Suspenseful—and silly.
A hellish road trip from the author of Home Before Dark (2020) and Lock Every Door (2019).
After her roommate and best friend is murdered, Charlie Jordan decides that she has to get away from Olyphant University. She’s posting a flyer looking for someone to give her a ride home when she meets a stranger who just happens to be going her way. This is Sager’s fifth novel, and readers familiar with his brand of psychological horror know that he favors high-concept plots. Here, the whole narrative unfolds over one long, eventful night in 1991. Sager’s fans may also recognize that Charlie fits a type. She’s a heroine who doesn’t seem much interested in self-preservation; another way to put that is that she behaves in ways that are astonishingly stupid—again and again and again. In the opening pages, she spends a lot of time wondering if it seems reasonable for a young woman who just lost her friend to a serial killer to travel across two states with a man she’s never met. It doesn’t seem reasonable at all, but this is what has to happen if Sager is going to write the story he wants to write, so….The whole first half of the novel is Charlie discovering that her driver may not be who he says he is, that he may plan to do her harm. This feels like a lot of time to spend establishing something that every reader is going to assume. The back end, though, is filled with twists. When these dramatic turns are genuinely surprising, it’s because they are absurdly baroque. In other instances, they are as inevitable as the denouement of a Greek tragedy. Oh, and there’s also some business about Charlie’s love of classic film and history of trauma combining to create a singular condition in which she momentarily leaves reality behind and gets lost in cinematic fantasy. This makes very little sense, but it’s occasionally important to the plot. Despite its flaws, readers who decide to just give in and go along for the ride will have a diverting couple of hours ahead of them.
Suspenseful—and silly.Pub Date: June 29, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18316-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.
Three siblings on very different paths learn that their family home may be haunted by secrets.
Eldest daughter Beth is alone with her fading mother as she takes her final breath and says something about Beth’s long-departed brother and sister, who may not have disappeared forever. Beth is still reeling from the loss of her mother when her estranged siblings show up. Michael, the youngest, hasn’t been home since their father’s disappearance seven years ago. In the meantime, he’s outgrown his siblings, trading his share of the family troubles for a high-paying job in San Jose. Nicole, the middle child, has been overpowered by addiction and prioritized tuning out reality over any sense of responsibility, much to Beth’s disgust. Though their mother’s death marks an ending for the family, it’s also a beginning, as the three siblings realize when they find a disturbing videotape among their parents’ belongings. The video, from 1999, sheds suspicion on their father’s disappearance, linking it to a long-unsolved neighborhood mystery. Was it just a series of unfortunate circumstances that broke the family apart, or does something more sinister underlie the sadness they’ve all found in life? In chapters that rotate among the family’s first-person narratives, the siblings take turns digging up stories and secrets in their search for solace.
Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9798212182843
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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