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A review by savvylit
Lakewood by Megan Giddings
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Lakewood is a terrifying novel. Giddings inserts readers directly into Lena's mind so that we know exactly as much as she does about her new employer. Which is very little. This allows Giddings to create a creeping sense of terror as more and more goes wrong during the Lakewood experiments. There were a few top-notch body horror moments in this novel that really scared the crap out of me.
The truly terrifying thing about this book, though, isn't the body horror or the corporate gaslighting. It's the fact that, though the contents of this book are fictional, they are based on a legacy of horrific white supremacist reality. Consistently throughout U.S. history, people of color have been unwittingly used as guinea pigs for medical experimentation. Giddings interprets historical precedent into a modern, entirely fathomable racist hellscape.
The truly terrifying thing about this book, though, isn't the body horror or the corporate gaslighting. It's the fact that, though the contents of this book are fictional, they are based on a legacy of horrific white supremacist reality. Consistently throughout U.S. history, people of color have been unwittingly used as guinea pigs for medical experimentation. Giddings interprets historical precedent into a modern, entirely fathomable racist hellscape.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Gaslighting, Grief, Medical content, Mental illness, Racism, Blood, Cancer, Death, Injury/Injury detail, and Medical trauma
Moderate: Forced institutionalization
Minor: Vomit