A flawed but inventive selection of four creepy stories.
Bratton collects four previously published horror stories in one chilling volume.
Urban legends inform these four spine-tingling tales, each of which works as a stand-alone story even as their characters and frights occasionally intersect. The lengthy opener, “Who’s at the Door,” riffs on the familiar sleepover legend of Bloody Mary. Following a car accident that breaks her foot, a 17-year-old girl stays home in suburban Ohio while her parents fly off on a two-week Hawaiian vacation. As an added measure of security, her father has installed a motion sensor on the front porch before leaving; using an app, the girl can check to see who’s at the door without having to walk downstairs. But what happens when the sensor starts going off every day at the same time—when, according to the camera, there’s no one there? In “Parasomnia,” a woman has trouble sleeping after the death of her father and the dissolution of her marriage. One night, after a mere five hours of slumber, she experiences a strange hallucination: “Upon waking, something very bizarre happened—before my closed eyes were a series of rapidly moving images in succession: crisp, high-resolution stills of unrelated people and places moving quickly along my field of vision.” One of these images is of a perfectly handsome man—so perfect that the woman tries to solve the mystery of his identity. It turns out he’s dead…and his intrusion into her life may be the opposite of perfect. “Dollhouse” concerns a man’s ill-fated purchase of a handmade Japanese dollhouse and its three toy occupants. His wife is not amused by the acquisition, and she’s thoroughly unnerved by the handwritten book that accompanies the house, which details the alarming backstories of each of the dolls. The culminating “Who’s Back at the Door” is a sequel to the first story, picking up seven years later, featuring disappearances, murders, role reversals, and more, further building on the legend of Bloody Mary.
Bratton’s prose is conversational and breezy, moving the narratives quickly from scene to scene. This approach sometimes prevents the tension that fuels these stories from fully developing, leading to moments that aren’t quite as scary as they should be, such as this passage from the collection’s first entry: “I looked at my phone. It was 3:33 AM, and there was a message saying there was motion at the door. I played the video, and I screamed in terror! There was someone at the door…” It’s a shame, because the premises are usually solid ideas that would benefit from a bit more space to breathe, particularly “Parasomnia” and “Dollhouse,” which construct intriguing worlds that don’t fully pay off. The balance feels wrong; each plot complicates itself with unnecessary exposition when it should linger in its ambiguity. The book lives up to its urban-legends theme, however, with the stories capturing the unsettling familiarity of tales passed through multiple tellers. Fans of quick, efficient thrills will likely enjoy Bratton’s collection and will anticipate the promise of future volumes to come.
A flawed but inventive selection of four creepy stories.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781736771532
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Blue Milk Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.
The feds must protect an accused criminal and an orphaned girl.
Maybe you’ve met him before as protagonist of The 6:20 Man (2022): Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine, who’d had the dubious fortune to tangle with “the girl on the train,” is now assigned by his homeland security boss to protect Danny Glass, who's awaiting trial on multiple RICO charges in Washington state. Devine has what it takes: He “was a closer, snooper, fixer, investigator,” and, when necessary, a killer. These skills are on full display as the deaths of three key witnesses grind justice to a temporary halt. Glass has a 12-year-old niece, Betsy Odom, and each is the other’s only living relative—her parents recently died of an apparent drug overdose. The FBI has temporary guardianship of Betsy, who's a handful. She tells Travis that though she’s not yet 13, she's 28 in “life-shit years.” The financially well-heeled Glass wants to be her legal guardian with an eye to eventual adoption, but what are his real motives? And what happens to her if he's convicted? Meanwhile, Betsy insists that her parents never touched drugs, and she begs Travis to find out how they really died. This becomes part of a mission that oozes danger. The small town of Ricketts has a woman mayor who’s full of charm on the surface, but deeply corrupt and deadly when crossed. She may be linked to a subversive group called "12/24/65," as in 1865, when the Ku Klux Klan beast was born. Blood flows, bombs explode, and people perish, both good guys and not-so-good guys. Readers might ponder why in fiction as well as in life, it sometimes seems necessary for many to die so one may live. And what about the girl on the train? She's not necessary to the plot, but she's a fun addition as she pops in and out of the pages, occasionally leaving notes for Travis. Maybe she still wants him dead.
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781538757901
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
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