August 8, 2016
Two boring characters lurch toward their fate in this listless contemporary horror novel from Grey (the writing team of Sarah Lotz and Louis Greenberg). Mark’s shotgun marriage to trophy wife Steph, who’s already haunted by the ghosts of Mark’s failed first marriage, is further strained by a home invasion. A chance to reset by swapping their apartment in Cape Town, South Africa, for one in Paris, France, only makes matters worse. When Mark thinks, “I’m nothing but a cliché,” he is sadly on the nose, as Grey doesn’t give readers any reason to care about a whining sad sack who accidentally killed his daughter. Steph’s jealousy and selfishness make her little better. The use of past-tense narration by Steph takes the mystery out of Mark’s present-tense account, and the horror elements (a suicide, hallucinations) produce barely more than a yawn. The story is slow until the rush to a senseless final death and a buck-passing ending that disappoints instead of satisfying.
A South African couple seeks respite from their troubled lives by taking a romantic vacation to Paris that quickly becomes the stuff of nightmares.After masked men break into Mark and Steph's Cape Town home, they both begin to suffer from paranoia and insomnia despite the fact that neither they nor their daughter was physically injured. Though they're strapped for cash, they find a website that facilitates house swaps and agree to trade a week in South Africa for a week in Paris, hoping that this time away will soothe their anxieties. But from the very beginning of the trip, nothing goes as expected: the Paris couple never shows up in Cape Town, and the apartment in Paris is like the set of a horror movie, complete with a creepy neighbor who utters cryptic warnings like "You be careful here. It is not for living." When she throws herself out a window, Mark and Steph have had enough and return home. But Mark has been infected by the darkness and continues to have supernatural visions of a dead girl. Steph has to protect herself and her daughter as Mark's behavior becomes more and more sinister. There are moments of true scariness that emerge from a sustained, deep-seated sense of discomfort, and the novel is very visual, providing cinematic descriptions such as "just for an instant, a skittering, shadowy thing, flat and blank-faced and multi-limbed, darted for me like a trapdoor spider lunging for a fly." Grey's (The Mall, 2014, etc.) characters are not deeply developed, but they don't have to be. Chills and thrills enough to attract and please fans of supernatural horror. This one will keep you up all night. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
October 15, 2016
In the aftermath of a home invasion, married South Africans Mark and Steph decide to leave their toddler with Steph's parents and do a house swap with a Parisian couple. This is a chance for a real honeymoon, as there has been tension between the pair. But from the first moment in the unexpectedly dank, dirty Paris apartment, the trip is doomed. Mark begins seeing things that aren't there and hearing the sound of a child crying, and the French couple never show up in Cape Town. Even after they return home, something dark has infected Mark and Steph's lives. The fracture lines in both protagonists are apparent from the first page, which will have readers biting their nails as they nervously await for whatever will tip one or both of them over the edge. VERDICT This creepy read from veteran horror writer Sarah Lotz (The Three), here writing under the pseudonym Grey, will make you hesitate before planning your next vacation. [This title is copublished with Blumhouse Books, the imprint of horror movie studio Blumhouse Productions; film optioned by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment.--Ed.]--MM
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August 1, 2016
Mark and Steph weren't injured in the break-in robbery of their Cape Town apartmentneither was their daughter, Haydenbut the resulting trauma is rotting their relationship from the inside. On a whim, they decide to use an apartment-swap website to spend a week, just the two of them, in Paris. But apartment 3B isn't the cozy, charming getaway they were promised. It's cold and musty, lacking Wi-Fi, and dark from locked window shades, and the building is practically deserted. A credit-card issue basically traps them there, at which point Mark finds something in 3B's closet: buckets full of human hair. Grey, a pseudonym for Sarah Lotz (The Three, 2014) and Louis Greenberg, believably corners the couple in an unwinnable situation eerily familiar to anyone who's had a vacation go awry. The ante is viscerally upped every new daya creepy neighbor, an unnerving wax museum, an animal death, and visions of Mark's dead child from a previous marriageand, as with Grey's surreal The Mall (2014), the authors change the game halfway through to disorienting effect. Bonus: features the scariest haircut scene possibly ever.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)
August 1, 2016
A South African couple seeks respite from their troubled lives by taking a romantic vacation to Paris that quickly becomes the stuff of nightmares.After masked men break into Mark and Stephs Cape Town home, they both begin to suffer from paranoia and insomnia despite the fact that neither they nor their daughter was physically injured. Though they're strapped for cash, they find a website that facilitates house swaps and agree to trade a week in South Africa for a week in Paris, hoping that this time away will soothe their anxieties. But from the very beginning of the trip, nothing goes as expected: the Paris couple never shows up in Cape Town, and the apartment in Paris is like the set of a horror movie, complete with a creepy neighbor who utters cryptic warnings like You be careful here. It is not for living. When she throws herself out a window, Mark and Steph have had enough and return home. But Mark has been infected by the darkness and continues to have supernatural visions of a dead girl. Steph has to protect herself and her daughter as Marks behavior becomes more and more sinister. There are moments of true scariness that emerge from a sustained, deep-seated sense of discomfort, and the novel is very visual, providing cinematic descriptions such as just for an instant, a skittering, shadowy thing, flat and blank-faced and multi-limbed, darted for me like a trapdoor spider lunging for a fly. Grey's (The Mall, 2014, etc.) characters are not deeply developed, but they dont have to be. Chills and thrills enough to attract and please fans of supernatural horror. This one will keep you up all night.
COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.