Library Journal - Audio
06/10/2024
Young, who writes children's books, YA, and adult fiction as Karen McQuestion, offers her horror debut, using a haunted house to trap a rather unlikable protagonist. Mark Norman is a guy who has used his looks and charm to skate by in life, until those traits stop working. He needs a job, and there's an opportunity for him in Alden Manor, caring for elderly oddball siblings Roy and Alma Walgrave. He gets some help from fellow caregiver Lisa, but she confesses that there is something strange about the house, something "putting thoughts" in her head. Thinking that this could be the score of a lifetime, Mark ingratiates himself with the old couple in hopes of inheriting their estate, despite his creepy feelings and bad dreams. Craig A. Hart offers a solid narration, particularly when he voices grandfatherly Roy. Even so, listeners will likely figure out the plot twist long before the shallow and duplicitous Mark, who has a frustrating lack of awareness. VERDICT Although Hart's narration is unimpeachable, the story offers little depth and few surprises. Listeners might enjoy seeing Mark getting his comeuppance, or they might rejoice when the book finally reveals its obvious twist.—James Gardner
Kirkus Reviews
2021-04-20
In this novel, a man cares for two older people who may not be as innocent as they seem.
Mark Norman is a handsome man who is en route to an important job interview when this story opens: “If he gets the position, it will change his life.” But as he sits on a Minnesota bus, Mark has no idea how drastically this job will alter him. He arrives at his destination, Alden Manor, a building that may have once been impressive but is now in a run-down area of the city. A derelict on the corner warns Mark that anyone who enters the house doesn’t “come out the same,” yet this harbinger does little to dissuade Mark from going into Alden Manor and meeting his future employers, brother and sister Roy and Alma Waldegrave. Very quickly, he has earned the job of helping care for the older siblings and aiding their other caregiver, Lisa, with errands and chores. The Waldegraves are incredibly wealthy and, in addition to paying Mark an inordinate salary for very little labor, treat him to nice dinners and new clothes. Mark is quickly enamored with Roy and Alma, and he hopes to ingratiate himself in their favor to continue to make good money. But Lisa warns him that “sometimes it feels like the walls are breathing and putting thoughts in my head. I get the most awful dreams too.” She shows him the manor’s second floor, where a cavernous room houses photographs of a mysterious group called The Redevine Society, a name, Lisa will later pen in her journal, that “is a cipher.” Young’s gripping narrative moves at a brisk pace that will hold readers’ attention until the very end. Lisa steadily becomes more and more unhinged, and her paranoia and fear slowly affect Mark as he becomes, at times, too “afraid to move, too frightened” in the dusty manor. But many of the tropes and plot points (an old house, a slightly idiosyncratic but endearing older couple, overheard chanting, an anagram, and an untrustworthy doctor) are very similar to such novels as Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby. While the writing is propulsive in Young’s story, the plot points can sometimes feel stale.
A well-written but familiar horror tale about the perils of greed.