CAIO

A woman’s dead-end life is disrupted by a case of child abuse and her own scandalous relationship with a preternaturally mature teenager in Delorme’s occult/mystery/romance novel.

In the year 2025, Sarah Baker is a smart but unappreciated 47-year-old Brooklyn paralegal whom everyone treats like “the wallpaper.” Especially dismissive are her boyfriend, Karl, a lawyer and all-around creep (“She will have the grilled chicken salad because she could do to lose a few pounds,” he tells a waiter) whom she tolerates because he pays her mortgage, and the voices in her head, including those of her mother, father, and dead husband, who insist that she can’t make it on her own. Intrigue surfaces when Sarah gets a case in which Andrew Davies, her firm’s smarmy client, fights his ex-wife for custody of their sons; her internet sleuthing and the kids’ cryptic comments hint at sexual improprieties involving 16-year-old Alex and his bombshell stepmother. Sarah’s outrage is complicated by her own inappropriate attachment to Caio, a 16-year-old Brazilian-born boy she encounters at a playground where he is shooting hoops. He seems to be the perfect lover: a great cook, raptly attuned to her feelings, and, when he expertly seduces her, fabulous in bed. Sarah is guilt-stricken over the apparent statutory rape, but Caio’s quirks, like his possession of a driver’s license stating that he was born in 1956, undermine that narrative while suggesting stranger possibilities. This first book in the author’s Limerent series mixes a realistic portrait of middle-aged despair with a sharply observed legal procedural that shades into a supernatural thriller, all while condemning—and glamorizing—ephebophilia. Her evocative prose remains psychologically subtle and naturalistic while conjuring spooky atmospherics (“Taking the blade gingerly between her fingers, Sarah pushed one corner of it against the skin of her forearm. At first, she felt nothing but a slight resistance. She pushed a little bit harder, and was rewarded with the feeling of a prick followed by a bit of red that appeared under the brightness of the blade”). The result is a somewhat queasy but well-written and captivating melodrama.

An entertaining fantasy with a dash of macabre eroticism.