The body

A housewife's paranoid fears are stoked by a series of inexplicable near-fatal assaults in this uneven domestic dark fantasy from Morrow (So Many Beginnings). Mavis Dwyer is seven years into a fulfilling marriage that has rescued her from the psychological oppression of her belittling ex-lover, disapproving parents, and the church she was raised in. Then her life begins to unravel. In quick succession, she is nearly killed in a car accident, barely escapes injury when an employee at a hardware store goes on a violent rampage, and fends off attackers during a home invasion. When she discovers that the perpetrators were all attendees at her wedding, and that none remembers their violent turn, Mavis is forced to consider that some malevolent influence is turning her acquaintances and loved ones against her. Morrow ultimately provides a novel explanation for Mavis's travails, but the winding path there occasionally frustrates. The narrative delves deep into Mavis's neurotic mind, which is often more flighty and distracting than it is illuminating. Still, patient readers will be rewarded with an eerie payoff. Agent: Victoria Marini, Volume Five. (Feb.)

Mavis is rushing home, clearly preoccupied and nervous, when her car is hit by a driver who runs a red light; Mavis ends up in the hospital. With this attention-grabbing, unsettling start, Morrow (Cherish Farrah) launches the story of couple Mavis and Jerrod as they enter the seven-year-itch stage of their marriage. Over the next few days, the pair face more threats to their lives as they are attacked by people they know--action that invites readers to ask themselves whether they are reading a domestic suspense novel with an unreliable, trauma-inflicted narrator or a supernatural, cult horror novel about a church meting out horrific penalties to those who break their vows. The answer very well could be "both," and readers will dig deeply into their own discomfort as they turn the pages in their attempt to unearth the truth. VERDICT Morrow delivers a thrilling reading experience that feels like Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl collided with Chuck Tingle's Camp Damascus, glazed with an overcoat of Rivers Solomon's Model Home.