A review by ericarobyn
Agony's Lodestone by Laura Keating

dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

4.0

Agony’s Lodestone by Laura Keating is a disquieting story of a family looking for answers after the disappearance of their sister. Filled with fever-dream-like sequences and terrifying thunderous booms of the waves crashing in caverns below, this tense tale will have you so nervous to see what’s coming next!

This family has almost given up on finding answers after so many years. But when the youngest brother arrives back in town, saying he found a lead, the three siblings get together and go to the location where their sister was last seen.

Unfortunately, they’re not alone. A film crew that recently wrote off the youngest brother is there as well, racing to find answers first. Once both groups enter the forest, they quickly learn that things are not normal or safe.

Shifting between the past and the present, each step gets us closer to seeing both what happened and why the siblings each carry a burden of guilt, as well as what’s going on now and what must be done next.

My Favorite Passages from Agony’s Lodestone

It was a Friday afternoon, but the light had a Sunday morning quality, dreamily pressing against the drawn living room curtains and playing at the dusty hem with long, golden fingers.

“I may not know showbusiness, but I don’t need to be a proctologist to know an asshole when I see one, either.”

The ground further up the service road was deeply uneven, pocked with holes wide enough to snag a foot, maybe break an ankle in. Soon the way began to fade until there was only a memory of a road. The terrain was so rutted it was as though someone had dragged an enormous plow along it; years of winter run-off carving a network of leaf-choked streams and puckered scars in the crusty earth.

What was currency, any currency, but an exchangeable form of time?

My Final Thoughts on Agony’s Lodestone

Reading this book is like sitting in the woods alone, hearing the snap and cracking of nearby branches, just waiting for something to pop out of the darkness.

Horror fans that enjoy the unsettling with a big focus on family and not a lot of answers, this is one for you!