieces of a compelling mystery. This mystery starts to fall apart by the final third of the book, however; in the narrative’s earlier sections, Ludwigsen mesmerizes with a distinct narrative voice, but events unfold rather abruptly as the climax nears. It’s an excellent set-up with a disappointing pay-off.
A smart send-up of Lovecraftian horror that doesn’t quite stick the landing.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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