A haunting supernatural thriller blending splattery carnage with creepy derangements of the soul.
San Francisco’s fog conceals madness, murder, and demonic intrigue in this lurid horror novel.
Lizzy Gardner has the perfect San Francisco life, complete with a high-paying job as a wealth manager, a swanky downtown apartment, and a devoted boyfriend named Tom. It all unravels when she has a horrific nightmare about a young woman being disemboweled, only to see news reports the next day about an identical girl who has been found dismembered in Golden Gate Park. Lizzy intuits that the dream and the murder are somehow connected to her brother Dylan, a drifter, dream interpreter, and occasional psych-ward inmate. The runaway junkies whom Dylan hangs out with have been having unsettling visions of a Dark Lady, her ghoulish, corpselike minions, and a giant cat; the apparitions have prompted a rash of overdoses and suicides. A fresh encounter with the Lady’s hypnotic minion sends Lizzy into a nervous breakdown; she starts wandering the streets and has a psychotic episode at work. Dylan takes Lizzy to a prophetess, who clarifies their predicament: Lizzy must allow the Dark Lady to take possession of her body—or Tom will be killed. Anderson’s yarn is a tense, psychological horror story in which the lines between dreams, delusions, and reality blur and otherworldly villainy feeds on characters’ very human sinfulness and guilt. It’s also an eerie portrait of San Francisco, from the sterile Financial District skyscrapers to the seedy Tenderloin. Anderson’s richly atmospheric prose is punctuated by gory violence and horribly vivid evocations of the macabre: “The grin…was so revolting, so smeared-looking. As if her grandmother had been munching on flies, their black bodies caught in her teeth behind her pursed and bloodless lips. There was a cunning hunger in that grin, quivering, vulgar—a hunger for her.” Yikes.
A haunting supernatural thriller blending splattery carnage with creepy derangements of the soul.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781963733013
Page Count: 383
Publisher: Fever Dream Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.
Hung out to dry by the elders who betrayed them, a squad of pregnant teens fights back with old magic.
Hendrix has a flair for applying inventive hooks to horror, and this book has a good one, chock-full with shades of V.C. Andrews, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Foxfire, to name a few. Our narrator, Neva Craven, is 15 and pregnant, a fate worse than death in the American South circa 1970. She’s taken by force to Wellwood House in Florida, a secretive home for unwed mothers where she’s given the name Fern. She’ll have the baby secretly and give it up for adoption, whether she likes it or not. Under the thumb of the house’s cruel mistress, Miss Wellwood, and complicit Dr. Vincent, Neva forges cautious alliance with her fellow captives—a new friend, Zinnia; budding revolutionary Rose; and young Holly, raped and impregnated by the very family minister slated to adopt her child. All seems lost until the arrival of a mysterious bookmobile and its librarian, Miss Parcae, who gives the girls an actual book of spells titled How To Be a Groovy Witch. There’s glee in seeing the powerless granted some well-deserved payback, but Hendrix never forgets his sweet spot, lacing the story with body horror and unspeakable cruelties that threaten to overwhelm every little victory. In truth, it’s not the paranormal elements that make this blast from the past so terrifying—although one character evolves into a suitably scary antagonist near the end—but the unspeakable, everyday atrocities leveled at children like these. As the girls lose their babies one by one, they soon devote themselves to secreting away Holly and her child. They get some help late in the game but for the most part they’re on their own, trapped between forces of darkness and society’s merciless judgement.
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780593548981
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It's almost enough to make a person believe in ghosts.
A disturbing household secret has far-reaching consequences in this dark, unusual ghost story.
Mallory Quinn, fresh out of rehab and recovering from a recent tragedy, has taken a job as a nanny for an affluent couple living in the upscale suburb of Spring Brook, New Jersey, when a series of strange events start to make her (and her employers) question her own sanity. Teddy, the precocious and shy 5-year-old boy she's charged with watching, seems to be haunted by a ghost who channels his body to draw pictures that are far too complex and well formed for such a young child. At first, these drawings are rather typical: rabbits, hot air balloons, trees. But then the illustrations take a dark turn, showcasing the details of a gruesome murder; the inclusion of the drawings, which start out as stick figures and grow increasingly more disturbing and sophisticated, brings the reader right into the story. With the help of an attractive young gardener and a psychic neighbor and using only the drawings as clues, Mallory must solve the mystery of the house's grizzly past before it's too late. Rekulak does a great job with character development: Mallory, who narrates in the first person, has an engaging voice; the Maxwells' slightly overbearing parenting style and passive-aggressive quips feel very familiar; and Teddy is so three-dimensional that he sometimes feels like a real child.
It's almost enough to make a person believe in ghosts.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-81934-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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