A chilling ghost story that sets the innocence of childhood against the horrors of domestic abuse.
A young girl with an eerie doll, a ghost hunter with a tragic past, and a mother-daughter team of psychics cross paths in this debut horror novel.
As World War II approaches, 7-year-old Affinity Bell lives an isolated life in a Virginia mansion with her father, Taylor, a wealthy weapons manufacturer with “a knack for all things business, and for all things underhanded and treacherous,” and her beautiful but ineffectual mother Monica. An obsessive woodworker, Taylor is determined to turn his own wife into “a honed and polished dowel” by beating her unmercifully, and Affinity seems to retreat into a fantasy world with Mr. Moppet, a doll with strange powers that alternately hurts and protects her—although it ultimately can’t prevent horror from engulfing her life. Three decades later, in 1974, Tanner Dann, a young Californian writing a book about ghosts, arrives in Virginia, seeking to uncover the secrets of Bell House. He enlists the aid of Linda Cookmeyer, an attractive older psychic, with whom he has a romantic spark. Along with Linda’s even more sensitive daughter, Claire, the trio finds that there’s much more evil in Bell House than a simple haunting, and that each of them will be called upon to face their greatest fears and vulnerabilities. Wilson does a skillful job of weaving the complex fabric of his story, setting a captivating tone from the beginning with Affinity’s unnerving blend of innocence and calculation. The leap forward in time to the 1970s is equally well-managed, and the relationship between the pragmatic Linda and the quixotic Tanner provides a degree of grounding to the fantastic narrative. Readers might wish that this aspect of the story were a little better developed, as things falter a bit with the introduction of archetypal supernatural elements. However, Wilson manages to keep the suspense taut to the end, and all the disparate plot threads come together nicely.
A chilling ghost story that sets the innocence of childhood against the horrors of domestic abuse.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-942981-95-4
Page Count: 292
Publisher: W & B Publishers
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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