Review by Booklist Review
ldquo;Any reasonable person would know that 'I'll kill you' is a figure of speech." But sometimes it becomes more than that. Grace has reluctantly allowed her mother, Jackie, to move into her new house--the home Grace finally managed to buy, only to abruptly lose her job after the outbreak of COVID-19. She needs to make those mortgage payments. Grace was content in her own little world, but Jackie's presence is like "a collection of splinters." Grace starts to unravel when she begins to have gruesome nightmares about her deceased twin sister. Then Jackie presses her into revealing her obsession with catfishing desperate women online, presenting herself to them in an odd assortment of personas. Grace feels violated, but when she invades Jackie's space in revenge, she makes a peculiar find and is shattered, along with the reader, by the explanation of what is in a small, locked box. This is Stage's fourth full-length psychological thriller (after Getaway, 2021). Each of her books explores the dark side of family bonds, all in their own extraordinary way. This one lays bare the true horror inherent in fables and folklore, and what Pandora lets out of her box seems negligible compared to what Grace unleashes. Some things are better not known. And be careful what you wish for.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Mother-daughter conflict drives this so-so psychological thriller from Stage (Baby Teeth). When Grace worries about making mortgage payments on her newly purchased Pittsburgh house after losing her job as a hairdresser at the start of a Covid--like pandemic, her recently widowed mother, Jackie, offers to move in with her, despite their strained relationship. Things go wrong right away. Jackie rearranges Grace's kitchen cabinets and hangs up unwanted photographs of Grace's deceased twin sister, Hope, in the living room. Hope, who was born with cerebral palsy and had mischievous tendencies, begins to appear in Grace's nightmares, which become increasingly disturbing and eventually alter Grace's perception of reality. As tensions continue to rise at home, Jackie reveals the frightening if predictable way Hope met her fate, and Grace's mental health takes a nosedive. What is a dream and what's reality is unclear as the convoluted plot builds to a chilling, ambiguous conclusion, and readers will struggle to care about the fates of these somewhat stock characters. Stage has done better. Agents: Claire Friedman and Stephen Barbara, InkWell Management. (Feb.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Stage's claustrophobic novel contemplates what turns a person into a monster. When the COVID pandemic begins, hairdresser Grace is laid off, and her widowed mother, Jackie, moves in to help pay the bills. Their relationship is strained, dating back to Grace's childhood. Told from Grace's clearly flawed but sympathetic perspective and fueled by the disorientation of COVID isolation and frequent flashback dream sequences, readers watch helplessly as Grace's mind completely unravels, leading to shocking violence. Opening the novel with an ominous prologue, where a criminal psychologist is about to meet his newest patient, and closing with an epilogue in which the same doctor's observations terrifyingly hammer home the supernatural aspects of the story, Stage thrusts dread upon readers from her book's first sentences and continues to escalate the tension with every page. VERDICT Stage's latest (after The Girl Who Outgrew the World) feels like a nice bookend to her Bram Stoker Award--nominated debut novel, Baby Teeth, an LJ Best Book of 2018. A great choice for fans of intense psychological horror where nothing can be trusted and no one can look away from the emerging nightmare, such as in Now You're One of Us by Asa Nonami or The Unsuitable by Molly Pohlig.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A young woman questions her sanity after she's forced to cohabit with her estranged mother. When Grace, a happily single 30-something who enjoys her job as a hairdresser and the independence she has gained from living alone in Pittsburgh, gets a call from her mother, Jackie, who wants to move in with her during the Covid pandemic, she is not thrilled. She and her mother have not been close since the death of her disabled twin sister, Hope, nearly 20 years earlier. But her mother needs her assistance, and with her income slashed because of the stay-at-home order, Grace needs help paying her mortgage, so she reluctantly agrees. The two coexist relatively peacefully for a while, the atmosphere sometimes pleasant but more often claustrophobic and oppressive. Just as it seems the two women might reconcile, Grace starts to have trouble sleeping, and soon, nightmares take over her entire unconscious life. When they begin to seep in during the day as well, she starts to question her own mental state as well as her mother's, and both she and the reader start to wonder if her sanity is connected to her mother's presence and what is really going on in that house. Amid her intense newfound insomnia, her mother makes a startling accusation, and things take a turn for the worse. The tense relationship between Grace and Jackie is well drawn and relatable. Though the nightmares sometimes get repetitive and take up too much space, the overarching plot and unreliable narrative voice--written in the third person but very close to Grace's perspective--make this a disturbing yet addictive read. This compelling book will keep you wondering what is real and what is madness. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
