Take a photo of a barcode or cover
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Isabeau was once a child medium in a family of witches, but she ran away from her past and changed her name to Alice. Now, she lives a privileged life with a normal boyfriend, but her life is upended when her sister finds her and threatens her so that she will return home and help deal with the ghost of her niece. Alice and Bronwyn must confront their past and shared trauma in order to save Bronwyn’s still-living daughter.
I really enjoyed reading this thriller. It’s a combination of paranormal, horror, and mystery as well, and balances all the genres well. A key theme in this book is trauma and the way it impacts us when we are older, as is seen by the quote from Bessel van der Kolk, psychologist and author of The Body Keeps the Score in the opening of the novel. This is the best-written debut novel I’ve read in a long time.
The novel goes between reflective descriptions of the pasts of the girls in the novel and the trauma they endured at the hands of their mother, Gisele, and tense plot-focused sections. I think it did a great job of highlighting how someone who is traumatized can be utterly transported from their everyday life by intrusive flashbacks. Although Gisele does horrible things to her children and grandchildren, you can easily see how the generational curse and her own mothering warped her into behaving the way that she did. She’s certainly not likeable — I’m actually not sure I’d say any of the adult characters in this novel are likeable, so if that is a turn off for you I’d advise staying away — but you do eventually understand why she turned out the way she did.
This novel is very potentially triggering with graphic descriptions of child abuse and of self-harm, so that is also something to be wary of. I thoroughly enjoyed the novel regardless, though, and I don’t believe any of the descriptions were excessive. Sometimes authors shy away from fully showing the horrors of the things they are writing about, and that was not the case in this book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Kidnapping, Death of parent, Toxic friendship, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Addiction, Eating disorder, Suicide, Terminal illness, Pregnancy, Alcohol
Minor: Abortion