Publishers Weekly
06/24/2019
Stevens’s intriguing yet uneven debut is a descent into obsession that follows Ella, a young woman from backwater Oregon who becomes a nanny for a wealthy 20-something couple in New York. Before acquiring her job, Ella’s meager existence in the Big Apple consists of barely having enough to eat and encouraging strangers to buy her dinner to stave off starvation. Though Ella’s charge is 16-month-old William, Ella spends most of her time observing his mother, Lonnie—whom readers know at the outset will leave her family. Ella investigates Lonnie and James’s house, reading Lonnie’s diary, looking through her photo albums, and pilfering the occasional trinket. Ella is aware Lonnie cheats on James with Carlow, their friend, which motivates her to attempt a seduction with Carlow in an attempt to get closer to Lonnie. At a writer’s retreat, Lonnie encourages Ella to swap identities with her to mess with the woman who leads the retreat, allowing Ella to revel in being Lonnie for a time. Ella is entranced by Lonnie’s beauty and is even more drawn to her after she discovers parallels with her own family history. The tension is reduced by revealing Lonnie’s disappearance up front, but Stevens meticulously elevates the mundane days of a nanny by injecting Ella’s life with her all-consuming adoration for Lonnie. This debut makes for a stimulating character study. (Aug.)
From the Publisher
Sexual and class tensions merge into riveting drama, as a nannying gig for a broke, 20-something college dropout turns into something more intimate—and perhaps more sinister.... As debut novels go, Devotion is about as promising as they come.” — Willamette Week
"A page-turner. This psychological thriller has all the ingredients to create a tense situation rife with obsession, jealousy, lust, and betrayal.... E ach word demands to be devoured." — New York Journal of Books
“Evocative…. Devotion pushes into territory that’s rarely covered and does so with such subtlety…. A thought-provoking novel, for sure, with rich, literary prose, and I’m hoping it helps expand the conversation on womanhood and consent, especially in the raised awareness of this #MeToo era.” — Criminal Element
“A sense of menace grabs the reader.... The deceptively casual way in which Ella recounts reading Lonnie’s journal or taking her things builds the sense of foreboding.... [A] dark, absorbing novel..... For fans of such friendship-gone-wrong stories as Marlena by Julie Buntin and The Girls by Emma Cline.” — Shelf Awareness (starred review)
“A stimulating character study.” — Publishers Weekly
“Devotion stages the dangerous yet mesmerizing knot made when desire wrestles envy.... This book will make your heart race. This story will make you sweat in the best way.” — Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Book of Joan
“Devotion is a dangerous novel—sharp, glittering, and sexy—and Madeline Stevens is a significant new talent. I read this story of obsession, friendship, and betrayal with my heart in my throat, captivated by Ella’s increasing absorption into the privileged lives of the couple who hires her.” — Julie Buntin, author of Marlena
“Madeline Stevens has written a thrilling, evocative book about intimacy, identity, and the alien nature lodged at the heart of the people we think we know the best.” — Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine
“Devotion is frighteningly perceptive about the ways women see each other, use each other, hurt each other. Madeline Stevens’ debut novel dares to let jealousy and obsession lead its characters to the places we fear most.” — Rebecca Schiff, author of The Bed Moved
“Devotion is a romance and a horror story, a tale of obsession and betrayal, revolving around two women divided by the chasm of class. In breathtaking prose, Stevens illuminates the ugly, stunning danger of love. This novel gripped me gorgeously and still won’t let me go.” — Hannah Lillith Assadi, author of Sonora
Julie Buntin
Devotion is a dangerous novel—sharp, glittering, and sexy—and Madeline Stevens is a significant new talent. I read this story of obsession, friendship, and betrayal with my heart in my throat, captivated by Ella’s increasing absorption into the privileged lives of the couple who hires her.”
Rebecca Schiff
“Devotion is frighteningly perceptive about the ways women see each other, use each other, hurt each other. Madeline Stevens’ debut novel dares to let jealousy and obsession lead its characters to the places we fear most.
Hannah Lillith Assadi
Devotion is a romance and a horror story, a tale of obsession and betrayal, revolving around two women divided by the chasm of class. In breathtaking prose, Stevens illuminates the ugly, stunning danger of love. This novel gripped me gorgeously and still won’t let me go.
Shelf Awareness (starred review)
A sense of menace grabs the reader.... The deceptively casual way in which Ella recounts reading Lonnie’s journal or taking her things builds the sense of foreboding.... [A] dark, absorbing novel..... For fans of such friendship-gone-wrong stories as Marlena by Julie Buntin and The Girls by Emma Cline.
New York Journal of Books
"A page-turner. This psychological thriller has all the ingredients to create a tense situation rife with obsession, jealousy, lust, and betrayal.... E ach word demands to be devoured."
Willamette Week
Sexual and class tensions merge into riveting drama, as a nannying gig for a broke, 20-something college dropout turns into something more intimate—and perhaps more sinister.... As debut novels go, Devotion is about as promising as they come.
Criminal Element
Evocative…. Devotion pushes into territory that’s rarely covered and does so with such subtlety…. A thought-provoking novel, for sure, with rich, literary prose, and I’m hoping it helps expand the conversation on womanhood and consent, especially in the raised awareness of this #MeToo era.”
Lidia Yuknavitch
Devotion stages the dangerous yet mesmerizing knot made when desire wrestles envy.... This book will make your heart race. This story will make you sweat in the best way.
Alexandra Kleeman
Madeline Stevens has written a thrilling, evocative book about intimacy, identity, and the alien nature lodged at the heart of the people we think we know the best.
Kirkus Reviews
2019-05-13
Reduced to picking up men in bars in hopes of trading sexual favors for a meal, Ella is definitely down on her luck. So when an offer comes to work as a nanny for a wealthy young couple, she jumps at the chance. But the job may cost more than she bargained for.
Ensconced in a lovely town house between Park and Lexington avenues, Lonnie and James seem to have everything Ella never had. Both women lost their mothers early, but Lonnie's died young, leaving her to the care of an overbearing father and private school, while Ella's simply packed up and left. Instead of struggling to make rent, Lonnie luxuriates in writing, easily living off her own trust fund and James' work in finance. Yet Lonnie seems to invite disaster, trysting with their friend Carlow practically under James' nose. Soon Ella finds herself drawn into games of sexual risk, assumed identities, and drug-addled escapades. With each character unstable and unreliable, Stevens' debut novel shimmers with tension. Ella isn't simply a damsel in distress; she might be a villain herself. Stealing mementos from Lonnie's closet, borrowing her clothes, reading (and rewriting) her journal (not-so-cleverly hidden in the freezer)—Ella treasures these souvenirs, squirreling away rings and someone else's memories with equal abandon. What everyone in this novel wants is both crystal clear—money, power, attention—and deliciously obscure. Why is Ella so drawn to Lonnie? Why is Lonnie so eager to pull Ella into a tangled web of marital and extramarital relationships? Stevens delicately pulls the threads together, ever so slowly, until a fateful night strangles any possibility of changing the course of anyone's fate. And then Lonnie disappears.
A darkly glittering jewel from a promising new voice in thrillers.
