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cleater65's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
This book was GRIPPING! As soon as I picked it up I couldn't put it down. It's complex in how many interwoven issues are covered, and alternates between uneasy and horrific. I am excited to read more of this author.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Confinement, Death, Drug use, Gaslighting, Gore, Medical content, Medical trauma, Physical abuse, Racism, and Torture
Moderate: Schizophrenia/Psychosis
Minor: Cancer, Murder, and Terminal illness
naimereadslines's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Chronic illness, Death, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Medical trauma, Racism, and Vomit
gentlethem's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Medical trauma, Medical content, Terminal illness, Mental illness, Drug use, Death of parent, Death, and Confinement
Moderate: Gun violence and Racism
sherbertwells's review against another edition
dark
emotional
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
Before I begin my review, I’d like to thank Ms. Saunders for generously giving me this book. I wish I had taken better care of it. Without you I would never have encountered it, and it really expanded my horizons!
I’m not normally a fan of horror in fiction. Lakewood by Megan Giddings is the first horror/thriller novel I can recall reading. I don’t know how closely the book hews to the tropes of its genre or whether it’s a ‘proper’ thriller at all. It disappeared a few hours after I finished reading it, so I can’t exactly comb through it and pick out the most atmospheric quotes. Then again, disappearing books are pretty spooky.
The reviews I watched in advance for this book claimed it was terrifying. It was horror because it was real, because the US government really had exploited people for years in horrible projects like the Tuskegee syphilis experiment and Project Stargate. For the first half of the book, I was frozen in terror as Giddings patiently revealed the main character: Lena is a black millennial whose mother, Deziree, suffers debilitating migraines, and in order to pay the family’s medical debts she volunteers for a sketchy government experiment in the fictional Michigan town of Lakewood. In fact, the first half of Lakewood isn’t grotesque or ugly at all, merely thick with dread. I read it all in one sitting because I kept expecting something terrible to happen.
I sort of expected the horrible parts of the plot to be satisfying or to wrap up neatly or at least to explain what’s happening in the eponymous town. But unlike the creepy white observers whose omnipresence leads to some of Lakewood’s best scenes, Giddings isn’t concerned with the disgusting details of the experiment. Instead she focuses on its human costs; Lena, her mother and dead grandmother each have a mysterious tie to the US Government’s legacy of scientific exploitation, and only by understanding their history can they put their common demons to rest.
The world requires a book like this, and I require this book more than I like it. The Tuskegee syphilis study and other unethical experiments are real American horror stories. It makes perfect sense to retell it as a thriller. I just don’t understand thrillers, and now I can’t even find the goshdarn book!
I won’t forget it, though. The name “Lakewood” summons a chilling story from my own past.
A few years ago I spent a month at a German-immersion summer camp whose gift shop doesn’t sell postcards. Twenty years before the village opened in 1961, the Nazis had forced Hungarian Jews in Auschwitz to write to their families about how wonderful their new residence was. The letters’ authors were murdered and their addresses were collected for further atrocities. Because the name of the fictional location was so generic and idyllic-sounding, the founders of a wholesome little immersion program in Bemidji had accidentally chosen it for their flagship village. When a French village opened, then a Spanish one—there are twenty now—the creators copied and pasted the original title until the woods of northern Minnesota were dotted with identically-named projects.
That name? Waldsee.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror and Medical content
Moderate: Confinement, Death, Drug use, Gore, Racism, Violence, and Vomit
Minor: Death of parent and Grief
caseythereader's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Blood, Body horror, Cancer, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Cursing, Death, Death of parent, Dementia, Drug use, Gore, Gun violence, Medical content, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Murder, Racism, Terminal illness, Violence, and Vomit
deefenestrate's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Gore, Grief, Medical content, Medical trauma, Physical abuse, Torture, Gun violence, and Violence
mxfahrenheit's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Chronic illness, Death, Gore, Medical content, Medical trauma, Racism, and Emotional abuse
Moderate: Cancer, Confinement, Grief, Vomit, and Torture
lauriereadslohf's review against another edition
dark
informative
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Lakewood is a disturbing tale of classism, racism, and desperation and those who take advantage of others because they can and for their own gain. It’s horrifying on so many levels and definitely worth reading.
Lena is a young woman grieving the loss of her grandmother when the story opens. Her grandma took care of them all but especially Lena’s mother who suffers from a brain malady. Now Lena and her mother are left alone with their grief and the mounting bills in the aftermath. It soon becomes overwhelming and when Lena receives a strange letter from The Lakewood Project offering her a huge stipend, lodging, and full medical coverage for her family in exchange for research studies into her mind, memory, personality, and perception, she’s more than a little curious as well as a bit skeptical because if it sounds too good to be true, well, you know the rest.
It feels like a scam. The interview makes her uncomfortable but ultimately she agrees to basically become part of an experiment and from there the most terrible things happen, as they will, and that’s all I’ll say about that.
Much of this book reads a little like a fever dream as Lena and her fellow test subjects are exposed to tests and drugs and various appalling and chilling things. Despite this, I never felt too off-kilter. Lena is doing her best to keep it all together and the situation is depressingly oppressive and sad and 100% believable. My only complaint, and it is a bit of a big one, is that this book is a super slow burn (this isn’t the complaint) and the last few pages throw SO much backstory and reveals at the reader that it’s a little mind-numbing. I wasn’t quite ready to be hit with all of that in such a brutal manner! I wish more time had been given to some of those reveals and that a few more questions had been answered with some clarity and in all honestly I would’ve liked to see it all unpacked a bit more slowly.
There’s a lot to think about in this book and it’s not a light and easy read but I think it’s worth your time if you know what you’re getting into before you begin.
Lena is a young woman grieving the loss of her grandmother when the story opens. Her grandma took care of them all but especially Lena’s mother who suffers from a brain malady. Now Lena and her mother are left alone with their grief and the mounting bills in the aftermath. It soon becomes overwhelming and when Lena receives a strange letter from The Lakewood Project offering her a huge stipend, lodging, and full medical coverage for her family in exchange for research studies into her mind, memory, personality, and perception, she’s more than a little curious as well as a bit skeptical because if it sounds too good to be true, well, you know the rest.
It feels like a scam. The interview makes her uncomfortable but ultimately she agrees to basically become part of an experiment and from there the most terrible things happen, as they will, and that’s all I’ll say about that.
Much of this book reads a little like a fever dream as Lena and her fellow test subjects are exposed to tests and drugs and various appalling and chilling things. Despite this, I never felt too off-kilter. Lena is doing her best to keep it all together and the situation is depressingly oppressive and sad and 100% believable. My only complaint, and it is a bit of a big one, is that this book is a super slow burn (this isn’t the complaint) and the last few pages throw SO much backstory and reveals at the reader that it’s a little mind-numbing. I wasn’t quite ready to be hit with all of that in such a brutal manner! I wish more time had been given to some of those reveals and that a few more questions had been answered with some clarity and in all honestly I would’ve liked to see it all unpacked a bit more slowly.
There’s a lot to think about in this book and it’s not a light and easy read but I think it’s worth your time if you know what you’re getting into before you begin.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror
Moderate: Chronic illness, Death, Medical trauma, and Racism
Minor: Grief
podanotherjessi's review against another edition
challenging
sad
fast-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
This was definitely a strange and thrilling ride. I liked the themes woven into this book and the way it made you think. Not so much about the nature of research - which it makes abundantly clear is terrible when performed in this way - but about why they are doing what they're doing. And what it would take to push you to something like Lakewood. Personally would have liked to make up my own mind about the horror of the research slowly rather than be told almost immediately, and I was let down by the ending, but overall a good read.
Characters: 7
Plot: 8
Setting: 9
General Appeal: 6
Writing style: 7
Originality: 9
Ending: 5
Characters: 7
Plot: 8
Setting: 9
General Appeal: 6
Writing style: 7
Originality: 9
Ending: 5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cancer, Chronic illness, Confinement, Death, Drug use, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, and Racism
veg_sbn's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Chronic illness, Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Grief, Medical content, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Racism, and Torture