Considering who the bogeyman clearly is and remains, Wegert does an admirable job of generating mounting suspense.
A New York state cop makes still another heroic effort to exorcize her murderous cousin from her life—and he takes a lot of exorcizing.
Years before Blake Bram became the East Village janitor who kidnapped and killed Jess Lowenthal, Becca Wolkwitz, and Lanie Miner, he was Abraham Skilton, the cousin and childhood playmate of Shana Merchant, whose love and companionship he repaid by abducting her as well—and he might have executed her, too, if he hadn’t been killed first. Even though Shana has moved to the Thousand Islands, Bram has continued to haunt her in unimaginable ways. His latest avatar is revealed by a combination of two painful experiences: the disappearance of Rebecca Hearst after an argument with her well-connected husband, car-dealership heir Godfrey Patrick Hearst III, and the publication of a vitriolic anti–Shana Merchant screed in the local paper by Gracelyn Barlowe that attracts the attention of Estella Lopez, the wife of Jay Lopez, a rookie cop who was killed trying to rescue Shana from her cousin’s clutches, and Javier Barba, Estella’s ex-con brother, both of them bent on making her life hell. It’s an unnecessary gesture, since her late cousin is already doing a bang-up job—this time through a series of copycat killings of women who share the first names of his earlier victims. The author turns the screws on Shana even tighter by making Gracelyn Barlowe the mother of Juliet Barlowe, the pregnant wife of Shana’s fellow cop Don Bogle, who soon comes under suspicion himself.
Considering who the bogeyman clearly is and remains, Wegert does an admirable job of generating mounting suspense.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4483-0713-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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